Faculty, when VCs and startup founders doing work strongly related to your research area of expertise reach out for advice, do you charge a consulting fee or ask for equity or anything like that? Should I? I genuinely want to do this work, but it's tiring with the amount I am getting asked these days, and I think I'd benefit from a small monetary reward even just to spend on some motivational boba or something.
@TaliaRinger I would charge them a fee unless there was some compelling intrinsic interest in their mission.
@wilbowma @TaliaRinger We have a couple scientific advisors who get stock options in exchange for signing an NDA and meeting with us a few hours / months. If they don't have this framework in place tell them to figure it out with their lawyers and come back to you (and make sure you know your university rules about side work and IP ownership).
@wilbowma @TaliaRinger if you're going to be writing code and not just advising you should get paid in real money too, and if you're incentivized by publishing make sure you have alignment with their stance there (usually involves a patent filing)
@TaliaRinger @wilbowma yeah, that sounds ongoing enough that there should be stock options involved.
@elfprince13 @wilbowma So, often it's a one-off meeting, but there are, say, five people who might want one-off meetings for their respective startups in a given month (it's a hot area right now), and I just can't handle it without some extrinsic motivation at this point
@TaliaRinger @wilbowma you can ask them to buy your boba for the meeting like they would be expected to if they were meeting IRL
@elfprince13 @wilbowma haha I'd be down for that but it's a bit silly if it involves a complicated reimbursement process
@TaliaRinger you could just have them Venmo/Ko-fi you and then it's their problem to get reimbursed ;)
@TaliaRinger or like an Uber Eats gift card.
@elfprince13 @wilbowma It's just advice on promising approaches, potential risks, further contacts, and potential employees to interview