Question
What's it like to be an entrepreneur in residence? What do you get to work on? How are compensation and incentives structured? What value does the VC firm get?
Answer
The idea of an EiR originated in the VC community I believe, and Michael Wolfe has covered that kind of EiR neatly.
I have the EiR title in a big company (Xerox), where I am part of the innovation group (the fancy new name for "R&D labs"). Senior managers in such labs are the equivalent of VCs: they decide what projects to invest in. The word used to be Intrapreneur, but that never really caught on, and more big companies are using the EiR term now.
The title does not map to as clear a role in corporations as it appears to in VC firms, but the basic purpose is to legitimize the role of what used to be called "maverick" types before McCain ruined that word for everybody.
EiRs are a sub-species of "maverick" who try to create new products/services/offerings for a big company.
The basic job description is "here's a long piece of rope. Is that enough to hang yourself?"
The basic perk is a limited amount of air cover from a savvy senior exec or two, for as long as you are politically astute enough to keep it.
Process wise, corporate EiRs tend to get incubated in "20% time" type
schemes. The idea was invented at 3M I think, before Google made it
famous.
I am a product of Xerox's version of the scheme, called XTIN (Xerox
Technology Incubator Network), a kinda Y-Combinator type thing inside
Xerox.
It's a little bit more restrictive than Google's. You don't get a time grant automatically. You have to apply and win an XTIN grant from a committee. But it is also a bit more powerful, since you can get a seed grant of money if you need it, not just a time-grant; I used mine to hire a summer intern to get what is now Trailmeme (http://trailmeme.com ) started.
EiRs inside big companies are a fantastic idea. After joining Xerox in August 2006, I spent only 4 months as a "regular" employee before applying for, and winning, an XTIN grant. This was December 2006. Since then, I've been basically doing my own thing.
Besides Trailmeme, which is a public, consumer Web technology, I also started another such EiRish project (I Trojan-horsed it in with my original grant). That project, which I can't talk about in public is now managed by a successor.
I'd like to say more, but I'll save the long story and juicy details for my memoirs :)
I have the EiR title in a big company (Xerox), where I am part of the innovation group (the fancy new name for "R&D labs"). Senior managers in such labs are the equivalent of VCs: they decide what projects to invest in. The word used to be Intrapreneur, but that never really caught on, and more big companies are using the EiR term now.
The title does not map to as clear a role in corporations as it appears to in VC firms, but the basic purpose is to legitimize the role of what used to be called "maverick" types before McCain ruined that word for everybody.
EiRs are a sub-species of "maverick" who try to create new products/services/offerings for a big company.
The basic job description is "here's a long piece of rope. Is that enough to hang yourself?"
The basic perk is a limited amount of air cover from a savvy senior exec or two, for as long as you are politically astute enough to keep it.
Process wise, corporate EiRs tend to get incubated in "20% time" type
schemes. The idea was invented at 3M I think, before Google made it
famous.
I am a product of Xerox's version of the scheme, called XTIN (Xerox
Technology Incubator Network), a kinda Y-Combinator type thing inside
Xerox.
It's a little bit more restrictive than Google's. You don't get a time grant automatically. You have to apply and win an XTIN grant from a committee. But it is also a bit more powerful, since you can get a seed grant of money if you need it, not just a time-grant; I used mine to hire a summer intern to get what is now Trailmeme (http://trailmeme.com ) started.
EiRs inside big companies are a fantastic idea. After joining Xerox in August 2006, I spent only 4 months as a "regular" employee before applying for, and winning, an XTIN grant. This was December 2006. Since then, I've been basically doing my own thing.
Besides Trailmeme, which is a public, consumer Web technology, I also started another such EiRish project (I Trojan-horsed it in with my original grant). That project, which I can't talk about in public is now managed by a successor.
I'd like to say more, but I'll save the long story and juicy details for my memoirs :)