[richardjortega]

A key employee as in he is putting about 1-5 hours of coding per week but we needed a good backend dev and he was the best I knew. He's a college friend and I don't know how best to deal with the situation of him not communicating.

I came to ask this question on HN because I wanted devs opinions, I know non-tech founders get bad reps here - and I understand if you want to attach that bias to me.

I put my life savings into this project, I didn't ask for favors. He makes us feel uncomfortable in our office, and cancels everytime I ask him to come in. We only work on Saturday/weeknights, because I have to have a job to pay for this startup endeavor.

I don't assume we are worth $1 million or anything. I don't mean to take a defense stance, but I thought giving a portion of the founders equity made sense since he was taking a pay cut from normal hours. If he would've worked for free (like we are) he would've got founder's equity, but we still need a frontend dev which we had to pay for because he frankly said "I can do it, but I don't want to".

[brudgers]

An hourly gig which requires one to five hours a week is Chinese water torture - just enough to be a pain in the ass, not enough to make any real money.

And considering it's being done at less than market rate - all it really amounts to is 1-5 hours of being pissed off on the cheap.

Seriously, with that little work, how often do you really need to meet face to face?

And while I understand the economics of moonlighting for a startup, it's a two way street and an unwillingness to take time off from your day job for a meeting over lunch suggests some lack of commitment on your part - i.e. you aren't willing to burn a few hours of leave from your day job, but are willing to ask the programmer to invest more time at below market rate around your convenience.

BTW, unless one person retains a controlling interest, if you are going to provide equity, 3-5% will give a third person equal control of the company to the two founders.

[richardjortega]

Just wanted to say brudgers, thank you so much for the "Chinese water torture" analogy. It made a ton of sense and I'll be meeting with my programmers to get things realigned from an expectation and compensation standpoint.

[coffee]

"...and cancels everytime I ask him to come in. We only work on Saturday/weeknights"

He has a baby, family, and a house. You refer to him as a "kinda cofounder" paying him well below market rate and have provided him no equity after he's put in 100+ hours into the project.

With all of that in mind, you're still complaining that he does not come into the office on weeknights and weekends?

You need to get real with yourself, seriously.