
Ask HN: Co-founder performance issues. How to not loose everything? - toBeDeleted
Hi HN,<p>I need some much needed guidance in dealing with cofounder relationship problem.<p>Context: Both me and my co-founder (CEO)(equal owners of the company) come from very good educational and professional backgrounds and have worked in the valley before we started the company together. I manage the tech side. The team was a marriage of complimentary skillsets but we had not worked together or knew each other much before we started the company. Given our backgrounds, we were able to raise a decent angel round, enough to quit jobs and work on our idea.<p>Problem at hand: In the last couple of months, the team has been extremely demotivated and our earliest couple of employees left us citing issues with management. Almost all the issues are related to my cofounder&#x27;s attitude. If I had to summarize them<p>1. Extremely authoritative and a lack of inclination to learn&#x2F;understand - This is very demotivating for the tech team<p>2. Non performance, Lying and erosion of credibility - We hardly get any customer interactions and employees often wonder what my cofounder is doing and some have directly asked me. However, whenever questioned either we get false confirmation of work that never happens or get asked to just wait and be patient as things take time.<p>3. Stingy - My cofounder is penny wise pound foolish. This has led to massive compromises in the hiring as well as internal team frustration due to unnecessary cost optimization<p>Independent of all this, I very much believe in what we are building and hence want to take this to a good logical end at least. We also have some very good investors who have been extremely supportive (to the extent that they hardly question us of our progress, and it kinda becomes tough for me to reach out to them with these problems). I thus want to do justice to them and the employees who have worked with me while also, getting basic reward for all the efforts and sacrifices I and my cofounder have put in the last 18 months.
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wmf
Trigger the shotgun clause.

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CuteBrowser
I have no experience but start documenting everything to begin with. Then talk
to the investors. And then to him too- hard for him to try and refute
everything.

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toBeDeleted
Fair enough. But since, there has been no priced round, dont think investors
have any voting rights in the company either. Can they still effect any change
in the company then?

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CuteBrowser
Go and talk anyway but without voting rights they can't affect change. They
can however tell you the best course of action to save their investment if you
can assure that it will happen. Show them that their effort will not go waste
and they can try.

