
Ask HN: Advice on unethical cofounder? - throwaway8912
A few years ago, I left a prestigious PhD program to cofound a web startup as cofounder&#x2F;CTO. Only two of us were all-in. I largely built our two products and did marketing, pitching, weekly A&#x2F;B, user testing, etc. I was critical to our growth and VC raise.<p>I drained my savings to work there (we both agreed to a minimal stipend), believing I had about equal equity. However, I was misled. My cofounder held &gt;80% of the company.<p>1) Nine months in, I discovered I was vesting only &lt;0.4%&#x2F;year. The &quot;total shares&quot; in my contract were misleadingly only a fraction of the total issued. I confronted my cofounder, who I had trusted with the legal. He promised to fix it but was insincere and just gave excuses (he idolized Zuckerberg). So, I quit after one year total.<p>2) Months later, he raised VC funding by saying I was just a hired contractor. When VCs saw &#x27;CTO&#x27; on my website, my cofounder demanded that I remove it ... even though I was the CTO.<p>3) He then forgot to repurchase my shares, allowing my equity to vest. He demanded 3&#x2F;4 of it back, trying to leave me &lt;0.4% pre-funding. If I didn&#x27;t agree to a very low valuation, I was told they would &quot;tarnish [my] name in the entrepreneur community&quot;, framing me as a greedy undeserving contractor.<p>Feeling I had to stop them taking away my CTO title, equity, and reputation, I hired a lawyer on contingency and sued. However, by then they were almost bankrupt and were firesaled. My cofounder then started a new company.<p>I am concerned that he continues to badmouth me. In a postmortem, he falsely claims he was the sole founder. In a recent YouTube video, he falsely says I arbitrarily left and warns about &quot;bad people&quot;.<p>On a VC&#x27;s advice, I removed my affiliation entirely. But, this lends him credibility. I am proud of the successful products I built. I want to share why I left my PhD.<p>Should I put this on my resume? How can I respond, when he&#x27;s been lying about me and my role for years? I&#x27;d appreciate any advice. Thanks!
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tptacek
Ignore your former cofounder and get on with your life. Badmouthing you is
going to make him look bad and you look sympathetic. There's nothing you can
really accomplishing by tackling the guy head-on.

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JSeymourATL
> Should I put this on my resume? How can I respond, when he's been lying
> about me and my role for years?

If you truly were the CTO/Co-Founder, other people can vouch for your story
and contribution. Yes-- include that on your CV. It's a strong part of your
portfolio.

As for responding, it's not worth your time & energy to react to him. You must
move on. Focus on the things you can control, helping clients, building
products, and growing another business.

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sharemywin
I would just put self employed consultant and describe the what you did "for
the project" If you're looking for a technical role. Find someone that can be
a reference for the work maybe the VC. Wash over the company you did the work
for. Learn from your experience and find something 10x bigger to work on for
your next project.

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jeffmould
As @sharemywin stated, I would put it on the resume as consultant. Highlight
the products you built and find someone that can attest positively for that.
Then just move on.

Even though the company may have been bankrupt and not had the cash to pay,
the bigger win for you in a lawsuit would have been a NDA and agreement to not
disparage each other. You could have sued for just enough to cover the minimum
contingency with all funds going to lawyer for the protection of having your
name intact. Depending on your funds, you may speak to an attorney again to
make sure there is not a defamation or libel case going on. A simple letter
from an attorney may be enough to scare him into not speaking further about
you.

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jyu
Take this as a hard lesson learned. "Trust, but verify" should be modus
operandi.

You really should distance yourself from this guy, since he's acting
maliciously. Badmouthing him to random people isn't really productive for you
either. As a consolation, his lies will eventually catch up to him because
people who have been burned before will quickly recognize the signs.

Remove your affiliation from the company. You were a freelance consultant for
all the product and technical parts. That's how you should explain the
experience. You left a PhD program to pursue a tempting opportunity of
increased responsibility in a fast paced environment, with potentially large
impact. It didn't turn out as you had hoped. The due diligence in a lot of
these places is pretty bad anyways, so you likely will never be questioned
about personal conflicts at this startup.

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brudgers
That sucks.

None of what you wrote is something to be ashamed of. Describe your work
because that's what matters. The business mechanics of a failed startup don't,
except in so far as the experience has given you insight into poor mechanics
and their effects. That's valuable.

Anyway, the sort of people you probably want to work worth are the sort of
people who will do due diligence. The past will come out in one form or
another and the truth doesn't change and neither will sound character. Good
people get conned into bad business deals. Behaving poorly isn't a substitute
for success on your next endeavor.

Letting go of the past is hard, but I believe it to be worth it.

Good luck.

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mundo
Consider something like, "2013-2015: built a tool that does (whatever) for a
failed startup". Include details about what you built and in what language and
so forth on the resume, but leave out the company name (which no one will have
heard of anyway) and the sordid details about why it went south.

You can supply details in in-person interviews if you want, but you won't need
to. "I built some really cool technology but I found out my cofounder was
playing games with the equity and things fell apart" is probably all that any
prospective employer will need or want to know.

