Ask HN: how can I convince my company to incubate me (and spin me off)?
I’ve discussed the matter with my boss and he would be interested in pushing this further, i.e. free half of my time to finalise the development and, if all goes well, release me at the end of the year to start my company.
We're somehow in stealth mode (e.g. IT is not necessarily happy with this home grown application, but they fortunately have bigger fishes to fry at the moment), but I'm thinking about asking my company to incubate me and then do a spin-off . At this stage, I’d like to obtain time (my time), acces to some internal expertise (e.g. legal, IT Security, marketing…) and why not some seed funding (but I have other options there).
Some context: I’m a Procurement director at a Global Fortune 500 in Europe (we’re in the services industry). The application I’m developing covers the needs of a distributed Procurement/Sourcing department (currently: 100+ users in 17 countries). As in a lot of services companies, Procurement is not exactly strategic, so it's neither a threat nor an opportunity. On the other hand, entrepreneurship is clearly a value of the company. I have a rather direct access to members of the executive committee (and the support of my boss).
I've identified a few reasons why my company would accept to incubate me (living the values of the company, giving it access to a tool it needs at a very preferred price, and possibly some shares in the spun-off company)… But I'm struggling to see if this is compelling enough, or if there could be more in this incubation for the company.
Do you have any experience with intrapreneurship / spin offs? What other benefits I could advertise to convince them to incubate me? Any pitfall I should be aware of (besides IP — I'm already working on this one)?
Thanks for your help! P.