I understand where you are going and I have thought the same way but my experience has said to treat it otherwise. Absolutely you want to provide a solution to

I understand where you are going and I have thought the same way but my experience has said to treat it otherwise. Absolutely you want to provide a solution to solve their problem which they created and which puts food on your table, no doubt. That is what all contract or consulting work is for though, this is not innovative, this is the nature of the business. To answer your question, yes I do tell them to keep the equity and to tell their friends. Now, of course, as my book of business grew so did my ability to increase my rate, for everyone. This is also why I can charge such a phenomenal rate and turn down business. For example, in 2013 I did a contact for a very large, well known organization. I made a tiny fraction of revenue that they made on the software I wrote for them. They could have easily paid me many orders of magnitude above my normal rate. But, I charged them by standard rate, completed the work, was paid on time, and definitely put food on my table. Now they call me constantly to add more functionality. Their partners call me. I speak at conferences about that particular project and people contact me. It has paid dividends. I guess you could say I sell hours of labor. I see it more as my business sells solutions at a fair market value for the work put into them. Now, I have also built products which I have sold or licensed to businesses. But that is a different beast entirely. I always tell myself "if you are building it for a single business, it's contracting. If you sell the same thing to multiple independent business's, it's a product."