We've had a few guest speakers in to do talks at my workplace (~50 people) – it's usually something fairly informal and off-the-record/private, so they have been extremely high value as you get the sort of detail that doesn't tend to make it into generic talks on YouTube. Often these have taken the format of a "fireside chat" with one of our senior people, plus audience questions, for a total time of about an hour. Now that Zoom/et al are so commonplace I could see us doing this over video conferencing as well even though they've historically been in person.
To my knowledge we've never paid for these sessions – they're mostly "friends of the company", investors, CEOs from other companies in our investors' portfolios, etc, but assuming the price wasn't extortionate or the topic area was an important one, I could see us paying for this sort of thing. Again, to my knowledge, the speakers haven't prepped for these explicitly in the past so the time commitment would have likely been small, apart from travel.
The fireside chat concept could work well. Especially if the folks in the audience don't have access to these opportunities otherwise and can sigh up individually. Thanks for sharing these ideas Dan!
To my knowledge we've never paid for these sessions – they're mostly "friends of the company", investors, CEOs from other companies in our investors' portfolios, etc, but assuming the price wasn't extortionate or the topic area was an important one, I could see us paying for this sort of thing. Again, to my knowledge, the speakers haven't prepped for these explicitly in the past so the time commitment would have likely been small, apart from travel.