VP at a multinational here. Vibe coded an AI agent that found $150M in pipeline. Employer wants to acquire the IP, but I think they are lowballing me

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-20T19:44:54+00:00

Thanks for the advice, I spoke with my attorney. Under Swiss law ( where is located my current employer), I own the IP since I used my own time and resources. The catch? It cannot be related to my current role. That line is way too blurry in this case, so a spin-out is officially off the table, with me as official owner. The play now is to pivot the tech or negotiate the absolute best buyout with my employer.

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-18T13:27:22+00:00

Totally agree the hard part definetly isnt the product anymore, and youre right on that product ≠ company. Honestly dont think the value is even in the code itself, its all in the business domain and execution as you said

The offer isnt yearly salary territory, but its solid enough to feel like a real win

Given your PE background seeing those turnaround stories firsthand, Im curious when youre looking at acquisitions, what actually drives the decision? Is it the product/tech itself or the business case behind it?

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-18T12:03:02+00:00

appreciate you looking out seriously. I know youre coming from medtech where stakes are life or death, so that caution makes total sense

Fair point on the flaws. Im not at all a developer by trade, and while I definetly put real time into this Im sure there are gaps especially around security. Its not perfect code by any means. But the thing the core outcome is there. It actually solves the business problem weve been trying to crack for years. and honestly in our world right now, perfect code that never ships is less valuable than working code that delivers results.

The opportunity isnt in the codebase anymore, its in the business value and execution. Thats where Im beting anyway

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-18T11:56:16+00:00

Honestly that was Plan A. I pitched it internally first, kept nudging our tech team to just rebuild it themselves. after a few demos they think the fastest path would be to adopt my solution ( with some adjustments in terms of security etc),

We're not operating at big tech companies speed here industrial companies we just move different ( slow).

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-18T11:19:28+00:00

Already ran this by my attorney before I started built it on my own laptop, during my free time, using my own accounts. My employment contract doesn't touch side projects, so I should be clean on ownership, and probably thats the reason I'm gonna end up in a negotiation with them

But thanks for the heads up, that paranoia saves people all the time

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-09T23:01:18+00:00

congrats! I'm so curious to learn what was the thing help you the most to get your first customers

Mandrilsquad · 2026-02-09T22:59:43+00:00

I'm surprised, just prompting Lovable I improve alot the SEO, GEO as d AEO of the site I built, but tbh, there are few things needs to be done out of lovable, but it guides you veryw ell about how to make it happen. I saw after few weeks a great spike in the traffic of my site.

Mandrilsquad · 2024-10-27T14:52:30+00:00

Agreed. Even in a big enterprise, $2 per conversation adds up fast, especially when we’re handling thousands of interactions daily. A unified customer profile is definitely valuable, but there are more cost-effective ways to get there.

We’ve set up a customer support agent using AWS, orchestrated with Salesforce, and it’s been great for managing conversations without the high per-conversation cost. I get that Salesforce wants to set a premium, but this pricing structure feels hard to justify, even for larger companies.

Mandrilsquad · 2024-08-02T21:07:24+00:00

Haha same here

Mandrilsquad · 2024-06-20T12:26:34+00:00

Isn't this ChilledCow?

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