Out of the gate I will offer a perpetual license for my product though I will likely change that to an annual subscription at some point. My licensing infrastructure can support any direction I want to go in.
Have no illusions, in Fan27 vs Major Hedge Fund the sucker is you. They aren't buying anything from you, they're trying to sell you something. With 99.99% certainty the deal is you bring them clients and get a commission on them, thus be a "partner". The effort is still 100% on you, they're just the intermediary who get a risk free commission on the capital that YOU bring.
Based on what I have been told thus far that does not appear to be the setup. That being said, I share your skepticism. I should know more in less than an hour.
My suggestion is to treat it like you'd treat a trade: you don't want your first few to be so successful that you're blind to the potential issues.
Just got off of the phone with the rep. Basically, they are interested in acquiring IP. From their point of view it makes sense as they have so much money to deploy (Tens of billions) that they are looking for new angles. Obviously I am not going to be rushing to hand over the IP I am currently using but this is something I am going to explore further.
YES! You can ask for enough to retire on up front and a backend, along with a fund to run on your own. Do it do it do it do it. $10 mill up front, fund starting from 1 mill up to $10 mill as long as performance is X where you get 2/20? Tell them you want this baby to grow and want to be the guy growing it. Also make sure that there are ways to take your baby back if they kill it.
But this is just software that hasn't been proven to generate systems which yield a long-term positive expectancy in real-time trading, right? If it's any good, it should be able to run off of a 1 min NQ, YM and/or RTY e-mini futures within the first 2.5 hours of RTH, use 1-3 contract entries all-in / all-out, avg somewhere between 40-60% winners in an avg reward to risk ratio range of 1.3 - 2.2 (net) and provide a very nice passive income. You know, do that for a couple of years. Then sell the IP for the millions you dream of because you have proof. If you can't eat your own dog food, then what are you selling that's of any real value?