[aqui_c]

I left the startup I co-founded 4+ years ago. The entire process was an emotional roller-coaster.

My co-founders (and business partners), who are the majority shareholder, made it abundantly clear that the company was 'theirs'. They made decisions behind my back although I am the only founder working full time on the company. I felt alienated, undervalued, and frankly quite miserable for a while.

At some point, when this behavioral pattern started affecting other team members and I realized I had nothing left to do, it was time for me to move on.

I tried to write down how I felt, keeping it politically correct.

[opmelogy]

That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear it.

I tried twice to start software companies with people I knew. Both times the other party didn't invest nearly as much time as I was putting in. And in both cases I figured this out fairly early and started to match their drive and investment into what we were building. As you'd expect, the companies folded within a few months.

What's interesting to me is that one of the guys I'm still friends with and the story he tells for why it folded is very different from my view. To him, it was me backing away and causing it fail and from my experience, it was I switched from working on it 7 days a week to working on it two weekends a month. I don't think he's being mean spirited here - I think he is just that clueless about what was going on.

My current start-up was founded differently. My partner and I did multiple smaller projects together to see if we could work together. We also went through a deep dive on "past traumas" (key life defining moments for us) along with exercises on what sorts of values we want to inject into the company (ranging from how we handle feedback, to how we respond to failure, to what our employees would say about us and the company 2 years in the future, etc.). This allowed us to understand where we are coming from, figure out if our values aligned, and help lean on each other when things got hard/stressful. It really does make navigating building something together. Basically "wtf?!" reactions can easily be replaced with "uh oh, is everything okay?"

[CMCDragonkai]

I've found that people live in their own delusions. You have to learn how about how a person perceives the world around them and realise that there is no objective truth but simply what they believe.

Then you can still work with them as long as their incentives are aligned with what you need them to do. That is the intended behaviour fits within their perception.

[taneq]

It sounds to me like the two perceptions of your previous startup are pretty well aligned. You felt your partner was coasting so you checked out. They felt that you checked out. Maybe they were doing more than you realised, or maybe they were just freeloading.

[opmelogy]

> You felt your partner was coasting so you checked out. They felt that you checked out.

Yes that's basically what happened. I get that this is their perception, but find it funny how much self-awareness is lacking as to what they contributed. I'm still friends with them and still like them, but they are firmly in the camp of "nope" moving forward.

> Maybe they were doing more than you realised, or maybe they were just freeloading.

I'd love for it to be the case where they were doing more than I realized, but considering we're all engineers and I'm the only one working on designs and implementing code...and driving all the discussions...you get the idea.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

I recently had a similar experience. There was no bad blood in the departure, but what I thought would be more of two people with supplementary experiences coming together ended up feeling more like an employer/employee type of relationship. Like many co-partnerships that end up splitting, one person felt like they were doing all the heavy lifting for too long and that engenders a bit of resentment.

[neilv]

Based on this description, I had to double-check that you weren't a particular founder I know.

FWIW, it's not just you; these seem to be non-rare things to happen.

One can guess at the likelihood that egos, differing understandings/philosophies, or just plain greed are likely to become a showstopper problem.

But, unless it's obvious that the showstopper problems are likely (some people telegraph warning signs heavily), if one is ever going to do anything, one has to guess and sometimes take a leap of faith.

[ilamont]

Cofounder conflict is one of the biggest untold stories of the startup world. Happens all the time, but no one wants to admit the scale of the problem or get into their own specifics.

[nmfisher]

I'm grateful that I experienced "cofounder mismatch" at a young age (23) and when the stakes were small. Basically, building an app with two friends when one wasn't committed at all, and the other was about half as committed as I was. Ended exactly how you'd expect (though thankfully, we're all still friends).

This is the chief reason why I'm the sole founder of my current venture. I'm not militant about avoiding cofounders (and I have actually scouted), but it would have to be a unicorn who is exceptionally good at the exact things that I'm bad at. Even then, I'd only do it after dipping my toe in over a number of months with smaller projects to gauge their personality and level of commitment.

[ilamont]

I too am glad my first cofounder flaked on me when I was just getting started. Learned a bitter lesson that I will never forget.

This is also why I went the solo route for #2 (ignoring the investor/"expert" insistence on multiple founders). 10+ years later my bootstrapped (non-tech) company is profitable, has a strong dedicated base of customers, and allows me a degree of flexibility in my company direction and life that I would not have otherwise.

[aqui_c]

Indeed, I've found some others in similar situations. Definitely a learning experience on which to build.

[psyklic]

FWIW something similar happened to me as well, dropped out of school to go full-time as a co-founder. We put in writing several times that we held similar numbers of shares, yet nine months in discovered my business partner awarded himself nearly all of the equity. When I left due to this, the company completely lost velocity for over a year, which I suspect might happen due to your departure too.

The betrayal weighed on me for years, especially since I eventually had to involve lawyers. I think the most important thing you can do is find new opportunities to occupy your mind so you can learn from it but not dwell on it.

[taberiand]

Sounds like something that should have involved lawyers right from the "put in writing" stage.

[psyklic]

We had well-known lawyers from the beginning who deferred payment until we raised. The problem was that we delegated all legal to my business partner. When we traded the written equity split, he didn't disclose that he held (estimated) >80x more shares than what was listed next to his name.

[DelightOne]

How can that happen and how do you avoid that happen without ones' own knowledge?

[psyklic]

It happened because it all seemed legit -- we were both going all-in, we had the exact share split in writing, did reverse vesting, received founders stock, etc. I even noticed that the shares seemed to exceed the total, and my business partner sent minor corrections, explicitly affirming I had the most shares of anyone. You have to trust your business partner at some point.

