

Ask HN: Monetizing your brain (without writing code) - danilocampos

Hi HN,<p>I'd like to raise some cash but I'm not sure I want to do contract work. Writing code for money can be a big commitment. More than that, it's often just not fun. Few clients have interesting problems to solve and I'd rather build things for myself. (Besides all that, the offer letter I signed for my current employer makes me run any such projects past them, which is annoying.)<p>Have you had success in selling your skills, technical or otherwise, in a way that doesn't involve project work? Are these transactions fun and rewarding for you? Is teaching/tutoring the right direction? How did you fill your client pipeline?<p>I've only been in the Bay Area for eight months, so I don't have the strongest network to lean on. Thanks for your insight.
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kls
I don't know your background but one of the things that I do is expert witness
for intellectual property litigation and tech relates legal proceedings. The
going rate is about $300hr and it is a pretty good gig. I do not do it on a
full time basis because I like to build stuff, but I do pick and chose cases
that I find fascinating it accounts for 10% of my work but there are enough
cases out there than I could probably scale that to 50% if I wanted to. It is
challenging work with high stakes involved but it can be very rewarding. I
don't know if you could fit it into a day job schedule though. Many times you
have to pick up and go for proceedings on fairly short notice. If you employer
would allow you to use personal time or leave without pay for it, it may be an
option.

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danilocampos
That's really interesting. What qualifies you for expert witness work? How'd
you get into it?

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kls
Generally you have to hold a bachelors degree or higher and be considered an
industry expert in a field. That can be relatively subjective in business
fields. For example a field like Medical is simple, you have to have an MD and
have practiced or done research in the specific subject matter of the case.
For technology it is not so cut and dry.

For me personally being a CTO at three companies serves as my main qualifying
credentials, even though the cases I take are deeply technical cases, cases
you standard "I have never wrote code CTO's" would be over there head in. I
have sold three travel related technology companies to some of the big players
in that space which furthers my creditably in high volume online transaction
systems, then there is obviously the specialist focus in travel technology. I
have been a speaker at several conferences including IBM's Impact on the
future of enterprise web and mobile technologies as well as rich internet
applications.

Those are the markets I tend to stick to and it is easy to prove my
credentials in those segments. While my list of credentials may look
impressive it is by no means the bar that you would have to meet to be
considered an expert. Competency, some business sense and networking is all
that one really needs to get into the market.

After a few cases you are established as an expert witness and those become
your credentials. As with anything else start small, take the cases the big
fish are passing up because they only need an expert opinion of facts paper
written or some other "lesser work" done. Those papers while not the same a
expert testimony (many cases don't require expert testimony, just paperwork),
do serve as creditably that you understand the legal process and understand
your role. Obviously case wins are important to your reputation but not as
much as they are to the lawyers.

I kind of fell into it, one of my companies was sued by Hotels.com, as well
there was a lot of pressure being put on various governmental agencies to
investigate our company for anti-trust violations. I served as expert witness
in defense of my company. We settled out of court with Hotels.com which
included the sale of the company to Hotels.com (it's how they negotiate)
before the case drew to a conclusion. Anyway, a while later I received a call
out of the blue from a legal group that was representing a client in a similar
situation and was asked if I would serve as an expert witness, from there it
just snowballed.

It is a pretty easy market to get into. Cold call, buy some lawyers lunch,
give them a packet with your info and the types of expert information you can
provide and ask them to network you in their network. Pay a commission if they
hook you up with another firm.

Finally if you a serious about getting into the field of expert witness they
you should get the book "A-Z Guide to Expert Witnessing" it is an expensive
text but it is well worth the money. It has every piece of information that
you will ever need to become a successful expert witness.

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jdc
I think that a better title for this post would be "What non-coding skills are
in demand in the Bay area?"

~~~
danilocampos
I could see the merits of phrasing it that way, though the answer could just
be "babysitting" and I know that's not what I'm after. Besides, that cuts
everyone not in the Bay Area out of the discussion, and smart people are
everywhere.

I'm more interested in unique ways technical people have sold themselves
without getting hooked on lengthy coding projects. There may be useful
inspiration from people smarter than I.

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awa
Stock market could be one such avenue, also sometimes utilizing your brain or
other skills to save money can also help (cooking instead of eating out)

