This creates interesting churn. If demand for 4 sessions/mo is only 2 people, 3 spots open up at lower prices periodically
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Or say $100+n for your nth hour for a non-resetting slow ratchet. After a year, your rate is $152.
If value is compounding, it will easily beat a linear ratchet (quadratic total)
If you stop/pause, maybe the integrator unwinds as we say in controls.
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Or a monthly auction where you bid for 1, 2, 3, or 4 hours, and I just fill the time with 4s, 3s, 2s, 1s in reverse order. An easy knapsack problem basically. You get invoiced just once, for $100, $300, $600, or $1000.
Scheduling is a wrinkle. Adds a spectrum auction element
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I think a Hollywood celebrity might have such a problem (basically a sibyl attack) but at ordinary scale the value is not worth the cost of coordinating the attack, and it might even be an open feature. Eg a company sends different people to sessions depending on topic
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Replying to @vgr
what will you do about the problem of collusion?
someone sending 5 people to ask the questions they want
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For eg, say I run a 4-topic monthly cycle devoted to consulting on technology, marketing, strategy, and finance, a company could send a different different middle manager rep to each for $400 but a wannabe-CEO trying to develop all 4 areas would pay $1000.
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This seems weirdly equitable 🤔
Specialized career dev support is cheap, general development costs you a premium since you’ll make more money if you become CEO
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If your current bill rate is B and you want to set it up so you make the same if you sell n hours/mo to one client, at $kn for the nth hour, k should be 2B/(n+1)
So for eg if you bill at $500/h and n=4, k=$200, so hours cost 200, 400, 600, 800, and 4h/mo = 2000= 4*500
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The underlying narrative is accessibility+affordability without pro-bono charity. As a consultant you learn a lot by serving a mix of clients at all stages. Contrary to vanity positioning of “prestige” consulting, you shouldn’t only work with F100 CEOs even if you could.
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I’ve never found a good solution to the problem of working with pre-funding startups or small biz at a price they can afford, is worthwhile for me, and has net positive expected value for them. I dislike both charity and the sense of taking easy money for support with low EV
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Actually, the other end is the same way. I’ve never consulted for F100 C-suite (SVP-level max). There’s a weird signaling economy at both ends — pro-bono charity for the poor, “prestige” billing for hobnobbing with F100 CEOs. In both, the real value exchange is swamped
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Replying to
I really can’t do this. The theater gets to me. The market is either irrationally distorted at both ends, or simply a market for a different service pretending to be consulting, depending on how how you think of it.
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Anyhow… quadratic consulting might be yet another quadratic thing. Other ideas?
Quadratic rideshare
Quadratic CSA veggies
Quadratic cigarette/alcohol pricing/taxation
Quadratic rationing under scarcity (eg gasoline now)
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Gaming economies
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Replying to @vgr
hmm something that comes to mind is pricing inside games
i think rn there's commonly discount on big amounts of "tokens" but maybe it should be the opposite and it could help establish a base, disincentivizing too much whaling
F2P is too dominant but it could be an alternative
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