I'm working as a developer on a client web application that helps his business. I have been working for him for years now, I have built most of it on my own.
I have been looking for ideas to start an online service that could help me earn some passive income for a while. One idea I have is to turn his application into an online service that businesses could use for a monthly subscription fee. Of course, I'm not planning to steal his application without his knowledge, but instead I'm planning to share my idea with him and hope that we could make a deal.
I think he might actually like the idea, because it would make things easier for him and could also generate more income for him too (depending on the deal we could make). He stated several times how he does not have enough time to take care of the details of the development (discussing new features, provide bug reports, etc). He will not need to do any of that the same level he needs to do it right now, when he only uses it as a service. He is a business man, so I think if I manage to explain him my idea in a way where the dollar signs start jumping before his eyes, we might have a deal.
I could create a similar app without copy his app verbatim, it does not have anything unique, but it is very custimzed to the needs of his business, so it will be a lot of work to turn into something that is generic enough, but still provide value for other similar businesses. You can think of the app as a special kind of upwork where people who has job todo and people has can do jobs can do businesses with each other, but it also supports jobs where you have staff to manage the workers and clients. Actually it became a very complex application during the years.
According to the plans, we are planning to work together for years, so it does not make sense to start working on a similar app in my free time for free and work on his app during the working hours, when we could also make a deal to create something that could help both of us.
My question is: what do you suggest how should I propose my idea? I would like to stop working for him directly and work on the app full-time on my own, do all the changes and improvements I could not do so far.
It would be great if I could manage to get ownership on the new project. I do not have money to finance all the work that the app requires to turn into a service. I either need to get a loan or ask my client to keep paying me as an investment. Then when the project is up and running he could either use it for free or I will pay him a percentage from the income or whatever terms we could agree. I could also work on the new version in my free time for free for a while, while keep maintaining his current app if that works for him, but of course, we could launch it much sooner if I can work on it full-time.
Does all of that make sense? Do you think it is possible? Thanks for any advice.
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