a year ago met a doctor with some cool method he made like 30āyears ago. thought would be nice to equip it with some new tech. ended up partnering with the dude for 25% of the new business which now started to manufacture ai powered equipment. the docror dude is now irrelevant in the business as adds no value to the company although his ideas where quite cool when we started. we pre-sold 1M worth of gear to some studios and they are pretty excited with potential of this gear. feel like i build the whole thing (which i did working like 15 hrs a day for minimal wage and a stake) and started to feel like i sold myself short. thoughts?
Wait for him to find this post
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Buy out the doctors stake, or majority of it
He refused to sellš¤·āāļø
You leaned a good lesson.
Yee man thatās not helpful but thanks
What help are you expecting? You already learned and can apply your new knowledge next time. This time you can vent if you want?
Raise a round of capital. The VCs will do the dirty job for you.
They will not touch it - early and co-founders at ods with each other
Itās an operational issue that can be fixed for what seems like a good business.
Go on vacation for three weeks. Do not respond to phone or email at all. See if the guy is willing to negotiate when you get back, now that he knows what running the business solo feels like. Realize you might have to leave, and be glad you learned useful lessons.
Ok. Since the story developed further. The breakdown really started a year ago (which I have omitted for the sake of intrigue). One day the dude felt my resentment toward him for not pulling his weight and being a majority stakeholder decides he doesnāt need me anymore. He goes and changes locks on office doors and revokes my banking access. Sends a letter informing me of termination of ācooperationā with me. Then takes domain name, patent application and puts all on his own name))). I run for legal advise - minority oppression. Cost of pursuing $150K with unpredictable outcome. Funny thing - the business went south right away. In a year no new clients. All former staff left cause didnāt want to work under him. Business is technically dead. What do you think my actions now after a year should be?š¤·āāļø
You were telling us your wife is going to leave you. Now, you tell us that it was 40 years ago? Move on.
Lol. We had 3M pre money valuation before the crap started. Donāt wanna just forget my 750K. I could turn it into 50M company in 3-4 years I recon.
You just said business is dead. Offer to buy tech out of dead business for 20-50k if you believe it is worth it and start over with selling. If he won't sell tech, start over from scratch and start selling a new product in the space or a laterally related space. If you are an entrepreneur, you move on to the next deal, you don't cry over the one that got away.
Ideas make money, not grunt work. Grunt work brings the ideas to life.
Hereās the thing - ideas are mine how to make business out of it. He was sitting on 30āyear old garbage selling 1-1 training sessions. Now itās a equipment vendor with saas model.
You need to renegotiate - before that get objective evaluation of why you are not compensated fairly. Then what if discussions go south? You might have a hand in negotiations if you can demonstrate that you'll bring additional value that only you can bring. The value that you brought until now is not that relevant because you already gave it away for cheap assuming that you aren't fairly compensated. Grunt work will bring money if you play your cards well.