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I don’t have an operating agreement with my business/life partner. How do I protect myself? (alien.top)

submitted 1 year ago by Evening_Fig4577@alien.top to c/entrepreneur@indiehackers.space

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As the title says, I started a SaaS business with my boyfriend 3 years ago, and it has since grown to 10k MRR and we could sell the business for a decent amount of money since it’s all automated. It’s our baby, and we both want to see it through until we grow it big enough and get it acquired.

Although we have an LLC filed in California, we never actually signed an operating agreement between us. The only thing really stating that we each own 50% is by the pass-through revenue when filing taxes.

Lately, the business has been taking a toll on our relationship (as we both work remotely), and I’m honestly not sure if our relationship (and therefore business) can hold on for another year or two.

And because we argue a lot about work, it would be hard to get my partner to sign an official operating agreement now, since he’s resentful that I haven’t put in as much time as he has; since it’s his full time job and I’m only part time. However, I’m only part time due to having a salaried job to keep us afloat. On top of that I’m no stranger to spending all-nighters on top of my day job to get releases out.

The question of “I do more work than you” always comes up even though we’ve addressed it in couples therapy. I also originally founded the business months before he joined, and handle the entire technical side of this software company, as the main developer / CTO.

What can I do to protect myself in the case that our relationship goes south? We have over 100k in our business bank account and could likely sell for at least $500k given our niche, so I’d want to walk away with $300k in equity if it came to it, but I’m worried about how he might act if shit hits the fan.

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[–] willslater99@alien.top 1 points 1 year ago

Lawyer. Go to one now. Even if you're not taking any action yet, hopefully you never have to take action and you can both sort this out in a happy healthy way, but just speak to one for a few hours, ask them, see if they'd be able to build a case based on old conversations, screenshots, files, revenue split, when accounts were opened, etc.

I hope your relationship and business all works out and none of this is ever necessary, but if it all goes to shit and you both need to call on lawyers, your best chance is to be calling the lawyer who started on this 3 months early.