TL;DR: I work in online advertising for a company that runs pay per performance marketing (cost per acquisition) but it is limited by advertising budget. I want to start my own company on the side to make deals on a revenue share basis with my employer, essentially absorbing some risk for my employer. This sounds like a conflict of interest to me but my boss does not seem to think it's a bad idea. Is this something I should even be considering? What legal repercussions should I watch out for? Any advice on how I could best propose and execute this with my employer would be appreciated. More details: My job at my employer is to recruit users in to a free community where they can earn cash. My work group are limited by advertising budget despite obviously profitable metrics. There are many international markets we have where the budget is $0, where demand for users internally is fair and advertising supply is available. We have not succeeded in having additional budget approved. To get around this in some cases we ask publishers to run on revenue sharing instead, which requires no budget at my employer and pays the publishers over several months after the fact. However, many publishers won't want to absorb the risk that it may not pay out and refuse to work on that model. This is a core responsibility of my employment there, to find and make these deals. In response to this I suggested to my boss that I start my own outside company, invest my money to pay the publishers, and enter in to a revenue sharing agreement with my current employer (Essentially I pay the publishers for advertising up front, they send supply, and my employer pays me a percent of their revenue from this supply over the next few months of its activity). This could be worth a lot of money to me. To my surprise he did not think it was a bad idea and does not necessarily see a conflict of interest. My employment contract includes a non-compete and restrictions on "Moonlighting" so I would prefer to do this with full consent from my employer. Any advice on how I should proceed would be appreciated. Please let me know if I should explain any details further.
You and your employer may enter into a written contract which amends your current contract to allow for your activities.
Of course he thinks it is a good idea. You are taking all the financial risk by fronting the money. It may be legal but I would really give some thought as to whether it is a good business idea.