Legally speaking, my business partner secretly created a small equity pool for all co-founders excluding himself. There was no reason to believe we were in a pool, since co-founders split the entire pot.

This caused the percentages to seem about as expected. To the best of my knowledge, there were only two tells in the written contract:

1. The total shares were listed as ~1M, which at the time sounded perfectly logical. Unbeknownst to me, this was only the shares in the pool. I now know that startups often first allocate 10M shares, apparently for psychological reasons.

2. The vesting documents were titled an "equity incentive plan". At the time, this made perfect sense to me; the entire reason for us all reverse vesting is to provide incentive to stay. However, I now know this specific phrase often indicates an equity pool.

I recommend all founders speak with the lawyers jointly, instead of delegating it to the CEO. Ideally, also pass the contract by a startup-savvy lawyer. (In our case, one of our co-founders showed a CPA who said everything looked normal.) I recommend not signing until the exact cap table with zero errors is jointly signed. (As I mentioned above, I pointed out a mistake to my business partner then signed after he replied I had the most equity.) I also recommend contacting your business partner's references if you haven't worked together, especially since they will be providing those to VCs later.

[DropInIn]

The way you explain it makes it sound like explicit fraud which is completely actionable....

Or were all communications referenced verbal rather than written?

[jlokier]

> I now know that startups often first allocate 10M shares, apparently for psychological reasons.

Heh. My company has exactly one (1) share, probably also for psychological reasons.

[computomatic]

The short answer is always, always have your own lawyer review these things.

The lawyer preparing the corporate documents is the corporation’s lawyer. That person cannot also be your lawyer. Every founder should have their own lawyer review and advise them on the paperwork.

[quickthrower2]

Amazing people think that’ll work. Might be OK if the person doing that is the majority of the drive behind the business. But if not of course it will collapse.

[aledalgrande]

How can people be so sketchy and still sleep at night is out of my mind

[calmlynarczyk]

Psychopathy is a hell of a drug

[parineum]

And incredibly rare!

[liquidpele]

They use their stolen money to buy very nice mattresses.

[hinkley]

"White noise machine" is the answer from the joke.

[David_SQOX]

Life is too short to stay miserable, OP. You launched a startup that has lasted 4+ years, that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment. I've had several startups fail over 20 years and each was a it's own heavy learning experience.

You've gotten much further than most ever will. Good work aqui!

[aqui_c]

Thanks! I try to stay as positive as possible, and looking forward to the new opportunities that'll appear.

[j45]

There is always what’s next for people who don’t finish learning and experimenting .. and consequently peaking.

Keep moving, Inward onward and upward

[JimtheCoder]

It is probably no consolation for you, but now your former co founders have "their" own company that's four years old, still has no customers or an MVP, and apparently no one really working full time on the company...

Seems like they get what they deserve...

[aqui_c]

Well, there's one product, one MVP, and a team of 8 full-timers... My biggest concern was the people, trying to find a situation that somewhat guarantees their short-term future and they can then go from there..

[JonChesterfield]

If the full time people don't identify a founder leaving as an existential threat and look for their way out that's on them.

[quickthrower2]

Also it is a job. People can get fired (impacted I mean) at any company. They weight it all up like any other job. Company is family never really existed.

[hinkley]

You can keep people off balance enough that they don't have time to think about finding another job. That's what a 60+ hour work week is for, after all.

You work and sleep.

[glitchc]

Honestly not your problem at this point.

[ab-dm]

I had to check I hadn't written this in my sleep overnight. You're describing a very similar experience to mine, and I'm honestly shocked at how common this experience seems to be.

2 weeks ago I signed the contract to "sell" my shares for my startup of ~7 years. I'm just now starting to realize how utterly miserable I had been for a long, long time.

It's a very difficult decision, but it gets easier every day (on average, some days can still be tough).

It's only going to get better.

[treprinum]

By leaving you gave your co-founders what they wanted and they probably celebrated that their nasty behavior led to the expected outcome. Sometimes it's worth fighting and not avoiding conflicts.

[whack]

Sorry to hear that. How did you end up in a situation where you're the only founder working full-time but the other founders have more equity and control over the business?

[taneq]

Maybe they funded it?

[hinkley]

Why is it always that the most practiced storyteller on a project seems to tell themselves the story that their contributions matter head and shoulder over those of everyone else combined? "We wouldn't be here if I hadn't pushed thus and such."

At some point they forget that the value others brought to the table was a big part of what made them participate in the first place. Now they devalue all of those other players.

[princevegeta89]

Sorry to hear. Reminds me of the "cofounder" that I had who wanted a sizeable equity but ended up bringing nothing technical or managerial to the table. The startup failed after 1 year, and we just wrapped everything up. I was secretly glad it failed.

It also reminds me to only work on startups with someone who you really know and trust, like a best friend.

[barelyauser]

Great way to ruin a great friendship.

[princevegeta89]

I don't necessarily agree with this statement - if I know my best friend inside out we will have a super large room for flexibility, and that often prevents conflicts.

[barelyauser]

My practical experience is that there is no way of separating the two things, friendship and co-worker. And I believe there is more to lose than to gain in this arrangement. When a problem comes up I rather not argue with my friend (sorry, co-worker) about how my position is right and his is wrong.

[princevegeta89]

Thanks for the insight. In that case, I'm wondering what would your preferred network be, if you're looking for a cofounder?

[rendaw]

How'd you end up as a minority shareholder? I feel like this is a fairly common story, and I'd be interested to know if there are signs/how to avoid it.