Wow, not quite the same thing but I have been part of the roller coaster of the Beau’s business from a small start up in the basement to an office with about 20 employees, back to nothing, and we are back rebuilding. Other ventures have had the ups and downs too. Its brutal, and watching things you have lived and loved and invested heavily in, a business that has replaced “family time” with my “5 year old is drawing pictures in the staff room while I do payroll and the Beau makes sales calls” is hard to let go.
We are building up again, but this time we won’t move into an office space and hire a bunch of people. We will do it ourselves, and be smaller but we won’t have the overhead.
The relationship is rather complex. I’ll try to give brief details. There is a mother company in the UK and a US company. The mother company is the core business that funds the development. It also does the type of business that we wrote the software for. The US company is the development shop and is really only is in business to allow easy payments from the UK to the developer and tester.
The mother company is struggling and can no longer fund the dev. The development company has to fold and development will now end. The mother company owns the IP. My guess is, the mother company will likely *eventually *fold, but for now will try to strengthen their core business.
The IP remains as an asset of the mother company, even if (or when) they too fold. I would have to go through the courts to ask them to give me the IP in lieu of back pay or other broken promises. I might win, I might not, depends on their other creditors and whether they try to claim the IP. They may or may not. Either way, I cannot afford to wait and see if the mother company survives. I will need a paying job soon.
In preparation for the likely event that the mother company will go under, I have asked them to write variance to the work-for-hire agreement, granting IP to the development company. That way, if they *do *fold, the IP is not an asset of theirs. However, they are reluctant and have not yet made a decision.
I have engaged an attorney to look at all the details. It seems that there are ways I might get the IP, but they all involve courts - or the UK company voluntarily signing over the IP.
Khadaaji, very sorry for this to have happened. From your posts though you seem very level headed and have a positive attitude about it (as much as you can).
Managing a business through various growth stages is very tough, and simple excellence in the blocking and tackling, while critical, is not sufficient to guarantee that a business can make it - too many external variables. Sounds like you gave it a solid shot.
What’s funny is - I am still developing. I had a major breakthrough yesterday and I was as tickled as a child.
An old boss has been trying to get me to do consulting work for him for - well years. He is currently in India, but when he returns we’ll talk. If he doesn’t have work now, I still have other irons in the fire.
But I am proud of this thing we have created - I would have liked to see someone use it.
In the end, all will be well. For now, I’m still a little sad.
Although I don’t want to revive the thread, I thought I’d give a little update.
My business partners have put a clause in place such that, if they cannot pay me my back pay (a significant amount by most people’s standards) by the end of the year, the IP will revert to me.
It has been amicable and I have agreed to accept a tempcontract and revisit coming back in the fall - if they find a path to market.
So sorry, Khadaji. It sucks to put so much effort into a venture to have it fail.
It’s no consolation, but consider a phrase/idea I’ve heard kicked around a lot in many business/entrepreneur podcasts that I listen to in the last few years: