In my experience, getting involved with an employer to work on your side-project is not a wise decision unless you're 100% sure it won't go south. I've done it

In my experience, getting involved with an employer to work on your side-project is not a wise decision unless you're 100% sure it won't go south. I've done it and regret it. I asked my employer if they would help me on the marketing side of things for an app I was building on the side, and allow me work on finishing the app on company time--fast forward 8 months and I was the only one putting any work into it, and they also owned over 50% of my app (yes, I know--I was super dumb, overly excited and way too generous!). I eventually burned out and moved on, and it sucked to leave behind a project that I liked due to my poor decision-making and bad co-founder fit.