(1) the grass is always greener on the other side (2) serial entrepreneurs are more common than parallel ones (3) don't you have a performance requirement with your investors? (4) does your shareholder agreement allow any of this? (5) have you talked this over with your investors? (6) it all depends on the cap table (7) you could always sell your stake in the current company or engineer an MBO (8) doing another compa…
Thanks for the feedback, I'll answer this by providing some more context. a) I've done well when you consider revenue/global brand reach/spread b) I've spoken informally to trusted board members nobody seems to have clarity on the best way forward c) Option 7 seems to be the best way out d) on point number 9, yes I'm distracted, but I've understated how much thought has gone into the second idea; it's something that'…
You're right that POS is the #1 pain point retailers have, even though you used it only as an example.
I bring this up because the problem is not what you'd think it is.
You can't just "build another one and they will come", because each different business who might be a customer has slightly different needs and wishes to implement the software in a different manner.
For clarity's sake, we run 8 retail stores, and since I have a background in software my partner wanted me to build a POS, since none of them on the market met our needs. I know enough to stay far away from that gig, though, because it's a rabbit hole of custom engineering.
I don't know what your business is or what people have asked you to build, but if it's anything like what I described above, you'd essentially be downgrading yourself from "funded software company CEO" to "paid consultant."
And even if you think you can sell it with minimal modifications to other customers, you better be 101% sure of that before jumping off this cliff.