[almostarockstar]

1. You are not a founder. A founder is there at the beginning...when the company is founded. You are a business partner. It's a very different dynamic. The business is a machine in your eyes and a child in your partner's.

2. Are you sure your partner actually wants the business the grow? Sounds to me like you are treating a lifestyle business like a corporation. You are swimming against the tide.

I would hire somebody else who can deliver in the way you expect them to and let your partner keep doing what he's doing at his pace. Build the business around him.

Or...you know...stop wasting your time trying to scale a lifestyle business.

[tseoeo]

1. Technically - yes. Although if we go to discuss this further we would go over this technicality. 2. That was clearly stated and discussed in depth in the beginning when I was joining. And yes - I am treating a lifestyle business as a growth potential business and that's what was clearly agreed from the beginning. He is having some difficulties with transitioning from this and thus I am trying to help him, not break him.

[travisjungroth]

On point 1, just expect to have this conversation pretty frequently. It is not a technicality. If you tell people that you are a startup founder and it comes out that you're recently taking on partner level responsibilities of a 7 year old company, they're very likely to see these things as in conflict. You said you've "always helped a bit". If by "always" you mean since year 0, that's at least a little more compelling.

[tseoeo]

It is something that I have on top of my mind but even for the technicalities: - we are moving things to a brand new company now - there will be a new brand soon, old one would be left just for the domestic market (a very small percentage of expected sales) - working on new products, 80% of old ones would gradually be stopped

So I guess we are joining forces to create something new but in a step by step way so we can make bootstrapping it easier.

[travisjungroth]

Oh yeah, that's very different. That sounds a lot like founding and I didn't get it from your original post. May help to talk in terms of "refounding".