For years, I’ve successfully sold my expertise to raise money for cancer, and to contribute to the Unreasonable Institute.  But these were broad fundraising efforts, with contributions entitling donors to anything from an email to an in-person lunch.

Recently, a couple of folks reached out to me on Clarity, which made me think more about auctioning off phone calls.

The problem is that my schedule is so busy that I just can’t yes to that many requests.  That’s when it hit me: drivetime.

So as an experiment, I’m going to set up shop as “The Drivetime Startup Doctor.”  I’m happy to do telephone house calls–as long as they take place when I’m driving in my car.  Because I have to pay at least some attention to the traffic around me, I’ll discount my usual rates to compensate for any distractions and background noise.

Normally, my Clarity rate is $600/hour.  Driving from my home to my office, or vice versa, takes about 20 minutes.  So I’m prepared to offer a 50% discount for the inconvenience.  One call will set you back $100.

Now I could try to put together some kind of fancy website, but I’ll keep it even simpler.  Just send me $100 via PayPal (my account is cyeh [at] mba2000 [dot] hbs [dot] edu; I think I set up my account back when I was still in business school, which is pretty terrifying).  Put “Drivetime Startup Doctor Donation” in the subject line, and list a couple of times that make sense in the message.  I’ll get an email notification, and we’ll arrange a specific 8:30 AM or 5:30 PM Pacific time slot for your call.

(Gee, this even sounds kind of like a spam email…good thing it’s just an experiment!)

I have no idea if anyone is going to do this, but all it cost me was 15 minutes to write this blog post, so I think it’s well worth the experiment!

P.S. Word to the wise–this is a very bad way to pitch me your startup.  Only send me money if you truly want my help and advice.

P.P.S. You know, you probably have some smart friends who can give you good advice.  You might want to try them first before you send your hard-earned cash to some stranger you found through his blog.

P.P.P.S. The beneficiary in this case will be Jason and Marissa’s college funds.  Once TrustEgg enables social contributions, I will probably switch over the payment method.