My two co-founders and I own a profitable home services company that runs on a proprietary technology platform that I've built. Over the past two years, I've put the majority of work into the startup, with most of the effort dedicated towards building and maintaining the platform. However, over the course of the past year, my two co-founders have begun to take a backseat in the operation of the business. We've had many late night conversations about this but it doesn't appear to resolve any of my concerns. It's been extremely demotivating for me while I still continue to invest the same chunk of effort into building out the platform. Sometimes, features and fixes are delayed simply because of the occasional resent I carry.
However, I have a proposal that I'd like to bring to the table--branching off the technology into a separate company and licensing it to the home services company to use for free. I feel this would greatly motivate me again to work on the platform--it's a win-win situation in my eyes. If this were to happen, there is still software development needed on the home services company to interface with the platform. What are your thoughts on this? Should I give equity to my co-founders within this new company? We did hire a short-term contractor to work on the platform which never surpassed $5,000.00. The rest of the work was done solely by me. Interested to hear some feedback on this since this has been brewing in my head for awhile!
However, I have a proposal that I'd like to bring to the table--branching off the technology into a separate company and licensing it to the home services company to use for free. I feel this would greatly motivate me again to work on the platform--it's a win-win situation in my eyes. If this were to happen, there is still software development needed on the home services company to interface with the platform. What are your thoughts on this? Should I give equity to my co-founders within this new company? We did hire a short-term contractor to work on the platform which never surpassed $5,000.00. The rest of the work was done solely by me. Interested to hear some feedback on this since this has been brewing in my head for awhile!