Startup Networking Workshop #12, Online - Understanding the FlexUp Collaboration Agreement

The problem with conventional collaboration

Any professional who has worked with early-stage companies knows the central tension: founders need external expertise, but they rarely have enough cash to pay for it at market rates. The conventional options are unsatisfying. Reduce your fee and undervalue your work. Take a percentage of a company you cannot control. Work for free and hope things work out.

Beneath that individual tension is a structural one. Standard contracts are built around fixed obligations – you owe me a salary, I owe you a service, and neither of us can easily adjust when circumstances change. That rigidity creates conflicts. When cash runs out, the employee has to be paid before the founder. When the company succeeds, the shareholders take all the upside. Everyone is technically following the rules, but their interests are pointed in different directions.

FlexUp starts from a different premise. Rather than designing around an assumed abundance of cash, the model builds flexibility into the contract itself – and aligns all contributors around the same objective: generating more value together.

The Collaboration Agreement

The Collaboration Agreement is the specific FlexUp framework for working with independent professionals – consultants, advisors, coaches, freelancers, or any professional who already has their own clients and wants to work alongside FlexUp.

The fundamental idea is simple. Two parties – the Collaborator and FlexUp acting as the Operator – enter into a bilateral framework agreement. For each specific client engagement, the two parties decide who performs which activities. The activities are defined by a standard value breakdown:

• Referral (5%): introducing a prospective client to the other party. The fee applies to all revenues generated from that client for the following three years.
• Sales (10%): managing the full sales process – meetings, demonstrations, proposals, and contract negotiations.
• Invoicing (5%): issuing the invoice to the client and managing payment collection.
• IP licence (10%): providing the intellectual property – the platform, brand, tools, contract templates, or methodology.
• Execution (70% or 80%): delivering the actual work. The execution rate is 80% when the Collaborator uses their own intellectual property and tools, and 70% when they rely on FlexUp's IP.

Either party can be the one who invoices the client (the Vendor) or the one who delivers some of the other activities (the Performer). The value breakdown stays the same regardless of who is doing what.

The result is a highly flexible structure. A few examples illustrate the range:

If you bring a client to FlexUp and we handle everything else, you receive a 5% referral fee on all revenues from that client for three years. If you also manage the sales process yourself, that rises to 15%. If you invoice the client directly and do the execution using your our methodology, you retain 90% and simply pay FlexUp a 10% IP licence fee. Any combination of activities is valid – the percentages adjust automatically based on what each party contributes.

The important point is not the specific percentages. It is that every engagement is clear, standardised, and negotiable – without requiring a lawyer to design it from scratch.

Working with cash-constrained clients

The Collaboration Agreement also opens up a different way of structuring your fees with clients – one that is particularly relevant when working with startups or early-stage businesses.

The most common constraint for consultants and advisors who work with founders is this: the client values your expertise but cannot pay your full rate in cash. Under the conventional model, your only options are to reduce your fee, defer payment informally, or walk away.

FlexUp provides a third option. Under the FlexUp payment model, you can propose a mix of cash and deferred equity-based compensation. If your day rate is 1 000 €, for example, you could agree to receive 500 € in cash and 500 € in FlexUp Credits. Credits are not shares in the traditional sense – they are a flexible financial commitment that entitles you to a share of the client's future profits once the business generates cash.

This changes the economics of the engagement in two directions. Your total expected compensation increases, because the equity component carries upside. The client's immediate cash cost drops, making it easier to engage you in the first place. And because your interests are now tied to the client's success, the relationship shifts from transactional to collaborative.

To compensate you for taking on the risk of deferred payment, the model applies a risk factor. A Credit carries an 80% risk factor, meaning that for every 100 € you accept as a Credit, you also receive Tokens worth an additional 80 € of risk compensation. Those Tokens entitle you to a share of the project's future profits. If the client later chooses to buy back your Credits, they pay twice the original amount plus 25% per year – so 100 € invested today becomes at least 200 € plus accrued return, depending on the timing.

This is the same logic that applies to any contributor in the FlexUp system – whether they are an employee, a financial investor, or an external consultant. The same rules apply to everyone, regardless of their role.

From collaborator to FlexUp Hub

The Hub model extends the Collaboration Agreement logic to local businesses and ecosystem builders.

A FlexUp Hub is an established local organisation – an incubator, accelerator, co-working space, advisory firm, local development agency, or any business already working with startups and SMEs – that integrates the FlexUp platform into its own service offering. Rather than a single professional working alongside FlexUp, a Hub brings an entire local team, an existing client network, and deep knowledge of a specific market or sector.

The Hub model is designed as a three-step progression. In the first stage, the Hub focuses on referral and sales. It brings startups and SMEs to the FlexUp platform, earns the combined referral and sales fees (15% in total), and lets FlexUp handle the invoicing, the IP, and the execution. This is a low-commitment starting point: the Hub earns meaningful fees from the relationships it already has, without needing to build deep expertise in the platform right away.

In the second stage, the Hub takes on the client-facing advisory work: coaching founders, running onboarding sessions, providing implementation support. At this stage the Hub retains a much larger share – up to 85–90% of each engagement – and pays FlexUp only the IP licence fee (10%).

In the third stage, the Hub operates as a self-sufficient local FlexUp presence. It handles referrals, sales, onboarding, execution, and client invoicing. It retains 90% and pays FlexUp a 10% IP licence fee. FlexUp's role is reduced to platform support and IP maintenance.

This model is designed for partners who are already embedded in a local startup ecosystem. They already have the client relationships and the sectoral credibility. FlexUp provides the platform, the legal framework, and the brand. The combination is more powerful than either could deliver independently.

We are currently in conversation with potential Hub partners in several countries. If you work with startups or ecosystem builders and want to explore whether a Hub model makes sense for your context, the best starting point is a direct conversation.

Want to join our next workshop?

Our workshops are open to entrepreneurs, founders, and professionals who want to explore fairer ways to structure partnerships, finance growth, and collaborate when cash is limited.

You can find the schedule and register at:

www.flexup.org/events

Further reading

Previous Workshops: www.flexup.org/blog/workshops-8

How FlexUp works: www.flexup.org/economic-model