

Ask HN: Revenue sharing contracts? - chriseidhof

Hey guys,<p>I am working on an app together with a designer. It is a bit of a hassle to set up a separate company for it, because it's not (yet?) a full-time project, we don't have any revenue coming in yet and we don't know what the future will look like.<p>We have agreed on an equal split of the revenue.<p>I want to set up a contract with him that we share the revenue and IP. What should I include in the contract? Of course, there need to be clauses for what happens if things go wrong, or what happens if things go incredibly good (e.g.  acquisition).  Does anybody have a sample contract for this?  If I hire a lawyer
to write it for me, what clauses should I consider?<p>As this is not the only project where I'm in a partnership, I wouldn't mind a reusable contract. Can lawyers provide these?<p>We're both based in Europe, by the way.<p>Thanks!
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robfitz
Hey Chris, I've been using a similar structure for some of my projects (all
involved track their billable time, which is paid off first in equal
proportion, then any remaining upside is split down the middle).

I haven't formalised either, so no contract to give you unfortunately, but
wanted to touch base in case we end up thinking about or writing anything
which is mutually beneficial.

Some universities have umbrella corporations/trusts set up where students
making a mini business can do it under this legal entity and just tell them in
plain-english how they want any revenue to be split up. Since the students
trust the university, it more or less works out, although someone at the top
needs to bear the legal costs/risks.

Anyway, my email is robftz@gmail.com if you want to discuss further.

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chriseidhof
I think it's essential to formalize it. It's easy to do this when things are
sunny and bright, but very hard to do when things don't go that well.

