Technical cofounder lost motivation - what now?

In the absence of information from him, do you think that it's worth finishing the product? You could almost certainly find a freelancer to finish it, but that's going to take cash that could be invested elsewhere.

I'd talk with him before contacting a freelancer, though. Unless you're planning on butting him out completely, he could see this as you going behind his back.

If something was going on in his personal like etc. he should be adult and professional enough to inform the people he goes into business with.

Although, he could be working diligently, you could tell if your project is on git, they should be making regular commits to dev branches if they are working.

My advice, follow up with him on status, get a final answer on whether or not he will finish it, and when. If he is adult and reasonable, you guys are good. If he admits he doesn't want to do the work... Sever ties with them, they can not be trusted, how do you know he will not lose interest in the second product? And put you in the same position again.

I understand What AznHisoka is saying about losing interest, this is very true, but when someone commits to doing something, they need to do it, otherwise they are not worth your time. Fucking Jokers, there is an interesting post on HN about this: http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/if-you-want-to-get-rich-sto...

Seriously, if someone working with/for me and they; first stop working on the agreed priorities, then give me some wishy washy non existent time frame to finish it, then tell me to not bother them. I would have my network administrator cut their access off, ask them to step away from the computer(assuming the company owns it), then escort them out of the building.

I would find a freelancer to finish.

Chris

Spoken like a true non-technical cofounder :)

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the the pareto principle applies heavily to software development projects. It's quite likely that the "last 10%" will take much longer than you think.

That said, I've seen this happen quite often from inexperienced developers, and it sounds like you have one on your hands. It's easy for passion and ego to carry a project from a blank slate to a state of mostly-functioning. Hackers usually get a great rush from this stage of the project. It's their code, their architecture, their baby. Sure it's got some rough edges, but the important stuff is done. Their genius has been imbued into it, now comes the drudgery of polishing the edges - oh wait, this sucks. The process of turning something that works into something that's usable or salable is boring. What a letdown. They just solved this intractable problem in O(log n) time, and now you want them to make the interface's corners rounded or add some copy? Bah. They'd rather stare at the wall.

This is a total shot in the dark here, but I've seen it often enough that I'm fairly sure it's the mentality you're dealing with. And I can't say there's an easy solution. It's nearly impossible to motivate hackers who think creating software is all fun, all the time. You either chose a bad cofounder, or just a young one who needs some exposure to real software development projects. either way, I'd recommend a confrontation, followed up by hiring out if things don't change.

In religion, this is usually via miracles. Luckily, you're just dealing with a product, so your job is a little easier. If the product is at a point where play-testing it with potential users is possible, then that would be my immediate course of action. Try to get several individuals or small groups from your target market to attend play-testing events (free food/booze = attendance incentive). For the first event, I'd ask the CTO to facilitate while I observed and alternate for each consecutive session.

The two of you need to examine the possible outcomes beforehand and agree on ways to identify whether it's the product or the facilitator that's producing the results. For instance, should each session he facilitate result in low interest, but each session you facilitate result in positive results, either you're a good salesman or his negativity is infecting others (or both).

It's important to discuss and agree upon how to interpret the results of the play-testing ahead of time so that you are both on the same page. On that same line, you'll want to confirm with him that this is a plan that could potentially change his mind about the product. If so, then ask him what he needs to see in order for that to happen. If not, then find out what, if anything, will alter his perspective.

If he's not open to having a change of heart, then you may want to find a new CTO or move on to the next project.

Move on to product 2. If it happens again, maybe it's a different problem, but it could easily be that he's right about product 1.

This is the most important reason why you need to work on things that you deeply believe in. Unfortunately you only find out late in the game how much you really care about a problem.

In my case I was the developer and I had worked two months past our decision to transfer the company to him, the non-technical founder. When I asked him (probably somewhat aggressively) to give me a few days off to get started after New Year's day he hired another developer. He went silent and hid this from me for three weeks until I found out from the client why nothing was a priority any more.

Eventually that new developer contacted me to ask about the details of my past business relationship with the guy. He was having the same problems with him that I had.

How do I describe the guy in retrospect?

I think he drank a lot and shot his mouth off about being a CEO kickin' back collecting the cheques too much. I did all the fucking work and he collected.

Even though we had been communicating about the issue in my case he took this as a sign to move on. I'm actually pretty glad he did. I was ashamed to let the client be stuck with him and all of his failures but sometimes that's the price you have to pay to keep your sanity when things go bad.

In the time since this has happened I have done a lot of awesome technical projects and he still has a broken webpage with nothing but errors on the front page.

It is hard to find a new developer. I strongly advise you to get introspective for awhile and figure out what you did to piss him off. After you've given him a bit of time to cool down.

Meeting in person or on the phone certainly helps too. Emotional data is lost in emails - best to avoid until you've patched things up.

You might want to make completion of this required before starting project two, as well review from both sides what will be different to help get project two across the goal line to see if there really will be a project two together.