Hi everyone,
I read an earlier discussion on Founder Dating about crowdsourcing and love the idea of having a few different people working on specific research and data analysis projects at the same time as I work towards our MVP. I’m looking for assistance with (1) answering multiple discrete questions, based on review of epidemiologic, public health, and medical literature, and (2) organization, cleaning and analysis of research datasets (which may include clinical information, diagnosis codes, epidemiologic information, etc.).
Are there any recommendations for crowdsourcing platforms with this type of skillset? Or recommendations for individuals who can help? I plan to approach local universities for grad students, but am open to other ideas.
Thanks in advance,
Charlene
Charlene,
Your best bet would be to try to entice students to help you. I suspect that you will need to pay them something even if a minimal amount since students are short on time and money. They would want something out of the deal such as a career boost from the work or minimum wage.
There are plenty of people who do this sort of thing professionally, however, pay is fairly steep considering that to interpret medical literature on even a basic level requires a science degree, which is costly in time and money to obtain.
I have found many people to be generous with their time for higher level advising, but to find someone willing to do the hard lifting needed to make a labor-intensive product for free, not so much.
To me the concept of crowdsourcing intellectual work for free has always been puzzling. The fundamental idea often seems to be that highly trained and skilled people have a lot of free time that they don't know what to do with and that it would be fun to spend their time performing their daily job in off-hours for free to help another firm (that is not non-profit and/or doesn't have a social benefit) to make more money.
Personally, I feel that an entrepreneur (or even big company executive) will be more successful and will feel better about what they achieve if the exchange is a two-way street where they provide the less experienced with training, or the opportunity to do something far above their current pay grade, or with some level of pay.