Can I have a simple contract drawn up online?

Staff augmentation vs. project work in A&D are really two different companies. Another key segmentation is work that requires certification (NATO Clearance, secret clearance, Airbus/Boeing training, etc). On staff augmentation, a lot of young firms start off bringing in good ex-employees of the majors and and targeting the supply chain. Often the majors Boeing, Dassault, etc like it when subs use talent that already know the primes practices. If you are targeting project work, you need to define if you are selling skill or price. If your the best team for converting major assemblies into a stream line lean process, you need to clearly define that and sell it into the targets. In all cases, you are likely to get your first customers in the supply base. The supply base is likely trying to win a bid or execute a current contract. They want to mitigate risk using temporary labor, especially if you are in a EU labor market. If your model is to sell outside of the Primes, for example selling aerospace talent to boat manufacturing, I would stick more to project work with a few key initial clients. Create an iconic success. I would also look at the UAV market. There is a lot going on there. Often the people creating UAV's are more controls focused, they might like having someone else be there air frame team. I was heavily involved in the lean manufacturing movement at McDonnell Douglas and Boeing. Mostly on F/A-18, but also C17, 787, UAVs, etc.

I would first attend that person's actual training sessions to judge his quality of delivery in a live setting. Once convinced, the next question is the revenue sharing ratio. If he is doing most of the work, including development of the training material, while he is using my training company name then I would consider something like 70:30, to him after paying for all the direct expenses. Of course, if the course fails to sell enough seats and is cancelled, or not cancelled but does not breakeven then the costs incurred including those on promotion should be evenly split. You are free to negotiate any other ratios.

Without more information it's not easy to answer your question, but I'll give it a fighting try :) The health insurance industry is a commodity industry, they sell the same things at around the same prices and every little competitive edge is something they hang on to dearly. It's not surprising or even unusual for them to wish for exclusive access to your product (whatever it might be) during the pilot period which I assume would then roll into exclusivity if they roll out into a full implementation too. That said, for your business this is a huge risk, it's the proverbial basket in which you put all your eggs and that's a significant risk to a young business, because if that pilot fails, you're 6 months behind in your goals and that's a big set back for a small company. You can do a few things to try to minimize the risk, or maximize the reward from agreeing to their terms (because if they are a major health insurer, you'll eventually capitulate either way). 1. Limit the scope of the exclusivity - If they are concerned about exclusivity in your state, be very clear that it is limited to your state and in other states you're allowed to pursue other clients. 2. Ask them to pay for the privilege - It's not unusual for a company to offer exclusivity in exchange for recompense. You basically tell them, listen that's fine but you're asking me to limit the profitability of my company, I'm happy to give you exclusive rights to the product but the pricing model for that is different. 3. Use exclusivity as a negotiating tool - You can add a condition to the exclusivity that states that if after 3 months they haven't declared their intent to proceed to a full implementation the exclusivity is revoked. 4. Get something in exchange - You may be able to give them exclusivity on the condition that they become a referral customer and give you a case study. They'll be happy to say nice things about you whenever anyone asks if that's all it costs for them to get exclusivity, and for you having someone important at a major health insurer say your product is great might be just what you need to get 2 or 3 more pilots in different states or industries If you're a start up and this is your first big enterprise client, they are going to try to bully you and push you around in the negotiation, they're the big kid in the school yard and you're the runt of the litter and they know it. So look for the way that you can give them what they want, but leverage it to make them more sympathetic to your situation and to invest them in your goals. Most importantly though, make sure that you don't give up your company's ability to grow in the future by signing away something that sounds so innocent. If giving this client exclusivity is going to lock you into a position where you have to pass on other opportunities as a result, maybe they're just not worth it.

It looks like you're not looking for someone who can scale and become a full fledged CTO (or you might not even need one), so try to look at it as a founding engineer hire instead. With early founding engineers, you can sell them on things like: - opportunity for learning - understanding business practices and models - opportunity for leadership down the road And the equity structure should be something around 1-5% of the business vested over a few years. You'll have to sit down and explain it to them as some people either aren't educated or they want to be assured of exactly what they're being given. I did this a few times last year and if done well, you can get some solid work out of them :) Feel free to call me up and chat about it more.

Yours is a common question! There are a great many factors you must consider when setting your price/rates. People tend to penalize themselves both when they are experts and when they are not. SMARTSTART has published a guide specifically about Pricing that teaches people how to put the right price on anything you sell. You can get a free copy at http://smartstartcoach.com/smartstart-pricing/ It has helped a great many business owners. I encourage you to download it, read the whole thing (it's under 100 pages) and do the pricing assessments included in it before setting your rates. As you'll see within it, "level of expertise" is not the most critical factor in pricing and your price is an important form of communication to your client. Hope the eBook helps you with this. -- Linda