
Ask HN: How to show business co-founders that I'm actually working hard - stuckFounder
I&#x27;m the tech lead on a startup and I have co-founders who know essentially zero about tech or web businesses. Our CEO sold real estate before this. We are a SAAS for students and companies that connects them for jobs via our website. I&#x27;m the CTO and have worked extremely hard for this company for 6+ months, 80-100&#x2F;week, and am still having to address concerns about being &quot;all in&quot; as a co-founder.<p>My commute is roughly 2 hours and I have a young child at home and am much more productive coding when we aren&#x27;t all together. I seriously think they think I work 10 hours a week when in fact I work 100. I&#x27;m happy to attend however many meetings they want to have. Ironically, I&#x27;ve been the one to suggest 2&#x2F;3 of the weekly meetings we do have. How can I convince them short of sitting right next to them in the office from 9-5 every day that I&#x27;m actually delivering a lot of value to the company?<p>Salient details: We don&#x27;t have much funding, less than 100K, and I&#x27;m a very experienced engineer, so its highly unlikely I can be replaced in a reasonable amount of time. We have had listings for $40K salary&#x2F;2-3% equity for both developers and designers on many sites for months with no takers. Before I arrived, another developer cost them ~$50K and took 4 months to build a website which was unusable according to their standards and generated no sales. I built our website in 2 months and this has lead to $40K in sales and the expectation to hit 6 figures imminently.
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mathattack
IMHO....

You are not being treated and trusted as a co-founder, you're being treated
and trusted as a hired CTO. You can choose to accept this, or not.

If you're going to accept it, you have to be the one to close the gap. In
situation like this, you have to make the time to show plans that demonstrate
what you're doing, and the time required for each. It doesn't need to be a
fancy planning tool - just a Google sheet listing the item, the estimated work
effort, the deadline, and any dependencies. The blocks of time should be less
than 40 hours each - even below 8 if you can get them there. Then be fully
transparent about your progress. When new work gets added, ask what drops. If
you have ad-hoc support tasks, add them to the log. This may add 30 minutes to
each day, but it will save you more than than in aggravation.

If you choose not to accept it, the market is still good for solid engineers.
You can find a job that pays more and allows you to see your kid. (Are you
crazy working 100 hours when you have a baby? The divorce will take away all
your equity! And besides, you'll have to work more on-site if this thing
actually grows.)

~~~
stuckFounder
We have alot of tools to show off my progress (I've mentioned elsewhere in the
thread), none of it seems to resonate. Basically facts don't resonate, and
this seems like a "soft" skill issue.

Because of our baby, i'm often up at crazy hours, the guys joke regularly
about my 4am Slack comments on the business and that I must not sleep at all.
This makes it even more baffling that my commitment is being questioned.

~~~
mathattack
Why stay?

~~~
stuckFounder
I think its a great business opportunity. Happy to put up with endless BS if
it makes alot of money.

~~~
mathattack
For better or worse this sets you up for a lot of pain over life. If it's all
about putting up with BS to make money, go work for an investment bank, hedge
fund or High Frequency Trading firm. :-)

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al2o3cr
As stated elsewhere in this thread, your co-founders seem decidedly immune to
the sort of data that would typically demonstrate "all-in". So here's my
advice: stop guessing what those yoyos want. Get them into a meeting and ask
them flat-out: "what would satisfy you on this point?" If they can't come up
with anything or give you a bullshit answer, QUIT ON THE SPOT.

A month later, if you've provided whatever they said would satisfy them and
they're STILL whining - see previous action.

You shouldn't put up with "I'm mad and I'm not going to tell you why" in
business relationships any more than you should in personal relationships.

Also, keep in mind that you may walk out of that initial meeting without a
job. The sort of nasty assclowns that your co-founders sound like don't
typically appreciate being directly challenged.

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enzoavigo
If the problem is that their time can be measurable in term of ROI (i.e.
sales) then you should definitely try to do the same with your tasks.
Implementing a A/B test ? --> Show lead improvment On-Page optimization ? -->
Show CRO evolution Changing design, implementing new feature ? --> show impact
on activation, retention. And so on. If you work very hard you can also share
a road map to share all the things you tick each week. In your case it seems
you also have more of a human issue. I think to this point you need to prove
them how much money you can bring to the company. I wouldnt go for a
discussion "just to have a discussion" with them. Its far better if you can
prove your added value. good luck !

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linkregister
Based off of your telling of the facts, it appears that if the other founders
were reasonable, they would be able to tell the difference in value between
the previous developer's work and your own.

I don't know you, but I would suggest being more aggressive with asking them
what their contribution is. Objectively, they would have $0 of sales without
your work. Conversely, you may have had $0 of sales without their personal
network. I think this would be a good topic for conversation to set the bar
for establishing the value of each founder's contributions.

~~~
stuckFounder
They say their contribution is making sales. It's a similar issue where, do I
know at, say 2:37pm on a Wednesday, they are talking to a customer? I don't,
but I trust that they are. My issue is getting them to trust that I'm doing
the same.

No amount Slack comment content/timestamps, github commits content/timestamps,
website features that get added seem to be able to clue them in to level of
effort.

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chrisbennet
This seems like a problem that won't get better as time goes forward and needs
to be fixed before you invest more of your life in it.

I would have a face to face with your partners and ask them if they are
actually dissatisfied with your progress or is it just a general frustration
with business progress that is reflected in a sort of "are there yet?"
behavior.

Then again, they may just want you around until they can find someone who they
think can do what they want.

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edoceo
I use Harvest to track time, use this to demonstrate time taken for tasks.

Q: "Why isn't it faster" A: "Quality code takes time" Q: "I think it shouldn't
take that long, these fixes are easy" A: "Then code it yourself"

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bensons
Speak out loud what you are doing, regardless if its a failure or success.

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zepolen
I think you should be asking them what _they_ are doing.

~~~
stuckFounder
They are making sales, on the phone, emailing. Its hard to argue about because
of the few measurables (10 total sales in 3 months). Just like me, they claim
they are pulling their own weight. The problem is I believe them and they
don't believe me.

I can point out involvement on Slack, where I am super engaged to everyone who
posts and in contrast, they respond haphazardly if at all, but this gets
petty.

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tmbeihl
git commits?

~~~
stuckFounder
tried that, told them LOCs too. Doesn't get through to them.

