Ask HN: Cofounder conflict, startup dying or dead for a long time already?
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[Status]: Europe, pre-incorporation, two working on a project for more than a year, reached private beta in May but have no users. Started to look for investors. I am the tech guy, my cofounder is the sales guy (talks a lot, befriends almost anyone, never says no) with some tech knowledge (he thinks he's a coding rockstar but he's not).
[Problems]: he refuses to communicate, doesn't include me in talks with potential investors he gets via his contacts, I have almost no money anymore (he has significantly more and is much more worry-free). I mentioned splitting our codebase and parting our ways - he threatened to talk to lawyers about it (at first, he tried to be friendly then).
[Questions]: What should I do? Is it dead already? Would it be too unethical to e-mail the potential investors myself without a proper introduction? What about splitting the code? Could he use the lawyers somehow? (we have no written agreements whatsoever)
Details
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He pitched our project to investors, befriended them, got hired by them to help them with projects they invested into. I asked to be included in talks with potential investors but was ignored for the most part. He offered to let me help to some of the "VC's" portfolio companies as a side-job. He says that they will invest in us sometime in late September. He wants to raise $1m or more. I think that's insane.
We have a prototype because I pushed for it. I have to fight with him so that he doesn't implement yet another feature or doesn't reimplement something for which we could easily get an existing library.
I told him many times I am not satisfied with our execution and our mutual communication.
I guess it's better to end it now? I am afraid that after incorporation and possible funding there would be only more problems.
Codebase: we worked on quite clearly separated modules, I designed the overall architecture.
Thanks for reading and comments.
27 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 47.9 ms ] thread2. Another reg flag for me is if there is one thing I hate more than anything is people who purposely lie about what they know or what they can do for no apparent reason. If he can't code, he can't code. Simple as that.
I made the mistake to work solely on this project and to rely on my savings. Only lately I've started to look around for project to pay the bills and I see fulltime employment as probably the only currently viable way to go (I finished my CS PhD (SemanticWeb) about a year ago and although I do have coding skills and industry experience, it's not enough, I feel I need more experience to do consulting and more networking, etc. to do freelancing).
2) If you can do the technical bits then do it by yourself. Then once you have it all finished you will be the one the VCs will be chasing.
3) I don't know anybody who does consulting/freelancing in the IT industry. You are either a permanent employee or a contractor. You want to get a contracting position where you are doing something low level e.g. fixing bugs or testing websites. That way you will earn tonnes of money and not be stressed from work. Anybody can get into contracting.
2) I will probably try. It's not a technological project though. It's much more Twitter-like rather than nuclear-fusion-like. So the business and execution side is really important. It involves non-trivial technology but it's no rocket science. A similar idea was very popular at a last year's TechCrunch disrupt and I see that the team is still pursuing it...
3) Interesting, that's new for me. But thinking about it actually I probably also know only people who are contracting.. In any case, I have some interesting potential offers that would allow me to learn stuff that I probably wouldn't be able to as a contractor, at least not easily.
Has your code formally been added as an asset that the company owns? If not, you may still technically own all the rights to the code, and be able to do what you want.
Second, what is the potential of the product, and what is your passion like? Do you want to take this company over and make it a success, or would you rather just move on? Certainly easier to just move on, but finding another business cofounder is not a super difficult task (there are hundreds of people who would love to do it). Or since you are out of money, are you considering getting a part time job instead?
It seems odd that your cofounder 'got hired' while he was supposedly working as a 'cofounder' - at this point it should have been a flag that hes not committed and you should have cut him loose. Next time you are sacrificing a lot of time and money, make sure you have the control to fire someone if they aren't working out.
1. Is your team making progress? Because startups have fewer people and resources, your founding team needs to be effective producers.
2. Do you guys trust each other to have your back? An example they gave was how two cofounders were arguing over equity. Instead of arguing that the other guy should get less equity, they were doing the opposite and insisting that the other guy should be getting more. And from that, they knew there was some underlying trust that drove their decisions.
Seems like this guy is breaking that trust repeatedly by doing weird stuff. And continues to do it after your confrontation. This sounds like a situation that will only get worse.
And yeah, I have difficulties with trust maybe in general but I believe I've done my part well enough in this case.
Sorry, but it appears to me to be that he wants as most coding done as possible before he invariable cuts you out of the deal. Going public would mean that you have a kind of partnership and are therefore entitled to equity. By keeping it private, or in a prototype phase, he can keep the number of people who are aware you are working together to a minimum.
I don't know what happened but I know the "awesome new guy" seems to be actually ok and very reasonable. He just fails to see the real point of the project and I think my cofounder is swayed too easily by unfounded opinions of people of a seemingly high status.
I actually don't think my cofounder is that much evil but he is out of touch with reality and refuses to engage in any communication that points it out. And yes, he's protecting his contacts quite hard and quite explicitly at times. Also tries to conceal the real state of things - I found out he got hired by the VC company only indirectly and after asking him a lot.
Then start learning abt VC, meeting people, and cutting deals by yourself. It's not that hard.
What does he need a lawyer for? You have no agreements, no money, no incorporation.
Maybe it was just his rushed reaction. He probably thinks I owe him continuing cooperation after we've been this long in it together. Maybe he would attack if I took my code and used it. Who knows.
Either way get your house in order just in case. Make sure commit logs and history etc is up to date and backed up. Use Github or somewhere similar under YOUR name. Make sure your partner doesn't know the password.
he wants to have in written everything you say so he has stuff on you. in other words, he doesn't trust you. otherwise, a follow up email with notes about phonecall agreements would be more than enough.