Your Expertise Is Investment Capital. Start Treating It That Way.

Whether you're between roles, running a services business, or just wondering if there's a smarter way to deploy your expertise — this session is for you.

If you have $50,000 in cash, there are dozens of ways to invest it in a growing company — equity, SAFEs, convertible notes, revenue-based financing. The infrastructure is mature and available.

But if you have 15 years of experience scaling companies and 10 hours a week to deploy it? Three options: get a job, consult by the hour, or work for equity and hope. None of those treat your expertise as investment capital.

That's not a fairness problem. It's an infrastructure gap. We built sophisticated tools to make money investable — and never built the equivalent for human capital.

In this session, I'll share how Shared Success Agreements close that gap. A Shared Success Agreement is a founder-friendly alternative to equity, debt, or a SAFE — a structure that lets professionals invest time and expertise in exchange for a defined share of future revenue, with milestone tracking, quarterly reviews, and real ROI expectations. The agreement was created to align incentives between founders and the talent they need, without burning cash on salaries or giving away equity too early. Not consulting. Not employment. Investment.

Over eight years and 50+ agreements, Cloudburst has invested more than $500,000 in clients this way. We've learned what makes a good investment — and what doesn't.

You'll leave with a new mental model for your own expertise, a framework for identifying which engagements are worth "investing" in vs. just billing, and a practical understanding of how to structure an agreement.

The open-source template is at SharedSuccessAgreement.org. This session gives you the strategy behind it.

Bring your current client scenarios — we'll work through them together.

• Beginner
• Careers
• Marketing