Ask HN: Suggestions on how to structure working on startup idea as sole engineer

  • I've been thinking about this type of problem recently so very timely question.

    IANA Employment Lawyer, so take everything here with a huge grain of salt, but is the separate product going to be a separate company? If it is would some mix of equity + cash work? If not, it seems like some custom contract based on the product and its dedicated revenues/profits might be necessary with lawyers involved.

    To zoom out a bit, the problem I've been honing in on is that there are a lot of companies that may want to issue profit-sharing like agreements or revenue share that have no plans to exit/IPO/go huge. But no one, especially early on when they're small or solo, wants to go hire a lawyer to write these contracts. I wonder if we can create good templates for rev/profit shares for solo/indie/bootstrapped businesses. Think the SAFE that YC created, but more around profit or revenue shares. If this is interesting to you shoot me a msg would love to talk to others who are seeing this type of problem.

    Also, if you know Gumroad, they're building out a new product called Flexile.com that enables companies to hire contractors but also give them equity/dividends. It's not released yet, but may be worth looking into and getting on the waiting list. May or may not solve this exact problem but it's in a similar realm.