Help- my company wants to do my side project in house

I’ve been working on a side project and recently shared it with colleagues at work. They loved it and spread it around the company all the way up to the VP. The VP is very excited and wants me to help prepare a pitch to the CEO about doing this in-house.

I feel like this is messy and I want to keep my side project separate from work. For both personal (we don’t need more competitors) and legal (plausible deniability) reasons. They’ve been nice and haven’t asked for the code base or anything, so I’m not sure how to handle this. This VP is directly responsible for my future promotions at the company.

How do I say no respectfully? Am I thinking about this the right way?

(Btw I’ve been to a lawyer and they were pretty vague. No I haven’t worked on company equipment and always in my spare time. Live in CA so non-compete/company ownership law is not enforceable as I gather. Big tech company.)

Would you consider selling it ? If you don't have customers it probably isn't worth much other than it protects them from future lawsuits initiated by you. As a side note, my buddy sold his side project to his employer for $350,000 but granted he had customers. But he also worked on it shamelessly while on the clock and using company equipment and using a sales guy who worked at the company. I sh*t you not.

If you do ask for money you should be embarrassed about how much you ask for or you are doing it wrong. They might not appreciate that but they will respect you.

I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, yadda yadda.

> I’ve been to a lawyer and they were pretty vague.

Find a better lawyer. You're definitely not the first person who has been in this situation.

> No I haven’t worked on company equipment and always in my spare time.

May not be relevant. Your employment agreement may have a clause that says the company has a claim, even if you worked on your own equipment and in your own time, if the project is reasonably connected with the company's usual business. You can challenge it, of course, but do you want to get in a legal kerfuffle with a "Big tech company"?

> Live in CA so non-compete/company ownership law is not enforceable as I gather.

This is not a non-compete issue; that's when the company tries to stop you from working for their competitor after you quit. Important to get the concepts straight. IP ownership issues like this are a different ballgame.

You've got several scenarios:

1. You say no, company wants to go ahead and do it themselves: you're now competing on the side with your employer. Very bad scene.

2. You say no, company says okay we won't do it. VP probably not happy; company still knows you're working on it and can claim ownership and land you in legal hot water if it takes off as your side project.

3. You say yes, company goes ahead: no longer a side project, so you won't see as much upside if it succeeds, but it might have a better shot of success with the company's resources behind it.

4. You say yes, company decides not to proceed: this may actually be your best outcome, if you can get the company to put in writing that they're not interested in the idea and you're cleared to go work on it on your own.

(EDIT: of course you may also be able to ask the company for clearance in situation (2), but they may be less inclined than in situation (4) where you've at least shown the willingness to work with them.)

I would make sure to protect the idea.

In France there is a old fashioned way to have a proof that you got the idea first : you can send a letter describing your idea to a specific state agency (INPI https://www.inpi.fr/fr/proteger-vos-creations/lenveloppe-sol... ). You may have something similar or better in California.

Working on your hobby at work is the dream so long as it’s not stolen from you and bastardized.

The greatest protection is a hyper restrictive license like AGPLv3.

One thing a company can do to lock it up is to extend the application in a novel way and then slap an interim patent application on it while investing an actual patent application. The only protection from this is to ensure new features are disclosed outside the company, but be careful not to violate a confidentiality clause with your employer.

Keep the source control outside your employer. If they want to extend the application internally they need to clone it to a different repository. Do not delete or abandon that original external source control.