How we hire researchers.
Pondera is a small senior team, five researchers plus George. We hire slowly and we publish the screen so customers know what we check. The criteria below are what every researcher cleared before joining.
Six gates. Five before joining the team. One ongoing.
Minimum experience floor
Six years professional research experience in investor-grade documents (eight for Business Plans Lead and Institutional Lead roles). FP&A, equity research, project finance, management consulting, or comparable founder-side delivery counts. Fiverr / Upwork hours alone don't.
Sample portfolio review
Three prior delivered investor-grade documents reviewed line-by-line by the founding team. We're looking for: cited claims, defended methodology, auditable financial models, named competitors, disclosed assumptions. Generic templates and AI-padded narratives don't pass this gate.
Two reference calls
Two prior clients, called by us. At least one investor-side where possible, the partner, IC member, or lender who actually read the document. We ask: did the document survive diligence? Was the researcher accountable on revisions? Would you re-engage?
Founder-audited trial work
The first three Pondera deliveries from a new researcher are reviewed line-by-line by the founding team before client delivery. We catch what's easy to miss when you're solo: assumption gaps, citation drift, narrative shortcuts, model errors. If trial work doesn't meet the bar, the researcher comes off the team.
Ongoing senior reviewer pass
Every Investor-Grade and SBA-Ready tier delivery gets a senior reviewer pass before it ships, regardless of who the lead researcher was. The reviewer is rotated among the team so no single voice dominates. Two failed reviews within a quarter and the researcher is removed from new orders pending re-validation.
What we don't check
We don't require an MBA. We don't require ex-McKinsey / ex-Bain pedigree. We don't require a particular geography. We don't require LinkedIn followers or a personal brand. We've found that the credentials investors actually weight live in the document itself, not in the bio of the person who wrote it.
If you order a SKU, the researcher who delivers it has cleared every gate above.
Their profile is on the team page. Their sample work is browseable. Their recent outcomes are listed. If anything in that profile turns out to be misleading, send the discrepancy to george@provdeck.com and we'll address it publicly, including by removing the researcher from the team.
We hire by referral and occasional open posting.
If you've delivered investor-grade documents that survived diligence and you'd be a fit, send three samples and two references to george@provdeck.com. We respond within two weeks. We're not always hiring, when we are, we say so publicly here.