I have been in similar situations and I would (and did) go for putting the patent into the company or walking away. Maybe with your shares vesting based on mile

I have been in similar situations and I would (and did) go for putting the patent into the company or walking away. Maybe with your shares vesting based on milestones. Companies do license patents (in my country this would put a strain on the company as a license implies you have to pay for it and that sets all kinds of precedents with respect to value etc, not sure how that works elsewhere) but those are usually in different situations; if you like each other and work well together, then this is the better (short and long term) option in my opinion. Edit: also, and again in my experience, investors and buyers will find the company to be worth a lot more; we had a perpetual license with all the protections in the past and we had a lot of investor hesitance to take risks as they were worried about the IP for the core product of the company not actually being in the company. The license did nothing to alleviate that.