How much should I charge for startup or tech consulting? Is there a fee per hour or an estimate for a whole project depending on time?
When you are working with startups it is important to understand what they needs are. Whatever time you budget or allocate for them you are bound to go over. Trust me. The startup will prefer to do a project based figure. You will want to do hourly but the middle ground is not to exceed this many hours per month. But it all depends on your comfort level. The other thing to note is that startups don't have cash like big boy companies so you will have to be flexible on your rate. Once you start the engagement and feel the company has promise and you can take it to the next level a blend of equity and hourly pay. Basic math to come up with hourly rate. 1. Take your annual salary divide that by 2000 working hours to come up with a hourly rate2. Take that hourly rate and multiply it by 30% (health care, other benefits, etc since as consultant you don't receive that)3. You have your hourly rate.
How much should I charge as consultant?
Thanks for the A2A. I’m not following your math or your logic.First of all, unless salary → hourly calculations are different where you are, $125K / 2080 hours/year = $60.10 / hour, not $70 / hour.Secondly, I have never hear of the rule of x3 and I feel that is a very inflated number. In fact, the consulting rate rules of thumb I have heard of include the following:Bottoms-up approach: Take your hourly rate as an employee and increase by a factor of 1.35 to cover taxes and benefits (this will vary depending upon your fed/state tax rates and could be higher or lower) and add another percentage (say 10–30%) for “profit.” That would yield a multiplier of 1.5–1.8x (certainly not 3x) - so for your hourly rate of $60.10 - the rate could be $90 - $106 / hour.Rule of Thousands: Take your annual salary and divide by 1,000 to get your consulting rate ($125 / hour in your case). The Rule of Thousands - Setting Your Hourly Rate - Drewslair.comOpportunity cost approach: This website happens to use your exact salary as an example and comes up with this result: “So now we have three reasonable reference points. $100, $160, $135. The average of the three is $132. Perhaps a good starting point for you would be to set your rate to $130 per hour.”Throwing out the high and low values, these three examples indicate that a reasonable hourly rate would be between $106 - $130 / hour. Certainly you have the option of going higher, but lacking any other information about your experience level, the competitiveness of your market, and the price sensitivity of your client, something in that range is more likely to be fair and reasonable than $210 / hour.
How much does a consulting firm charge?
Firms typically estimate the level of effort to do the required work and then apply a rate depending on the experience of the consultant. That rate can vary depending on the seniority of the consultant and their location from as little as $20/hour (or even lower) to more than $600/hour.I should add that a good rule of thumb for price a consultant is to take their salary (without benefits) divide it by 2000 and then multiply it by 2 - 3. So if you are paying a particular consultant 100K, it would be $50/hour X 2-3 = $100-150/hour.
How much should I charge per hour for a deep learning consulting job?
tldr: $300–$700/hrAs of writing (October 2016), Deep Learning has become an extremely-in-demand skill. There is a ton of demand from clients and not enough talent with the bandwidth for it all. Deep Learning Consultants regularly get a dozen inquiries per week (emails, phone calls, linked-in messages, etc). These forces mean that the going rate for Deep Learning consultants is now between $300/hr and $+700/hr.Think on this: deep learning experts get $400k–$800k/year compensation at any big tech company (salary + stock + bonus). Consultants are lucky to get 1500 billable hours in a year. To hit the minimum range of what they’d get at a big tech company, they have to charge at the very least $300/hr.So depending on the specific project and your experience/background, charge in the $300–$700/hr range.Some examples:PhD, novel problem, large corp: $550 / hourPhD, solved problem, large corp: $500 / hourPhD, solved problem, Series-A startup: $400 / hour + %1 equity sharePhD, solved problem, Seed-stage startup: $300 / hour + %2 equity shareM.S., novel problem, large corp: $400 / hourM.S., solved problem, large corp: $350 / houretc.It is hard to predict for undergrad because there is so much variability in experience.As with most consulting, the more stable the gig, the less you charge. I’ve only heard of the +$700/hr charges for one-off phone calls for high-level direction and advice. Something like building a deep learning model is a bit more stable of a gig (15 hrs/week for 4–6 months), so that tends to be $300–$600/hr. Note that the ��examples’ section is rates for stable gigs. Unstable gigs have crazy variable pricing so I didn’t attempt to estimate them.But yes, as Paul King said, you can charge “megabucks” because of the incredible market forces. Clients know they can’t find an experienced deep learning expert for cheap, so don’t shy away from asking for the market-rate.
