Trust scores, blind double reviews, and how experts set their own rates.
A score is only as good as the people producing it. This is how the expert panel is assembled, held to a standard, and paid.
Who Joins the Panel
- Sector operators with ten or more years building or running companies in a vertical
- Finance professionals from venture, private equity, corporate development or credit with live diligence experience
- Engineering and product leaders who can judge technical substance and defensibility
Calibration
Every applicant scores a sample file from our calibration set before onboarding. Ongoing reviews are measured against peer agreement and against delivered outcomes over time. That measurement becomes a trust score, and the trust score drives allocation.
Trust scores, blind double reviews, and how experts set their own rates.
How Experts Are Paid
Experts set their own rates. An expert receives one hundred percent of their listed rate, with nothing deducted by the platform. FounderGrade adds a service fee on top, paid by the founder, and shows the founder the full breakdown before they commit.
- Rate bands per calibration tier keep the directory comparable: Calibrated $150 to $400, Senior $300 to $800, Lead $600 to $1,500
- Milestone verification is a separate service with its own expert-set rate
- On a platform-matched blind double review, each reviewer is paid their own listed rate
- The third tie-break reviewer is funded by FounderGrade and never billed to the founder
Independence
Reviewers never see founder identity while scoring, and payment does not depend on the direction of a score. A reviewer is paid for a completed review, not for a favourable one.
