You should not avoid him, just tell him that you do not work for free. $100 plus some equity in the company (either now, or a signed contractual agreement for

You should not avoid him, just tell him that you do not work for free. $100 plus some equity in the company (either now, or a signed contractual agreement for such after the company is formed/funded) is perfectly reasonable. I also somewhat doubt his ability to pull this off from what you have described. A basic 5 page website is not really going to show very much. It's not going to be functional, it's basically going to be some glorified images and text. He should at the very least be able to mock up something himself in Powerpoint to show a "conceptual" webpage. If he cannot, I would question his ability to communicate the idea effectively enough to get off the ground with the idea. Also, somewhat related, I would caution you against charging "by the page". That model encourages endless requests for tweaks and changes. If you are going to do any project like this, I would probably go with something like $20/page to implement a page to the rough spec drawn out in an initial meeting, PLUS $20/hour for any changes/updates/edits after the first draft iteration.