

Rent time with founders from Parse, Hipmunk, Sincerely and Reddit through Exec - justin
http://blog.iamexec.com/post/20415502048/rent-a-tech-company-founder-through-exec-for-donors

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bambax
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
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 :(

~~~
clavalle
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

~~~
duaneb
Or just check for an @ symbol and use confirmation email.

~~~
wging
It's worth hesitating before introducing a confirmation-email step. You're
certainly going to lose people every time you increase the complexity of the
signup process.

~~~
Uchikoma
In some countries (EU?) you're required to do a confirmation-email step.

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zitterbewegung
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.

~~~
kn0thing
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>

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kenrikm
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.

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rdl
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.

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

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Alex3917
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
calls-with-experts has been done and is huge.

<http://www.glgresearch.com/>

~~~
Alex3917
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
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.

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dustingetz
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.

~~~
milesskorpen
This is what GLG does: <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
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.

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Caligula
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.

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

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

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

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fellowniusmonk
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.

~~~
jayro
This is precisely what AnyFu is: <http://www.anyfu.com>.

We haven't launched yet (just testing out the system), but we've processed
five client/expert sessions in the past couple weeks and the feedback has been
overwhelmingly positive.

~~~
sargun
This is genius. How do you vet your experts? When is this going to release?
Please take my money.

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lien
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.