How much should a consultant with a PhD charge for an hour?
There is nothing provided in this question that tells how much the consultant should charge. The PhD may or may not be relevant to the problem being solved. In addition, the PhD may make the consultant more or less able to help the client solve the problem, depending on how each one (client and consultant) views the PhD. Some of the key issues in pricing are: 1) What problem is the consultant being hired to help the client solve? 2) What knowledge, skills, and experience is the consultant bringing to the client to help them solve the problem? 3) Can the consultant help the client solve it, and how does the client know this is likely to be true? (Having a PhD does not prove it. Relevant prior experiences of having solved such a problem are much more likely to be a valid test of the consultant’s ability to do so) 4) What is the cost to the client of not solving the problem?
How much should I charge for management consulting services?
The exact price you charge depends on the size of client, size of need, and your ability solve the need. Still, here is some help to establish an hourly rate: Calculate the number billable hours in a year:There are 52 weeks in a year. Assume you take 2 weeks off for vacation. That leaves you with 50 weeks in a year to work.Assume you work a standard 40 hours in a week.50 weeks x 40 hours/week = 2000 working (billable) hours per year.Decide how much you want to make per year:Consulting on the side salary: $25,000 / 2,000 = $12.50 per hourFull-time consulting salary: $50,000 / 2,000 = $25.00 per hourEstablished consulting salary: $100,000 / 2,000 = $50.00 per hourFor reference: Glassdoor says the average management consultant salary at Accenture is $89,342. This would put your hourly rate at $44.67. Charging by time is the easiest to quote and a great place to start, but once you start charging over $100/hour it becomes hard to defend. It also means you have to deliberately measure your time to keep accurate billing. Sometimes it can feel like "counting pennies" or "nit-picking" clients. As you develop, turn the common client questions and challenges into a pre-packaged solution. It's called productizing. If you would like to dig a little deeper, I created a full write-up on this subject - 32 Examples of Productized Consulting.Best of luck!
How much should I charge for being a sales consultant to a startup in the U.S.?
There' a few unknowns here, as there are with most questions. I'll do my best to share some of my experiences in this space.Starting with a company with no sales is challenging. In B2B SaaS sales the sales process can range from relatively simple (online sign up taking a few minutes, to complex sales processes that can last up to a year or more). Depending on the service offering and sales cycle, three months may be too short of a time period to do more than set up the processes and tools for customer acquisition.It sounds like this would be more of a sales consulting position for these first three months. Starting with zero sales, pipelines, and processes, it would be hard to be compensated based on sales commission. If the company has financial backing (i.e. they can pay you in cash), you could look at offering a retainer as a consultant for your services for these three months as you build their sales infrastructure. Then it would be appropriate to organize a salary + commission + equity structure if you're still interested in working with the company.Depending on your experience, domain knowledge, and network, your fees could vary wildly. Anything from 5k - 10k per month isn't out of the question.On the other hand if this company doesn't have the cash available for that form of compensation, you'll have to look long and hard at the opportunity to see if it is worth your investment of time for equity. No sales = minimal if no traction, and no investing = minimal validation of market fit. This equates to a large amount of risk if you were to take equity only. Especially for that amount of time commitment for a business that may have a high probability of failure. Just for numbers sake though, 2-10% wouldn't be unreasonable if they are extremely early in their business and are desperately seeking a way to drive customers/sales in order to be appealing to investors.I hope this helps, and as I mentioned before there's a lot of unknowns so best of luck!