More often than not the people you are working for will just go bankrupt at some point if they can’t pay you. They will have loads of other bills they can’t pay

More often than not the people you are working for will just go bankrupt at some point if they can’t pay you. They will have loads of other bills they can’t pay, and probably if they engaged you knowing they can’t actually pay you then you need to understand that they are narcissistic and dishonest and treat them accordingly (ie don’t make additional deals with them) Chances are your revenue sharing agreement might not hold up in court (ie veto/not approved by shareholders) or they might scam you by selling the IP for $1 to a shell P/L company and just reincorporating. So yeah don’t jump for this option unless you think they’ll never pay you anyway… chances are if you keep the debt you can sell to a debt collector for 10% of its value (they’ll go after the director and usually succeed), or wait for liquidation and grab a bunch of their stuff. You might end up with choice pick on a few company cars or something like that you can sell. Startups operating on unpaid invoices is a very common and real scam that you need to be aware of and avoid. I hear founders casually make comments such as “I’ll try xxx project on unpaid invoices and see if it works” all the time.