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Could use some help here. I have years of experience as an individual contributor, manager, technical lead and founder at a medium-sized not-unicorn-but-not-too

Could use some help here. I have years of experience as an individual contributor, manager, technical lead and founder at a medium-sized not-unicorn-but-not-too-bad-either VC-backed startup. Say I were to exit one day, is there anything I can do for say, 20 hours a week, that would still pay the bills? I wouldn't expect to make as much as I do working 60 hours, but I wouldn't ever want to do that again tbh. I can see myself being extremely valuable as an advisor or a part-time C-level person, but I don't know how frequent or how well paid those positions are. Also it's completely not obvious if anybody would be willing to pay for an entrepreneur's time if that person is not.. entrepreneuring, the people who need our advice the most can't actually afford it. Any advice?

ghaff 9y ago
I suppose in part it depends what "pay the bills" means. From my observation, some experienced people do stitch together a combination of advisory roles, maybe some teaching on the side, speaking, etc. that adds up to meaningful money without working too hard. To give you some ballpark figures, an industry analyst will charge something like $10K for speaking at an event or a day-long advisory session. Of course, they have a lot of non-billable hours in order to get those types of rates. (Same applies to expert witnesses.) For me, one of the issues would be that 20 hours per week isn't that big a win versus a more conventional workweek. The bigger win would be taking months off and that's more difficult because you get out of the loop and behind on tech.
- BadassFractal 9y ago
  Agreed, 20h a week is still a job, although at this point even 40h feels like a vacation sometimes :) You raise a good point, I wonder what someone in that position could do to work a couple of days a month here and there and still have a huge amount of flexibility.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    I think that's hard. It probably requires either: Some fame in an area that allows you to collect on big dollar speaking gigs in spite of limited ongoing involvement. Eminence grise sort of thing. Widely recognized world-class expertise in some relatively slow-moving technology area. You're an expert in really gnarly ball bearing problems. $10K/day for a couple weeks is a bargain. Obviously these don't apply to a lot of people :-)

ghaff 9y ago

I suppose in part it depends what "pay the bills" means. From my observation, some experienced people do stitch together a combination of advisory roles, maybe some teaching on the side, speaking, etc. that adds up to meaningful money without working too hard. To give you some ballpark figures, an industry analyst will charge something like $10K for speaking at an event or a day-long advisory session. Of course, they have a lot of non-billable hours in order to get those types of rates. (Same applies to expert witnesses.) For me, one of the issues would be that 20 hours per week isn't that big a win versus a more conventional workweek. The bigger win would be taking months off and that's more difficult because you get out of the loop and behind on tech.

BadassFractal 9y ago
Agreed, 20h a week is still a job, although at this point even 40h feels like a vacation sometimes :) You raise a good point, I wonder what someone in that position could do to work a couple of days a month here and there and still have a huge amount of flexibility.
- ghaff 9y ago
  I think that's hard. It probably requires either: Some fame in an area that allows you to collect on big dollar speaking gigs in spite of limited ongoing involvement. Eminence grise sort of thing. Widely recognized world-class expertise in some relatively slow-moving technology area. You're an expert in really gnarly ball bearing problems. $10K/day for a couple weeks is a bargain. Obviously these don't apply to a lot of people :-)