Ask HN: Renumeration working part time with a start up

2 points by TJensen 16 years ago | 1 comment

I'm talking with a friend about helping him take a technology he is licensing from a university and productizing it. In essence, I would be the product manager for this product/company. The technology is very interesting and about 70% of the way to "shipping quality."

My job would be pretty standard product management: Determine the feature set needed to ship, figure out how to position the product, ensure launch readiness, and probably roll over into marketing as we go public.

While I'm sure I could put in as much time as I wanted, it will likely be around 15 hours per week until we get the company to a point that its either making money or is ready for seed funding.

The question is what should I ask for in return? If I went straight-percentage of the company, what is a reasonable percentage? Would there be any reason to ask for cash (discounted rate) and stock?

Thanks much!

ScottWhigham 16 years ago |

Do you need the cash? If yes, then I'd ask to get paid a discount rate. If you don't need the cash and the project is short-term (1-2 months?), then equity only is fine. Just be aware that you probably will never get any money at all if you go this route - just consider it padding for your resume, a great way to get experience, a good way to meet people, etc.