# SourceX referral eligibility review: who answers what

Canonical: https://refer.sourcex.si/guides/which-eligibility-questions-belong-with-sourcex
Last updated: 2026-11-05

Questions about the relationship belong to you, questions about the company's own facts belong to its CEO, and questions about program match, rights, exceptions, prior contact with SourceX and reward credit belong with SourceX. A partner who settles that third group in advance ends up promising an acceptance nobody has given. Ask the company only for metadata it already knows, date every answer, and send anything you cannot decide to SourceX's review rather than guessing.

The split matters more as a venture channel widens beyond the funded portfolio to LP-owned businesses and portfolio customers, where the platform team knows least and guesses most. Funding status answers none of the questions below.

## What the published pages settle, and what they hand to review

SourceX publishes some answers outright and reserves others. Reading the two kinds apart is the first step in sorting questions by owner.

| Kind | Statement | Where it is published |
|---|---|---|
| Settled | Introduced companies must meet the sourcing criteria, including 50 or more full-time employees at peak | Program terms, section 1 |
| Settled | Partners sign the SourceX Channel Partner Agreement before submitting introductions | Program terms, section 1 |
| Settled | A company already known to SourceX through an application, lead, account or email is a duplicate and earns no credit | Program terms, section 3 |
| Reserved | Whether a company's material matches a real program; SourceX checks this during review | Who-qualifies page |
| Reserved | Criteria follow the specific program, not one universal minimum, and some programs set higher thresholds | Who-qualifies page |
| Reserved | Smaller specialists can still be considered | Who-qualifies page |

The current program-specific decision is the one that does most of the work: SourceX screens each company against the criteria of one particular program, and a company turned down under that program can come back as a fit for another. A partner can therefore check the baseline, but cannot know which program applies or where its bar sits. The terms add a practical limit: partners never receive access to applicant documents, so after a company applies, the partner sees its stage, not its file.

## Pin down the entity and its controller before you sort anything

The owner of a question depends on which company is answering. Settle two facts first, with a date.

**The operating entity.** The legal entity that employs the people and holds the records, not the brand, the holding vehicle or the fund's position. SourceX looks at the company that holds the records, owns the rights and can sign; related entities do not simply add their headcounts together. For the reward only, a parent company and its subsidiaries count as one company, so the USD 50,000 floor applies once across the group, to its first qualifying transaction; there is no cap on the group's rewards.

**The current controller.** Whoever directs that entity today. In this program that authority sits with the CEO, who approves any licensing discussion and signs on the company's behalf. After a sale, that is the acquirer's CEO, not the founder who still runs the team. In a 50/50 ownership deadlock, or where a trustee or court controls the assets, the CEO alone may not be enough, and whoever controls the entity has to be found first.

Get either fact wrong and every answer below comes from the wrong person.

## The partner-versus-SourceX responsibility table

Twelve questions a screening conversation tends to raise, each with its owner. "Company" means the CEO or someone the CEO names to answer; the CEO still decides whether the conversation happens.

| Question | You, the partner | The company | SourceX | What you write down |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Who can ask the CEO and be heard? | Answer it | No role | No role | A named person and the date they agreed to ask |
| 2. Does the CEO know and want the conversation? | Confirm it through that person | The CEO answers | Lists an introduction the decision maker has not heard about among the usual non-fits | Yes, no or not asked yet |
| 3. Which entity holds the records, and who controls it? | Record it | Answers | Reviews the entity that can sign | Entity name, controller, date |
| 4. Full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded? | Record it | Answers from payroll history | Applies the program's threshold | One number and its month |
| 5. Since when does the company keep its own records, in which systems? | Record it | Answers | Assesses operating history and documentation | Earliest year, system types |
| 6. Where is the company, and what language are the records in? | Record it | Answers | Applies the 70% English rule where it applies | Country, main record language |
| 7. Do some records belong to clients, or sit under restrictive contracts? | Record yes, no or unknown | Its counsel reads its contracts | Decides in its rights review | One word; never contract text |
| 8. Do the records match a current program? | No role | No role | Decides in review | Nothing until SourceX says |
| 9. Would a company below the size baseline be considered? | Ask before introducing | Supplies the facts | Decides | The question asked and the answer, in writing |
| 10. Has the company applied to, or corresponded with, SourceX before? | Ask the CEO | Answers | Checks its own records before inviting the company | What the CEO said |
| 11. Who is credited if another partner also knows the company? | No role | No role | Decides from dated records | Your own dated introduction evidence |
| 12. What would the reward be? | Read the terms and any signed Schedule A | No role | Pays only once the payment conditions are met | Never an estimate presented as a promise |

Two rules fall out of the table. First, every cell in your column is either a relationship fact or a note of what the company said; nothing in it requires files, samples, exports or logins, and partners never ask for them. Second, the columns are not symmetrical. **A partner can close a row on a published exclusion, but only SourceX can open one.** If the CEO says the records are mostly client files, the row can close on SourceX's own "usually not a fit" list. If everything looks good, the row stays a "may be a fit" until SourceX reviews it.

**Method note.** We assembled the table on 2026-10-26 out of SourceX's program terms (Version 2026-10-22.2, since replaced by version 2026-11-04), its who-qualifies, how-it-works and contact pages, and the owner's settled rules on CEO authority, parent companies and staffing firms. The assignment of each question to an owner is our reading of those pages, not a SourceX policy document. It does not measure how often a partner's screen matches SourceX's review outcome; SourceX has not published that figure.

