Or startups could just hire him as their lawyer. Parse did and they are happy customers.
As an example I serve on the board of a condo and I'm paid $0. Most likely if I was told I would be given $25 for every meeting I would think "my time is worth more than that" and it would actually be a negative (figures arbitrary.)
I saw a thread on reddit earlier discussing Dennis Rodman's entreaty for Kim Jong Un to "do him a solid" and release the American who was arrested for photographing homeless children in North Korea. One of the commenters argued that this actually could work, due to the Korean principle of "Jeong", or helping out friends simply for the sake of helping. An appeal to Kim's rational best interests would be measured against his own appraisal thereof, but a personal request from a friendly acquaintance doesn't carry with it that baggage of zero-sum gamesmanship, and so is more likely to be heeded. It was an interesting argument, and I certainly don't think the concept is limited to Koreans.
"or helping out friends simply for the sake of helping"
To expand on this and bring in the theory of reciprocity to the discussion. By doing the solid for Rodman, Kim Jong Un gets access also to something money or power can't buy that he may want going forward (other american basketball players).
But here's an interesting thing that I have learned over time about doing "solids" for people. You have to cash in the solid rather quickly in general. That small thing [1] that you helped someone out with 10 years ago isn't as likely to get you a return favor as something you did two weeks ago.
I'm trying right now to get something that <large co you've heard of and most certainly use> controls that money can't buy because they don't need money. So I'm working another angle whereby I try to find something that someone else needs that has some influence over them to get them to give me what I want in exchange for the favor that the party that has the influence wants. I suspect that when Bill Clinton tried to get Led Zepelin to play the concert he might have succeeded if there was something that the group needed that he could help out with. (Say theoretically an issue that access to key legislators could help with.)
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bill_failed_zep_lomacy_ow...
[1] Meaning you didn't save someone's life I'm not sure how this would apply to Rodman and hostages it's all a matter of situation and degree.
Note, though, that for tipping systems where the tip is not cash or something reasonably equivalent to cash, the receiver might find the tip annoying.
For instance, I would overall be unhappy if someone on Reddit gave me Reddit Gold. Sure, I'd be flattered that they liked my comment enough to want to reward me, but I've looked at Gold and did not really see anything in it that I was interested in. I'd certainly get much less out of Gold than the giver thought I'd get, and I'd end up feeling that I had just wasted their gift, and I'd feel bad. I actually wish Reddit had an option one could set to disable the ability of one's account to be given Gold.