Should startup-company founder accept peer-review requests? I'm a relatively recent graduate putting together a startup company, and I've just received an offer to peer-review a paper for a reputable journal.

As with prior questions on SE.Academia, e.g.


As a Ph.D. student, should I spend time reviewing papers?,
Personal repercussions for those who actively ignore review requests?,
What benefits are there to peer reviewing papers?,
I have been invited to peer review a manuscript for a reputable journal. This is my first so I have a few questions to the more experienced,


I'm basically asking if it's important that I accept.  The difference in this question is that I'm not currently employed by a university, nor do I foresee that changing any time soon, so I'm less concerned with something like a faculty activity report and more concerned with maintaining professional connections.

While I believe that it's virtuous to help build the human knowledge pool, my primary concern is a bit more pragmatic in if I should be focused on building professional connections.  Realistically speaking I'm not currently too concerned with publishing papers, though I may yet need to when it's time to explain to the world exactly what technology my startup's based on.

However, a time sink's still a time sink, and I can't afford too many distractions right now.  I'm also unsure about precisely what I'd be committing to, making it harder to judge how much of a distraction it might be.

Other considerations:


The peer-review request came in on a private email address, so I assume that someone I know well recommended me.  It's a pretty safe bet that both the editor and the person who recommended me are aware of my professional situation and considered it when making the recommendation/request.
The editor has strong connections in a field where I have a patent for a technology that may yield significant royalties if it's adopted.  As a complex technology that I don't currently have time to personally champion, having other experts in the field recommend it could be the difference between investors using it vs. going with a less-effective-but-simpler solution advocated by competitors.


Questions:


Should a startup-company founder be concerned with maintaining a reputation as a peer-reviewer?
In general, is serving as a peer-reviewer important to researchers outside of academia?
Are there potential benefits/hazards to accepting/rejecting a peer-review request?




Context information (if relevant):


The peer-review subject matter isn't closely related to the startup company's core technology, though one expected basket of consumers of the company's core technology is likely to care about the peer-review subject matter.
I haven't officially done a peer-review before, though I've provided unofficially commentary upon request for those that were serving as peer-reviewers.
I think you should not take up this review, based on three reasons:

(1) No longer 'peer' : As an entrepreneur, you engage with technology, products and marketability more than academic research, thus defeating the purpose of peer-review, where researchers review papers in their field of work, and ideally get reviewed equally when they publish. The exception to this is if the journal is a technology journal focusing on product development and you have been asked to review from that perspective.

(2) Resource availability : To review a paper well, you will need access to related work in the field for judging correctness/suitability, possibly you will need to follow up some references, and more importantly, you will need to have time and current knowledge of published literature in the field. Unless the start-up is research-oriented, I think these resources may not be very accessible.

(3) Potential conflict of interest : This may not apply to the present case, but if this repeats, you may find yourself in situations where your review could be biased (eg. the paper reports flaws in a competitor's technology), and this would be an avoidable ethical burden.

Finally, the overbearing message I get from the question is that you are considering review because it could potentially benefit your product (through professional network etc). IMO, this is neither good (review should have a share-and-grow ethos) nor particularly effective- your network can be built better through more conventional routes, and also publishing a paper may not reach a big chunk of your target consumers (unless you are targeting the research community, in which case many of these points are invalid.).