Seems to be a perfectly reasonable promotion for a designer who had a surplus of sitting-on-the-shelf work and a near-term pipeline problem. Options: a) start doing the consulting rainmaking dance or b) spend ~1 day on the fulfillment required here and get paid a few thousand dollars to showcase their work in front of people who can pay _hopefully more appropriate_ rates for their bespoke services.
If the experiment works, wonderful, if not, he'll dry his tears on $X,000 and then move forward.
As a long-term business model, I find a number of things to be problematic, but if you think of it less as Founding A Company That Will Endure For All Time and more like Spiritually Similar To A Halloween Sale, this has a lot to recommend it. As the cost of starting things goes to zero the expected value of them doesn't have to be super high to be worthwhile.
If the experiment works, wonderful, if not, he'll dry his tears on $X,000 and then move forward.
As a long-term business model, I find a number of things to be problematic, but if you think of it less as Founding A Company That Will Endure For All Time and more like Spiritually Similar To A Halloween Sale, this has a lot to recommend it. As the cost of starting things goes to zero the expected value of them doesn't have to be super high to be worthwhile.