5 ms·

Rent time with founders from Parse, Hipmunk, Sincerely and Reddit through Exec

108 points by justin 15y ago

Alex3917 15y ago
This phone-calls-with-celebrities model has been tried many times before but it simply isn't viable in the longterm for various reasons. Clearly you can get people to do it occasionally and even enjoy it, so it's great for things like what exec is doing, but it's not something that many people would do on a regular basis. That said there are definitely still unexplored variations on this idea that have at least a decent probability of success, so I think it's worth it for those seeking ideas to take a closer look here.
- joshu 15y ago
  calls-with-experts has been done and is huge. http://www.glgresearch.com/ http://www.glgresearch.com/
  - Alex3917 15y ago
    In this case it makes sense because these people already do consulting for a living, so this is just another way to get clients. And further, the person calling is going to be looking for expertise about a specific topic rather than looking to talk with a specific individual because of their accomplishments or whatever, so it's much less socially awkward. I do still think there is an opportunity though to get celebrities who wouldn't normally do this to do it, it's just that none of the ways that have been tried so far have been suitable.
    - Caligula 15y ago
      It's not just consultants. They connect you with industry experts. One of the biggest spammers on linkedin I find are these types of companies looking for domain experts.
  - woohoo 15y ago
    Yes and no. I've been used as a GLG expert a number of times. The only people who seemed to use their service (read willing to pony up for the very high per hour rates) were institutional finance research groups doing due diligence for M&A or similar transactions. That's a pretty specific market with very deep pockets.
    - inthewoods 15y ago
      I worked at GLG - you are right about the main concentration of their work, but there are also a lot of other groups that use the service.
- justjimmy 15y ago
  I'm pretty sure they're not trying to this for sustaining/profit reasons – they're donating the money made to charity. It's more of a promotion/marketing approach, and depending on the response, then they'll decide where to go next.
  - justin 15y ago
    This is just a promotion to get people to know about and maybe even try Exec. $100 / hour is far, far under the value of the Alexis, Steve, Tikhon and Matt's time -- they are donating it to charity. The point isn't to be sustainable, although if people like it we might do it again with a different set of people as another promotion.
- brown9-2 15y ago
  I don't have any data on this but I think "have lunch/coffee/dinner with a celebrity" is a common thing to raffle off in charity fundraisers.
zitterbewegung 15y ago
Neat way to kill two birds with one stone. Not only do you get to promote Exec but you also get people to donate to a wonderful charity. Its great that you got such great founders to donate their time.
- _sentient 15y ago
  This really demonstrates the power of strong personal/professional networks. Each of these founders are probably happy to talk to smart, budding entrepreneurs, for as the saying goes: "He who teaches, learns". Justin Kan was able to bring them all together in one place, that place being his most recent startup. The charity angle doesn't hurt either, and adds a "feel good" element to this that makes it much more share-worthy. I love seeing creative marketing and promotional ideas like this. So long, and thanks for all the inspiration.
- kn0thing 15y ago
  Win-win indeed! Thanks. I'm on the advisory board of donorschoose.org, so I'm super biased, but they're indeed awesome (also, use my matching code! 'breadpig') http://donorschoose.org/alexisonCNN http://donorschoose.org/alexisonCNN
anandkulkarni 15y ago
Brilliant! This is a great way to demonstrate the power of the Exec model.
rdl 15y ago
This is awesome. Maybe more startups should figure out product-specific ways to do charity periodically. It's a good way to test new features, too.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
jreposa 15y ago
Need this for NYC. I have to imagine that this is the next area to expand to.
- kn0thing 15y ago
  Hear hear. Believe me, I've been bugging Justin to come here. All in due time...
Caligula 15y ago
This is a really cool idea. I tried to book Matt or Justin saturday for an hour but any would be worth that small price. I bet if you had pg people would pay 1k+ per hour.
kenrikm 15y ago
This is full of win. $100 for charity and an hour of advice from some really great people. I'm on board, now I just need to figure out who I'm going to talk to. Edit: signed up to talk with Tikhon Bernstam.
bambax 15y ago
Trying to create an account on exec: - email cannot contain the '+' character (yes it can!) - phone should be 10 characters long I can go around the first problem but not the second one (I'm in France: country prefix (33) + number = 11 pos). I understand the service is targeted at SF residents right now, but since it's available for "virtual" tasks, why be so restrictive?
