[Phlarp]

>My co-founder has written all of the code

>he holds a majority of shares

>My co-founder has decided he wants to pivot

>My co-founder has said he would be fine with me pursuing the initial idea

>asked my co-founder for rights to use the existing code in my new venture, he refused

Are you sure you are a co-founder? It sounds like you are an employee

[Shindi]

I kinda disagree with this. Depends what percentage of the company OP has. Growth + marketing + content are critical functions despite what the HN crowd thinks.

[simmerup]

Getting the tech sold is one of the hardest parts. A soft skills partner with the right connections is worth their weight in gold

[striking]

Sure, but if they don't have a majority of the company and are being told they can't use the existing code and can't invest the time/resources to reproduce it, does it really matter how critical those other functions are?

[bbulkow]

Op has 0 percent is how I read it. Op has options.

[JamesBarney]

I don't think Op has options. He said no one's shares have vested. You can't have a company ownership only made up of stock options.

I think they both own restricted stock units that are repurchased by the company at nominal values if the employee leaves or violates certain terms.

[tediousdemise]

Likewise. If their co-whatever wrote all the code, they sound like the employee. Bosses, visionaries, and founders typically don't write code, they delegate it to people who do.

Being an "idea person" is not comparable to being an "implementer." Truly exceptional individuals can be both, but I'm willing to wager that this whole venture was OP's idea, thus making him the "one true founder."

Diplomacy would be best for OP, but they shouldn't close the door on exploring their legal options. Especially if they have anything dated or timestamped that clearly establishes them as the originator of the idea or concept.

All in all, this is a valuable lesson for OP and they will walk away from the experience with wisdom to help them in their future ventures. Best of luck, OP.

[chadash]

> Bosses, visionaries, and founders typically don't write code, they delegate it to people who do.

So would Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and Sergey Brin not count as bosses, visionaries or founders?

[tediousdemise]

Proof of counter examples does not invalidate that statement. I could just as easily mention non-technical founders such as Steve Jobs, Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Tim Westergren (Pandora), Aaron Levie (Box), or Sean Rad (Tinder).

And just a reminder for you, per https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Edit: Response to swatcoder since I am rate-limited to 5 posts per day:

I really appreciate your response. Intuition is the perfect way to put it.

I am aware that the burden of proof lies on me, since I made the claim. I am 100% being intellectually lazy by not seeking out data to support my claim. My intuition is just a hypothesis that could very well turn out to be incorrect.

I am wagering that it is correct, just as other people are free to wager that it is incorrect. Downvotes seem to be a harsher way to express that, but your comment is much more constructive.

[swatcoder]

You're being downvoted and debated because you're relying on an intuition that many people here don't share, and there's no quantitative data that could conclusively validate or invalidate the claim you've made.

At any time, there are tens of thousands of startups bubbling through their first 6 months or year of development. The composition of who's an "idea person" and who's an "implementor" will be in pretty much every permutation you can imagine.

Now, it may be that the few startups that grow to conquer the world had a certain composition in their early years, but that really has nothing to do with the company the OP is involved in.

[cortesoft]

Your comment said:

> Likewise. If their co-whatever wrote all the code, they sound like the employee. Bosses, visionaries, and founders typically don't write code, they delegate it to people who do.

I think it is a fair criticism to your comment... the comment made it sound like writing code precludes someone from being a founder/owner. Pointing out examples where founders/owners wrote code shows the statement isn't true. The fact that the other cofounder wrote all the code has no bearing on whether they are a real founder or not.

[tediousdemise]

That's why I used the word "typically." This absolutely does not mean "always," but I didn't think I'd have to clarify that.

[mountain_peak]

Music groups tend to have the same issues; it's rare to find a band like U2 that equally shares credit regardless of who is doing what, which normally builds resentment when one or more members are seen as sole contributors (or 'stars').

It's also equally rare to find a group where each member can split off and form their own successful group (e.g., The Beatles, Genesis). The 'right' answer is that's it's usually somewhere in between. Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger failed at solo careers because they didn't have their friends to tell them that their music stunk. Of course Top 40 has been broken into a formula that primarily benefits music companies, but that's different story.

In the same way, you and your business partner may have relied on each other to achieve a whole that is more than the proverbial sum of the parts. Your partner's new venture may fail without someone such as yourself, since it really is a common blunder by technical people to underestimate the value of sales and other soft skills, and your venture may fail without strong technical backing.

As usual, you can throw money at the problem to see what works, but in my experience when people 'grow up' organically as opposed to in a lab, the resulting bonds are much stronger.

All of that said, my former business partner surreptitiously formed another company and lost interest in our shared venture, which ultimately killed what was a great niche product. I consider myself a fairly average coder, but he was brilliant, and although I could have bought him out and maintained and expanded the codebase, it wasn't fun anymore, so we sold to another company and went our separate ways. Regardless, I had fun and learned a ton along the way, and that's part of the journey.