
Ask HN: Is it okay to disclose your co-founder's incompetence to your employer? - askhobbit
Hi fellow HN guys,<p>A few months ago I started a company with a person (let&#x27;s call him X) who was recommended by a good friend. X talked very passionately about the domain. I&#x27;m a tech guy and I have very little exposure to the domain. I thought that with X&#x27;s domain knowledge and with my tech expertise we could form a synergy that would drive the company big.<p>We brainstormed a few ideas and decided to quickly build prototypes and iterate over our ideas. But when it came to execution, X just wouldn&#x27;t do anything - wouldn&#x27;t talk to clients, wouldn&#x27;t talk to investors, wouldn&#x27;t discuss strategy with me, wouldn&#x27;t come up with a product plan, wouldn&#x27;t discuss features, wouldn&#x27;t do anything at all. X always made excuses of being sick or having family emergencies.<p>I had to align X&#x27;s energy into building the company several times. After a point I realised that X was not motivated in running the company at all. When I threatened him with the idea of leaving the company, he didn&#x27;t confront me. Rather, he accepted that he was not motivated and he came up with an excuse of why he wasn&#x27;t able to perform.<p>Last month we shut down the company. Now I&#x27;m back to searching for jobs again. I&#x27;d like to know if it&#x27;s okay to speak about your co-founder&#x27;s incompetence to a prospective employer? I&#x27;d like to be honest with my prospective employer. I&#x27;m also willing to accept my mistake of not being able to judge a person&#x27;s competency. But then again I also know that badmouthing can get me in trouble.<p>How do I position myself when someone asks me: &quot;why did you close your previous company?&quot;<p>PS: I&#x27;ve parted ways with all my previous employers on an extremely good note.
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cimmanom
It’s perfectly reasonable to say something like “after working together for a
few months we determined that we didn’t really ‘click’ as a founding team and
decided to go our separate ways.”

That’s something that happens all the time, and you won’t be judged for it by
any reasonably astute observer - especially for a project that only lasted a
few months.

Depending on how far along you got on the project, another business savvy
answer might be that the proof of concept provided the information you needed
to determine that the business wasn’t going to be viable (or wasn’t going to
be able to produce the returns you were hoping for), so you agreed not to
invest further in a losing proposition.

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choot
How about:

"We split the tasks among ourselves keeping in mind our strengths, but
unfortunately the co-founder failed to deliver on his share of the tasks,
according to him he was affected by x,y,z. (His reasons)

Then we failed to move from there and ended up shutting down the business."

Let the employer judge whether it's his incompetence or real problems. Why
pass a judgement needlessly? Deliver facts.

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sharemywin
If it's for a technical position just talk about the prototype and if they ask
just say your partner was focused on the business side and wasn't able to get
enough initial customers to keep it going.

