Built by a buyer. Strengthened by specialists.
Provenance began with a real situation: our founder was looking for a small business in Portugal and found that everyone around the deal had an interest in closing it — and nobody had the job of saying why it might not be worth the money.
The screening process a buyer started for himself has grown into a capability that draws on several specialities. Provenance today works with financial analysts, specialists in law and licensing, market researchers and data engineers. They test the seller's words, find what is missing, and separate what is verified from what still has to be checked.
Provenance does not sell businesses and takes no commission from brokers. We do not take part in deals, and we have no reason to push one that should not happen.
Who does the work
Grig Kochedykov
Founder and Managing Director
48 years old. He moved to Portugal, went looking for a small business to buy, and met the traps buyers usually discover late: licences that do not transfer with the sale; leases whose real terms nobody shows; debts that follow the business to its new owner. Listings say almost nothing about this. The people selling have little reason to write it down.
Mafalda Serpa
Head of Financial Analysis
42 years old. Experienced auditor and transaction services specialist, concentrating on quality of earnings, cash flows and profitability for owners. She joined Provenance to make it easier for buyers to see the real company behind the figures, rather than the one the seller presents.
Íñigo Valcárcel
Law and licensing
50 years old. Commercial and administrative attorney with extensive experience in licensing and corporate documentation. His work is to spot the regulatory details that look minor before the purchase and turn out to be very expensive after it.
Eira Nyström
Senior Investigative Analyst
38 years old. Experienced business journalist and corporate intelligence researcher specialising in open-source intelligence, background checks and digital footprint assessment. Her rule is simple: if a claim affects the deal, the buyer should take nobody's word for it without evidence.
Duarte Sequeira
Market and commercial assessment
35 years old. Experienced hospitality operator and market research specialist, focused on the competitive landscape, location economics and business valuation. His job is to make sure the buyer pays for a profitable trade, not merely for a good address, a lucky season or a nice story.
Garance Delorme
Operations and hospitality
45 years old. Experienced hotel operator specialising in human resources and hospitality operations management. Her job is to find out what happens the morning after completion — whether the business will run without its previous owner.
Konrad Żmuda
Data and research systems
33 years old. Data engineer responsible for research automation, historical listing analysis and internal systems. His job is to turn past investigations into the firm's memory, so that next time the pattern is recognised sooner.
Vesela Markova
Client work and case management
40 years old. Cross-border adviser and relocation expert who has worked with international entrepreneurs and private buyers. Her job is to protect the buyer at the point where excitement about the deal starts to outweigh sober judgement.
How the screen is run
Every screen runs the same way: the full checklist, every time, in plain sight. Here is what we look at.
- What the public records say about who owns it — and whether it can change hands cleanly.
- Whether the licences survive the sale, on the record rather than in conversation.
- Whether there are public signs of debts that could follow the business to you: tax, social security, creditors.
- Whether anyone is insolvent — the company, or the person behind it.
- Whether the claimed revenue survives the street it is on: the competition, the foot traffic, the reviews.
- Where the seller's story and the public record do not line up.
Three working rules. Every fact taken from the records is tied to a named source and a date, and what we could not verify is marked rather than guessed. What cannot be seen from a desk is listed by name and never buried. And the founder signs every conclusion personally.
What the screen has already caught
We do not show invented testimonials. Client cases will appear here only with written consent, critical ones included. What we can show now are full dress rehearsals of the screen, run on real live listings, with real findings. They are labelled as practice, because that is what they were.
| The finding | What it was |
|---|---|
| 9 comparable competitors | behind one listing priced as a local monopoly |
| 4 reviews | the entire rating history behind a “5.0★ turnkey café”. The rival next door held 54 |
| 3 deal-defining findings | on one Madrid bar, from public records alone, before any lawyer was paid |
In plain words. The rehearsals are real listings, anonymised. We engaged with none of the parties. The findings reflect the public record on the retrieval dates.
The uncomfortable questions
“Did you end up buying a business yourself?” No. The founder's search ended with a better fit: partway through it he was offered a partner's role in an operating Portuguese company. He took it and runs its operations today. So we do not only read small businesses from a desk — one of us lives inside one.
“Has the method actually put anyone into a business?” Yes, before it had a price. The first screens were favours for friends and acquaintances buying with their own savings; what they bought, they still run today. We do not dress those up as case studies: a favour is not an order, and you cannot check it, so we do not ask you to weigh it.
“Why should I trust a service with no paying clients?” Do not trust it — check it. Every claim on this site opens: the practice screens with their findings intact, the registries we cite, the founder's tax registration, twenty years of named roles. Payment runs through Stripe under written terms with a refund, and nothing is charged until we have confirmed we are taking the case.
“If this works, why €550 and not €5,000?” Because it is a screen, not a full due diligence: fixed scope, public records plus the papers you obtain, and no office to feed. The price is deliberately set as the step before the €5,000 decisions. The heavy lifting still belongs to your lawyer and accountant — the report hands them a marked-up map instead of a blank page.
Verify the founder
You are hiring us to check people. Start with the person who signs. Everything below is the same kind of public record we use on your deal. It takes about three minutes.
- The founder's LinkedIn
- Twenty years of named companies and roles — under his real name, with a photo and a network.
- Tax registration
- He operates as a registered sole trader in Portugal, NIF 313485402. Check it yourself on the European Commission's VIES validator, country PT.
- This domain
- Look up who registered provenancediligence.com and when. It is the same check we run on sellers' websites.
- Our sources
- The registries we cite are official and open: court records, insolvency, company registries. Every report links its evidence so you can re-run it.
If anything here does not check out, do not hire us. That is the same standard we will apply to your seller.
Who does what
| Who | What they do |
|---|---|
| Us | Find the commercial red flags visible in public records — and name, out loud, what is not visible from a desk. |
| Your lawyer and accountant | The transfer itself, enforceability, the full tax picture, completion. Our report tells you exactly what to put on their desk. |
| Only the seller's papers | Can prove the earnings and the contracts. We tell you which documents to demand — before any deposit. |
In plain words. Judge the work, not the reviews. Every claim on this site opens: a sample report, a public registry, a named source.