That's great and very concrete, thanks. It's funny, at those levels is also where more friction starts to get introduced, because suddenly the system rears its ugly head and tries to co-opt it. If you were to regularly bring in $50k, suddenly the university wants more than half of it and it dawns on you that you don't quite need the university as much as they need you.
The extreme is a Jack Horner type who would eschew academia (but oh, the creative control he has!), but the thing I like about the size that we are right now is that we're flying under the radar of the tier-1 schools, and we're just funding and seeing lots of cool stuff. I'll happily duel university administrators in the future, but for now we get to focus on small pockets of really impactful science.
For the record, you can prevent the university carrying off half of the grant by stating as an official policy that you only pay X% overhead, where X is some much more reasonable number like 15.
Many private companies do this, and as long as it's something that's stated clearly and publicly, grants offices often go along.
The extreme is a Jack Horner type who would eschew academia (but oh, the creative control he has!), but the thing I like about the size that we are right now is that we're flying under the radar of the tier-1 schools, and we're just funding and seeing lots of cool stuff. I'll happily duel university administrators in the future, but for now we get to focus on small pockets of really impactful science.