- justin 15y ago
  Sorry, right now I don't think we have a good way to validate international phone numbers, we should fix that soon. The email refusing "+" was because of a crappy lib that I was using, and it isn't terribly high on the list of things to fix. So, I guess the real answer is that it is restrictive because that was what was easiest.. sorry :(
  - baq 15y ago
    fyi: see itu-t e.123 for standardized phone number notation: http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.123-200102-I/e http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.123-200102-I/e
  - clavalle 15y ago
    Here is some handy regex: /^([\w\!\#$\%\&\'\\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+\.)[\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+@((((([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9\-]{0,62}[a-z0-9]{1})|[a-z])\.)+[a-z]{2,6})|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}(\:\d{1,5})?)$/i
    - icebraining 15y ago
      Apparently, you need something like this to fully comply with the RFC: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html Or you can just do some basic checks and verify it by sending an actual email.
    - duaneb 15y ago
      Or just check for an @ symbol and use confirmation email.
fellowniusmonk 15y ago
I seriously wonder why someone hasn't created an app/escrow service to mimic/enhance 900 numbers. Experts enter, hours available, and their price per unit (minutes, hours, whatever). Users would basically pay the experts premium to cut through any and all communication filters to get ahold of that person right then. If the expert doesn't answer his phone right then it would text them to respond with 3-4 digits for a set time (clients chooses time range) to reschedule (or deny). If you find yourself not taking calls the system will automatically increase your cost per hour until it is worth your time to just answer the damn phone (it will be eventually). Think of it as a simple handshake service for payed phone consultation. In the speaker/entertainment industry you quickly come to realize that pretty much everyone has a price to get their full immediate attention, it doesn't matter if it's Bono or Tim Cook. Not to be crass but everyone is pay-for-play at some dollar amount. Anyone from Ilya Grigorik, to Gary Vaynerchuk could probably set a price point that would make them very happy and generate calls.
- dwynings 15y ago
  Skype's had something similar for quite some time, only without the brand names: http://directory.skype.com/en/skypeprime http://directory.skype.com/en/skypeprime Also, Dan Martell's new startup, http://clarity.fm/ http://clarity.fm/, seems to be tackling this market as well.
- jaredsohn 15y ago
  Ingenio (http://www.ingenio.com/ http://www.ingenio.com/) which was acquired by AT&T does this too. Edit: Ether (mentioned in another post) at least used to be a division of Ingenio.
- newman314 15y ago
  This was started several years ago with Ether (www.ether.com). Then Skype came along with their Skype Prime. I have no insight as to how much traction either offering has. Just wanted to point out this is not new.
  - fellowniusmonk 15y ago
dustingetz 15y ago
all of the founders are young. no grizzled veterans. fascinating. i would like to speak to a similar group, except 20 years more mature, running a business like Apple or Boeing.
- justin 15y ago
  If you want Tim Cook you're going to have to pay a little more than $100 / hour.
- milesskorpen 15y ago
  This is what GLG does: http://www.glgresearch.com/ http://www.glgresearch.com/ I did a lot of interviews via GLG (and similar services) as a consultant, with rates ranging from $200-700 per hour. The $700 range was for C-suite interviews at $5-10B revenue companies. I imagine a senior person at Apple or Boeing would be well in the thousands per hour for a similar service. The people who are paying for these services aren't small start-ups trying to grow -- it is private equity and consulting firms with really deep pockets making multi-million/billion dollar decisions. They'll pay what it takes.
  - yarone 15y ago
    I've done GLG (and other similar services) in the $700 range. It's not just for C-level execs at $5-10B revenue companies (I cofounded two venture-backed startups). I started by charging $400. Then I realized that some of these calls last 15 minutes. At "$700 per hour" we're talking about a whopping $175 to do the scheduling routine (some back-and-forth), make time in my schedule, interrupt "flow", and take the call. I now insist on a 1 hr minimum and bill $700 and do it occasionally when the offers come in (handful of times per year) because I like talking about the subject matter. It's not exactly the best use of my time.
medinism 15y ago
Hopefully this is adding value to those who are calling in. It looks a little self serving Exec marketing stunt. But, good on them!
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
lien 15y ago
No founder is so cheap as to have their time to be rented from. Besides, if I want to connect with some of the founders, all I have to do is send them an email.

