I (17M) had this idea for a project which I wanted to work on for a competition. My science teacher told me to include “Joe” (17M) because she thought he could help. I built the idea in a month; it was hard work and I felt very connected to it. At the beginning we talked about working together, but I did all the coding, testing, and writing. He showed up but didn’t contribute anything. When we won a couple thousand euros, split 50/50, I felt frustrated. I complained to friends, who said I shouldn’t do anything. Basically, I wasn’t happy, but I didn’t make a scene. During that time, I wanted to keep working on the project, but was fed up with “Joe” for not doing anything at all (*truthfully nothing*). I sent “Joe” a message asking if he wanted to keep working on the project.
Now, I purposely hinted strongly that it would be a lot of work, and made it seem like a unfavorable idea by saying things along the line of “there is no guarantee we make money from it”, and “we would need to contribute many hours a week” to try get him to leave. Naturally, he replied that he’d rather focus on school and didn’t want the workload.
Over the next couple weeks, I redid large parts of the project, and improved it a lot. A company that we’d reached out to earlier that year took notice, and offered to buy the MVP and idea, and let me keep working on it.
I received a decent payout. Nothing insane, but big for someone my age, which I saved. This was super exciting for me, I told all my friends and family about it.
When “Joe” found out, the guy got realy mad. He said I cut him out and that the original idea was “**ours**.” He claims I should have at least offered him a percentage since we reached out to the company about the project when it still had both our names on it or something.
I told him I gave him the opportunity to stay involved. He declined. I said I did 100% of the additional work, and spent hours of my time and a lot of my money on it (to make this post as truthful as possible, I exaggerated that point). I also feel I should add, “Joe” isn’t very popular in my school, and tends to get made fun of. When we originally won that couple thousand euro, people in my school were giving him a hard time about freeloading, which I may have indirectly caused. I was complaining to friends about the two way split and it led to him getting outcast ever further. Now, when I sold the idea myself, people are saying that I’m selfish and, for lack of a better word, an ‘**asshole**’.
