Ask HN: Cofounder conflict, startup dying or dead for a long time already?

[csfl]

Short version

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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.

[bhousel]

Sorry to say it sounds like it's basically over. You can't fix things if you are cofounders that don't communicate or respect each other. Get out as quickly and painlessly as you can.

What does he need a lawyer for? You have no agreements, no money, no incorporation.

[csfl]

> 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.

[taligent]

But what happens with copyright ? In a legal fight surely both parties will have ownership to parts of the code.

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.

[trueneverland]

1. If you already addressed this with him and he's not communicating, its over already. And the way he's acting is not going to be good moving forward. Why is he working for the VCs?

2. 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.

[csfl]

1. He's working for the VCs (that's what he calls them I think it's rather a beginning startup accelerator) because they promised to invest in us if he helps them. 2. Well, he's sincerely convinced of his skills. That's part of the problem.

[trueneverland]

From personal experience, all I can say is absolute trust and strong communication from your cofounder is absolute. You guys lack that and having to address it at all is already a red flag in my book. Given that you brought it up and things still haven't improved, its time to shut down or talk to an attorney to sign him off. Clearly this will not go well in the long run if things don't change.

[csfl]

Yes. That's what I am afraid of. Thanks for commenting

[jyu]

Sounds like you got a bad cofounder. I was listening to a VentureHacks talk about finding a cofounder, and they had two main points:

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.

[csfl]

We definitely could have been more efficient, we had a lot to learn. But the biggest problem I see is that we were still quite efficient producing features but not so much validating assumptions and developing customers/users (my stance: "let's go test it now and perhaps make some mistakes publicly but get feedback early", his stance: "it won't work unless we finish feature X, we have to change our business model and implement feature Y to target customers more likely to pay because this awesome guy from this large company I just met says they would pay", my reaction: "ok, sounds reasonable, let's try it." and it of course lead nowhere :) the awesome new guy probably changed his opinion, etc.).

And yeah, I have difficulties with trust maybe in general but I believe I've done my part well enough in this case.

[smashing]

Who says anyone changed their opinion?

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.

[csfl]

> Who says anyone changed their opinion?

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.

[bazookaBen]

what kind of a co-founder "protects" his contacts from a fellow co-founder? Dysfunctional relationship at best. Cut him off, take everything you've built and go somewhere else. He's got nothing legal against you.

Then start learning abt VC, meeting people, and cutting deals by yourself. It's not that hard.

[smashing]

Whatever happens I hope things work out for you.

[csfl]

Thank you

[inuhj]

Failure to communicate is reason enough to call it quits. I'm having the same problem with my cofounder. He refuses to work via phone calls--it has to be email only. I'm in the process of withdrawing my financial investment from the company and leaving to start my own version of the same company.

[zalew]

> I'm having the same problem with my cofounder. He refuses to work via phone calls--it has to be email only.

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.

[EarlofGrey]

I cant and wont do phone calls for many things. Everything has to be by email or text like skype, ect. Nothing about trust and purely about documenation so it can be referenced word for word later.

[loceng]

What is the agreement on equity, etc? Is it concrete? What are the chances he will remove you from the company? What is it worth to you to go after him if he does that? Is he just leading you on so you keep doing work on a prototype or project he may just abandon - though expect ownership from still? What are your overall skills? Are you working on other projects to pay bills? Do you have other ideas you'd enjoy working on? I could ask more questions though the issue really is the lack of transparency. It doesn't sound like he's explaining anything to you. Him getting hired by VCs sounds a bit like conflict of interest, though it could be innocent, especially if he has said that he's still expecting to raise $X amount.

[csfl]

The agreement on equity is 50/50. It's originally my idea and the stuff that's technically interesting in it is mostly my work. I very much doubt he could pull it off just by himself (technically). I'd have more technical chances of success but less business (which is why I chose to work with him).

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).

[negrit]

Man, if it's your idea and if you've done most of the work, get some balls and fight for your project !

[taligent]

1) Is this agreement verbal or on paper ?

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.

[csfl]

1) It's only verbal

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.

[jamesjguthrie]

Fighting this much with a business partner, in my experience, doesn't end well. My best friend and I opened a PC repair shop when we were 20. After 6 months we were at each other's throats. The business stagnated and ultimately failed. Luckily it failed before we had completely ruined our friendship.

[csfl]

I've heard similar stories before, many ended much worse. Now I can appreciate much better that they really do happen :)

[pizza]

The investors should know what's going on, even if just between you and them.