108 points by justin 15y ago

This phone-calls-with-celebrities model has been tried many times before but it simply isn't viable in the longterm for various reasons. Clearly you can get people to do it occasionally and even enjoy it, so it's great for things like what exec is doing, but it's not something that many people would do on a regular basis. That said there are definitely still unexplored variations on this idea that have at least a decent probability of success, so I think it's worth it for those seeking ideas to take a closer look here.

joshu 15y ago
calls-with-experts has been done and is huge. http://www.glgresearch.com/ http://www.glgresearch.com/
- Alex3917 15y ago
  In this case it makes sense because these people already do consulting for a living, so this is just another way to get clients. And further, the person calling is going to be looking for expertise about a specific topic rather than looking to talk with a specific individual because of their accomplishments or whatever, so it's much less socially awkward. I do still think there is an opportunity though to get celebrities who wouldn't normally do this to do it, it's just that none of the ways that have been tried so far have been suitable.
  - Caligula 15y ago
    It's not just consultants. They connect you with industry experts. One of the biggest spammers on linkedin I find are these types of companies looking for domain experts.
- woohoo 15y ago
  Yes and no. I've been used as a GLG expert a number of times. The only people who seemed to use their service (read willing to pony up for the very high per hour rates) were institutional finance research groups doing due diligence for M&A or similar transactions. That's a pretty specific market with very deep pockets.
  - inthewoods 15y ago
    I worked at GLG - you are right about the main concentration of their work, but there are also a lot of other groups that use the service.
justjimmy 15y ago
I'm pretty sure they're not trying to this for sustaining/profit reasons – they're donating the money made to charity. It's more of a promotion/marketing approach, and depending on the response, then they'll decide where to go next.
- justin 15y ago
  This is just a promotion to get people to know about and maybe even try Exec. $100 / hour is far, far under the value of the Alexis, Steve, Tikhon and Matt's time -- they are donating it to charity. The point isn't to be sustainable, although if people like it we might do it again with a different set of people as another promotion.
brown9-2 15y ago
I don't have any data on this but I think "have lunch/coffee/dinner with a celebrity" is a common thing to raffle off in charity fundraisers.

zitterbewegung 15y ago

Neat way to kill two birds with one stone. Not only do you get to promote Exec but you also get people to donate to a wonderful charity. Its great that you got such great founders to donate their time.

_sentient 15y ago
This really demonstrates the power of strong personal/professional networks. Each of these founders are probably happy to talk to smart, budding entrepreneurs, for as the saying goes: "He who teaches, learns". Justin Kan was able to bring them all together in one place, that place being his most recent startup. The charity angle doesn't hurt either, and adds a "feel good" element to this that makes it much more share-worthy. I love seeing creative marketing and promotional ideas like this. So long, and thanks for all the inspiration.
kn0thing 15y ago
Win-win indeed! Thanks. I'm on the advisory board of donorschoose.org, so I'm super biased, but they're indeed awesome (also, use my matching code! 'breadpig') http://donorschoose.org/alexisonCNN http://donorschoose.org/alexisonCNN

anandkulkarni 15y ago

Brilliant! This is a great way to demonstrate the power of the Exec model.

rdl 15y ago

This is awesome. Maybe more startups should figure out product-specific ways to do charity periodically. It's a good way to test new features, too.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

jreposa 15y ago

Need this for NYC. I have to imagine that this is the next area to expand to.

kn0thing 15y ago
Hear hear. Believe me, I've been bugging Justin to come here. All in due time...

Caligula 15y ago

This is a really cool idea. I tried to book Matt or Justin saturday for an hour but any would be worth that small price. I bet if you had pg people would pay 1k+ per hour.

kenrikm 15y ago

This is full of win. $100 for charity and an hour of advice from some really great people. I'm on board, now I just need to figure out who I'm going to talk to. Edit: signed up to talk with Tikhon Bernstam.

bambax 15y ago

Trying to create an account on exec: - email cannot contain the '+' character (yes it can!) - phone should be 10 characters long I can go around the first problem but not the second one (I'm in France: country prefix (33) + number = 11 pos). I understand the service is targeted at SF residents right now, but since it's available for "virtual" tasks, why be so restrictive?

