Frequently asked questions

• How does it work?▾

  You pay $5 a month. Ask questions about finance careers, deals, markets, whatever you're stuck on.

  Verified professionals working in PE, hedge funds, growth equity, and venture answer. Everyone stays anonymous by default.

  Want more than a written answer? Book a 1:1 call with any professional at their hourly rate. You pick the time, they pick the price.

• Who is on here?▾

  Dozens of verified professionals on the platform right now. People who currently work at or have worked at bulge bracket banks, elite boutique banks, mega-funds, mid-market private equity, growth equity, and activist hedge funds.

  We verify every professional through their work email and a real human reviews them before approval. No pretenders, no bots.

  Learners include students, people switching into the industry, folks already in it who want an unfiltered take, and anyone who came across a finance topic through a pitch or a conversation and wants the real anecdotes instead of the sales version.

• Learner: why should I join?▾

  Right now your options are asking ChatGPT, reading LinkedIn posts that are basically ads, or cold DMing people who don't reply. None of that works.

  We built this to bridge the exact gap we lived through. In school we had no real way to connect with people doing the work. That's only gotten harder. Here you get real anecdotes and experience from people currently in seats at real firms.

  Ask anything without worrying about getting clowned for not knowing. That's the whole point.

• Professional: why should I join?▾

  We built this as professionals ourselves with 5+ years in the field. We wanted to give back but couldn't find a structured way to do it. Every program we looked at expected hours of formal sessions we couldn't commit to.

  This is the opposite. Answer a question when you have ten minutes on a train and get paid for it. Take a 1:1 call only when you want to, at whatever rate you set. No minimums.

  You control everything. What you respond to. What you charge. When you're around. You're anonymous by default so nobody at your firm is going to stumble across your profile.

• Why did you make this website?▾

  When we were in school we had no way to connect with people actually working in finance. The people who could answer the questions we had were too busy to reply to cold emails, and there wasn't a good place to find them online.

  It's gotten harder since. LinkedIn is advertising now. AI gives generic answers to specific questions. The real signal is still sitting with the people in the seats, and nothing pulls it out of them.

  We wanted a place where truly interested people could ask real questions and get real answers from people who've done the job. We respect professionals' anonymity and compensate them for their time, so they actually show up.

  Plenty of professionals have wanted to give back but don't have hours to commit to formal mentorship programs. Here they just set their own price and answer when they want to. A lot of them charge low relative to their expertise because they're in it to help. The small fee also filters out people who wouldn't bother to prepare for the call. Let the free market work.

• What's the goal?▾

  Create a forum where good-faith people can ask and answer without friction, and where bad actors and AI slop hit enough friction that they don't bother populating it.

  We value anecdotes, experience, and actual subject matter expertise over anything an LLM can produce. That's the value prop. If a learner reads three answers here and walks away with more clarity than a month of LinkedIn scrolling, we did our job.

  Not the biggest platform. The most trusted one.

• How do I know people aren't using AI to write answers?▾

  We verify every professional by work email and a real human checks them before approval. That filters most of the noise on the way in.

  Beyond that, the economics reward insight over volume. Monthly payouts come from peer upvotes and learner “helpful” marks, not word count. A generic AI response earns nothing.

  The professionals doing well here are the ones sharing sharp, specific takes that come from actually having done the thing.

• Are your prices fair?▾

  We're transparent about pricing because we aren't trying to gouge anyone. The platform takes a small cut to cover Stripe, Twilio, and servers. Everything else goes to the professional.

  The subscription is $5 a month. Calls are priced by the professional, not us. You see the rate before you book.

Didn't see your question? Email team@sitatthedesk.com.