I'm a - by all accounts - very talented programmer and student with over four years of self employed programming experience. For my thesis I decided to work in the field of genomic data analysis. Two years ago I found a PhD supervisor who shared his idea of a software application in that field with me which I found interesting and decided to work on. My supervisor is a post-doc in bioinformatics and does not have any experience with larger software projects. Over the course of the last two year I added many of my own ideas to the application. The resulting product has shown to be very useful to the medical institution I'm a student of.
There have been talks about turning this application into a company very early on. These were always initiated by me and for roughly one year my supervisor stated he was not interested in starting a company at all since he is primarily focused on his research. Over the last couple of months however he has become very serious about starting a company based on the application I programmed fully by myself. He has even received an investment of 10.000 EUR by a public fund sponsoring projects in this field by 'showing off' my application.
In autumn this year there is an invitation to tender by the institution he is a employed at for something very similar to the application I have created. Due to his experience with this particular institution and its needs, he asserts it is highly likely that we would be awarded the contract. It is worth noting, that there will be significant changes to the application before we may be awarded the contract, but nothing that I could not do until autumn.
In our last meeting however my supervisor stated that if we were awarded the contract and founded a company, he would take the vast majority of shares (95%), since it is his many years of experience and connections in the field that lead to the situation we are currently in. I do not agree with this at all and feel like the application would not have come into existence hadn't it been for my programming knowledge as well. Without the both of us we wouldn't be here today, it took both of our efforts.
Since my thesis is not complete yet (I've written it all up, but my supervisor suggested some changes which I'm working on right now with full speed) I am highly dependent on him and want to avoid any confrontation on this issue until my thesis is graded.
Here are the options my supervisor has:
- Increase my share (I feel entitled to at least one third of the company)
- Cut me out entirely and hire some other developer (which has the downside, that they probably wouldn't be able to finish by autumn and the new developer would very likely lack domain knowledge and not be familiar with the task at all.) I do think however, that my supervisor vastly overestimates his skill in overseeing the development of such an application and underestimates my qualities as a programmer.
Here is my 'nuclear' option:
- Collaborate with one of my past clients (large software company I worked for) and secretly bring in our own tender application.
Of course I'd prefer a collaboration with my supervisor under fair terms. What are your thoughts on this, how should I approach this situation?
Summary: A software application I wrote for my thesis will likely turn into a company. My supervisor wants to largely cut me out of the deal, despite having received an investment from a public fund based entirely on my work. I want to avoid open confrontation because my thesis is not fully finished yet.