justin 15y ago
Sorry, right now I don't think we have a good way to validate international phone numbers, we should fix that soon. The email refusing "+" was because of a crappy lib that I was using, and it isn't terribly high on the list of things to fix. So, I guess the real answer is that it is restrictive because that was what was easiest.. sorry :(
- baq 15y ago
  fyi: see itu-t e.123 for standardized phone number notation: http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.123-200102-I/e http://www.itu.int/rec/T-REC-E.123-200102-I/e
- clavalle 15y ago
  Here is some handy regex: /^([\w\!\#$\%\&\'\\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+\.)[\w\!\#$\%\&\'\*\+\-\/\=\?\^\`{\|\}\~]+@((((([a-z0-9]{1}[a-z0-9\-]{0,62}[a-z0-9]{1})|[a-z])\.)+[a-z]{2,6})|(\d{1,3}\.){3}\d{1,3}(\:\d{1,5})?)$/i
  - icebraining 15y ago
    Apparently, you need something like this to fully comply with the RFC: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/Mail-RFC822-Address.html Or you can just do some basic checks and verify it by sending an actual email.
  - duaneb 15y ago
    Or just check for an @ symbol and use confirmation email.

fellowniusmonk 15y ago

I seriously wonder why someone hasn't created an app/escrow service to mimic/enhance 900 numbers. Experts enter, hours available, and their price per unit (minutes, hours, whatever). Users would basically pay the experts premium to cut through any and all communication filters to get ahold of that person right then. If the expert doesn't answer his phone right then it would text them to respond with 3-4 digits for a set time (clients chooses time range) to reschedule (or deny). If you find yourself not taking calls the system will automatically increase your cost per hour until it is worth your time to just answer the damn phone (it will be eventually). Think of it as a simple handshake service for payed phone consultation. In the speaker/entertainment industry you quickly come to realize that pretty much everyone has a price to get their full immediate attention, it doesn't matter if it's Bono or Tim Cook. Not to be crass but everyone is pay-for-play at some dollar amount. Anyone from Ilya Grigorik, to Gary Vaynerchuk could probably set a price point that would make them very happy and generate calls.

dwynings 15y ago
Skype's had something similar for quite some time, only without the brand names: http://directory.skype.com/en/skypeprime http://directory.skype.com/en/skypeprime Also, Dan Martell's new startup, http://clarity.fm/ http://clarity.fm/, seems to be tackling this market as well.
jaredsohn 15y ago
Ingenio (http://www.ingenio.com/ http://www.ingenio.com/) which was acquired by AT&T does this too. Edit: Ether (mentioned in another post) at least used to be a division of Ingenio.
newman314 15y ago
This was started several years ago with Ether (www.ether.com). Then Skype came along with their Skype Prime. I have no insight as to how much traction either offering has. Just wanted to point out this is not new.
- fellowniusmonk 15y ago

dustingetz 15y ago

all of the founders are young. no grizzled veterans. fascinating. i would like to speak to a similar group, except 20 years more mature, running a business like Apple or Boeing.

justin 15y ago
If you want Tim Cook you're going to have to pay a little more than $100 / hour.
milesskorpen 15y ago
This is what GLG does: http://www.glgresearch.com/ http://www.glgresearch.com/ I did a lot of interviews via GLG (and similar services) as a consultant, with rates ranging from $200-700 per hour. The $700 range was for C-suite interviews at $5-10B revenue companies. I imagine a senior person at Apple or Boeing would be well in the thousands per hour for a similar service. The people who are paying for these services aren't small start-ups trying to grow -- it is private equity and consulting firms with really deep pockets making multi-million/billion dollar decisions. They'll pay what it takes.
- yarone 15y ago
  I've done GLG (and other similar services) in the $700 range. It's not just for C-level execs at $5-10B revenue companies (I cofounded two venture-backed startups). I started by charging $400. Then I realized that some of these calls last 15 minutes. At "$700 per hour" we're talking about a whopping $175 to do the scheduling routine (some back-and-forth), make time in my schedule, interrupt "flow", and take the call. I now insist on a 1 hr minimum and bill $700 and do it occasionally when the offers come in (handful of times per year) because I like talking about the subject matter. It's not exactly the best use of my time.

medinism 15y ago

Hopefully this is adding value to those who are calling in. It looks a little self serving Exec marketing stunt. But, good on them!

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

lien 15y ago

No founder is so cheap as to have their time to be rented from. Besides, if I want to connect with some of the founders, all I have to do is send them an email.