[anigbrowl]

It's one thing to say 'to be honest Bob, your code is pretty messy...' I'd have no problem with that, indeed as CTO it is part of his job to be honest and say that something should be rewritten or someone with deeper experience brought in to work on part of it if that's what's going to make the product better.

But it's another thing entirely to be telling a founder that they should be leaving. This is saying 'not only are you not good enough to write the production code, you're so awful that you shouldn't even be involved in the company you founded any more,' as if the OP has no possibility of developing him/herself as an owner of the business.