## Mandate, language and history: three places partners answer for SourceX by mistake

Most overreach is a sentence a partner says with good intentions. The fix is to say what you know and stop there.

| What partners tend to say | What you can actually say | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Their data is exactly what AI labs want." | "They keep twelve years of dispatch records in one system; SourceX checks relevance in review." | Program match sits in SourceX's column |
| "They're basically all in English." | "Head office in Mexico; the CEO thinks most records are in Spanish." | The language test is applied by SourceX |
| "They've been around forever." | "Founded in 2004; records in the current system start in 2011." | History means the company's own records, with dates |
| "They're under 50, but they're special." | "47 full-time at peak in 2023; may I ask whether that rules them out?" | Exceptions are SourceX's call, asked in advance |

On language, the published rule reads: Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 70% of the data is in English. The 90% concerns the data, not the language the team speaks, so a Mexican company whose records are mostly Spanish falls outside it on its own CEO's description; record that rather than rounding up. For headcount, a staffing firm counts only its own full-time employees, never placed workers on assignment at clients; write both numbers down and introduce the firm anyway when its records are strong. The [full-time employee count note](/questions/how-to-count-full-time-employees) explains the payroll reading.

## One company sent forward, one sent back (Illustrative)

Illustrative. Two generic companies, invented facts, no outcome implied.

**Sent forward: a 180-person freight audit firm.** An LP of the fund owns a majority stake; the LP principal sits on its board and agreed to ask the founder-CEO, who said yes on 14 October. The firm reports 180 full-time employees at its 2022 peak, audit and dispute records since 2009 in two systems it administers, offices in the U.S. and Canada, and has never contacted SourceX. Its CEO is unsure whether some carrier contracts restrict reuse of audit notes. Rows 1 to 6 and 10 are answered; row 7 is "unknown"; rows 8, 9, 11 and 12 belong to SourceX. The CEO applies with the partner's link, told only that the firm may be a fit and that SourceX decides after its own review.

**Sent back: a 140-person tenant-screening company.** A portfolio founder knows its CEO, who is keen and wants "to license our report database". Rows 1 to 6 pass. Row 7 does not need a lawyer: the records are background reports about individual consumers, and personal consumer data is on SourceX's published "usually not a fit" list. The partner closes the row, records the reason and date, and tells the founder plainly that this kind of data falls outside what SourceX looks for. Nobody suggests that removing names would change the answer, and nothing is sent to SourceX for a second opinion it has already published.

The difference is not enthusiasm, size or the warmth of the path. One row had only SourceX-owned questions left open; the other failed a question its own CEO could answer.

## Sending SourceX a question it alone can answer

Rows 8, 9 and 11 sometimes need an answer before anyone contacts the CEO, usually when a company sits just below the baseline or raises an unusual rights point. SourceX's contact page sends questions about an existing referral to the partner dashboard and other questions to SourceX through sourcex.si. Keep the question short and metadata-only:

1. **Describe, do not identify.** Size band, sector, country, years of records, system types and the CEO's awareness. Leave the company's name out unless the CEO agreed to share it.
2. **Ask one question.** "Would a 47-person specialist with eleven years of its own inspection records be considered for current programs?" is answerable. "Is this a good company?" is not.
3. **Keep the answer with the row.** Note what you told the CEO, usually nothing yet; a written answer to row 9 is what lets you introduce without implying an acceptance.

While a question is open, the CEO hears "may be a fit, and SourceX decides after review", never "qualifies" or "pre-approved". The [company fit checker](/tools/company-fit-checker) is a preliminary, non-binding screen a CEO can run alone, and the [guide to fit checker scores](/guides/how-to-use-a-company-fit-checker-without-treating-the-score-as-approval) explains why its output is not an approval either.

## Where this split can fail

- **Criteria move.** Requirements vary by program and by SourceX's current data needs. Date every cell.
- **The company's answers can be wrong.** Peak headcount and first record years are often remembered, not looked up; payroll outranks recollection.
- **Duplicates are invisible to you.** Under section 3 of the terms, any earlier lead, account or email between SourceX and the company makes it a duplicate, however it began. Row 10 catches what the CEO remembers, not what SourceX holds; see [what happens if the company was already known](/questions/what-happens-if-the-company-was-already-known-to-sourcex) and [two partners and one company](/questions/what-happens-if-two-partners-introduce-the-same-company).
- **Rights are decided late.** Row 7 flags obvious client ownership, as the [client-owned documents question](/questions/can-a-company-participate-if-some-documents-belong-to-its-clients) explains; contract terms are read by the company's counsel and in SourceX's rights review.
- **The two size statements need reconciling.** The terms make 50 or more full-time employees at peak part of the sourcing criteria, while the screening page says smaller specialists can still be considered. Until SourceX answers row 9 for a given company, treat it as open.

To test the split on your own pipeline, fill the twelve rows for your next 20 screened companies, count the SourceX-owned cells someone had already answered informally, and compare your "may be a fit" rows with what review said thirty days later. The [overview for venture platform teams](/for/venture-platform-teams) covers the rest of the portfolio workflow.

## Next step

> **Refer a company. No cap on rewards.** Default reward on a company's first qualifying transaction: the greater of $50,000 plus 5% and 15% of Actual Supplier Payout, with no cap; further qualifying transactions first agreed within 12 months of the first Closing pay 15%. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, including the USD 100,000 Minimum Transaction, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.

Once your column and the company's column are complete and only SourceX's questions are left open, [register for a partner link](/register), line the row up with [who qualifies](/who-qualifies) and go through the [program terms](/terms) before the CEO applies.

Looking at SourceX as a possible investment rather than as an introducer is a different diligence track altogether, and investor materials for it can be requested through the [SourceX investor overview](https://sourcex.si/investors).

This article is for information only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. Any offering by SourceX is made only to verified accredited investors through its offering documents.

## Sources

- https://refer.sourcex.si/terms
- https://refer.sourcex.si/who-qualifies
- https://refer.sourcex.si/how-it-works
- https://refer.sourcex.si/contact
- https://sourcex.si/investors