Hey, I need some real talk from anyone who’s been burned by a "partner." This is a tough situation for me.
I'm a young dev, still in high school, but I'm the single technical brain behind everything this company does. My boos, let's call him "visionary man", is all sales and big promises. I'm the one who built the whole stack: Rust/Node APIs, Tauri/React desktop apps, manages all the servers, load balancing, database. I literally build all the engine for all high-stake client projects.
The amount of work done is huge, the pressure is constant, but the pay is nonexistent. For months, our Whatsapp chat has been a broken record: me begging for my weekly pay, and him giving the excuses: "I'm at zero", "waiting for money to come in," or just to busy flying around. To keep me motivated, he only keeps talking up about the future, how we'll "get rich" later with his next big project ,and that I just need to be patient.
The whole thing blew up recently. He's obsessed with this personal project, and when it slowed down because I was actually focusing on my school and personal stuff, he went off on me. He accused me of not being dedicated, compared me to his own insane workload. He then threatened my financial stake: he warned that if he has to invest more of his own money to keep his pet project moving, the whole percentage picture changes.
This is the bottom line: I built the business assets, but he treat my labor like free capital, and now he's threatening my future.
I need some advice of what decision should take, i don't have any experience with this things. What would an experienced entrepreneur do?
I'd be happy to answer any questions and provide more information about the situation, without revealing any personal details about the project or the company.
Sorry for my bad english, it's not my native language
I need advice: Built My Boss's Entire Tech Platform (Full-Stack), Now He Won't Pay Me and Is Threatening My Share. What Do I Do?
byu/Eswaldots inEntrepreneur
Posted by Eswaldots
23 Comments
probably start looking for a new job
Code in something so that the program won’t work without your continued support and then strong arm into paying you if he wants to use your product
You cannot really lose anything, since he hasnt paid you at all.
If you are a partner in the business, just take the whole thing offline. Shut it down, until he actually pays. If he doesnt, you still havent lost anything.
If you´re employed in the business, then you have a really bad situation, since all intellectual property rights probably belongs to the business and taking it offline would cause harm to your boss.
So are you employed or part owner?
is the business bringing in traffic? is it bringing in revenue at all?
or is it just a project that he spec’d out and you built?
was there any employment agreement signed for wages/hr? if there was an agreement signed to be paid, and you aren’t paid, notify your state’s labor board.
If this isn’t the United States, and this is happening, not sure what your local laws are.
Backup the entire project, tell your boss “I can no longer work on this project without you paying me $(all your missed hours + 15%) and need to be paid on a semi-weekly basis going forward.
1) Your English is great, your post is easy to understand.
2) Do you have anything about your current stake in writing? An amount of shares, awarded to you in the form of share certificates, preferably?
I have some bad news. It sounds like this person has completely taken advantage of you, and there’s a high probability that you’re going to walk away from this with nothing. If you have really built a product that has paying customers, and haven’t been paid at all… well, the injustice in this is really just unacceptable.
If the pressure is high it sounds like you’re doing a lot of maintenance, and if you stepped away everything would tank. If (as I suspect) you don’t have any legally binding proof of your equity in this company, I would say “Pay me now, these are my terms, or I’m done, effective immediately.” And then if he doesn’t pay you, walk.
If you don’t have a contract in place, you’re fucked.
But he’s also fucked. Break the code and call it a loss.
He doesn’t value your monetary contribution of “time” and compared it to his financial investment.
… Or rewrap the product and own it yourself – there were no contracts.
Fuck this dude. I’ve dealt with hundreds of them. Remember, YOU’RE the smart one, you just have imposter syndrome.
First, are you 18?
Next, what does your contract say? If you don’t have a formal contract, what do written explanations of your agreement say? Did he agree to pay you?
Also, sounds like hed be fucked if you stop working, so let’s also talk about who has the power here.
I can give you more specific info once you answer those questions
This is an amazing lesson to learn at your age. Worry about finishing highschool and possibly/probably going to college. A business degree with a CS degree or even just CS capability will take you very far later in life.
Make sure you have all your code and work examples, it sounds like you have an incredible portfolio at your age. YOU did that, nobody else, and you need to leverage that moving forward. The dude you’re working with is a salesman and you are his product, which he is getting for free. Of course he’ll do whatever he can to keep it that way, he’s trash and you need to move on.
If you actually want to continue working with a person like that, which you shouldn’t, you need to contact a lawyer and figure out your options. Since clients are involved it could get messy quick.
Make a copy of the repo and delete the main one. Renegotiate.
Talk to a lawyer. Have that lawyer review whatever agreements you have with this person and then see what options they give you. Also document every single interaction with your “boss”. Save emails. Save texts. Make a note of every verbal exchange as well.
If there is no actual money coming in, and all you asked to get paid in was profit share, then thats not anyones fault. But if he owes you other funds you need to take the whole ball and go home. Like a salary, shut it down. He needs to pay you.
That stack is not easy to learn. Tell him to ask ChatGPT to rebuild his project if he wants it for free. Pull the plug.
Minors cannot enter into a contract. So I don’t know what you have with your partner as there is no partnership.
Dude wtf are you talking about? You are the technical guy, shut that shit down yesterday. Negotiate terms before you turn it on, everything in writing, and if he f’d up again; shut it down again, take your ball and go home.
You’re in high school, I wouldn’t be thinking twice about this dude. Either act right or I’ll see you after gym class sir!
I assume you don’t have a written contract. In this case lock the system. Bring it down until you come to an agreement. Make sure the agreement is in a legal contract. Bringing it down will get a very quick response.
You don’t work without a contract.
If someone breaches the contract, you terminate the agreement per the terms.
If you do work without a contract, you probably still own the IP unless you signed it over.
If you ever do work without a contract you’re asking to get burned.
Did you sign a contract? If so, does the contract stipulate that he owns the code you wrote? If so, you could try to take him to small claims court. If not, (and he doesn’t own your code) hold the code ransom until he pays you what he owes you, at which point you release what you wrote.
I would consider a call to the DOL in your state. Unless you have a contract with parent co-signers.
It all depends on whether you are an employee, a contractor, or an equity partner.
And have you been paid for anything up until this point? Are you a legal adult?
Is anything in writing? If not, just take all of your work. You built it, you own it. Take over his position, change the name and sell the product. As a guy who has owned several businesses, he needs to learn that the owner gets paid last.
Do you haver payroll, invoice, contract?
No money, no contract. If you have git push, of something that demostrates it’s your, try to get your propertie in your hands
Do you have a partnership agreement? That is the first and most important lesson: without an agreement you have nothing. Him acknowledging your agreement and promising to pay is valid. If you do the tech as a partner you have to address when and how you will get paid or what the profit share is. If you built it as a vendor I suggest you built a backdoor and shut it down until he pays. You can’t unfortunately do both- be a partner and co-carry the risk and get paid like an employee
That’s your intellectual property until he pays. Give him a final request to pay (don’t threaten) and if he doesn’t pay by a certain time close it down, keep it for yourself and stop working with him. He’s likely to scream and threaten you, then plead, then cry, then threaten again but if you have documentation showing your request for payment and his responses you have a clear set of events that lead you to stop trading with him. Good luck.
Honestly, cut him off, take the loss on whatever you could have gotten. He’s toxic and using you. You could take him to court and sue him but you don’t have money and he probably doesn’t either.
Just cut him off, call it a learning experience and build something yourself. You’re the actual useful one, he’s quite frankly dead weight and even less than dead weight as he doesn’t provide anything. You’re the one actually making the product, he needs you not the other way around. Even if you delivered a finished product now without you to maintain, update it, etc he’s screwed.