
Ask HN: Leaving my startup as technical founder, what is the right approach? - thrw1293
I&#x27;m currently working on a startup as the technical founder. Majority is owned by two investors who invested mostly money and I&#x27;m in for 10% having invested mostly time. I get paid, and in return I also do consulting work for the investor. There are two more minority owners&#x2F;founders who are working on the business side of things and also do unrelated consulting work.<p>We&#x27;ve been working on this for over a year and are close to launch date. I have a single, very junior, developer and we still have a lot of work to do before launch, which is supposed to happen within two months.<p>My biggest problem is that I never tend to agree with my fellow founders and that they promise potential customers and our investors unrealistic timelines and then tell me to make it happen. Also, the investors have from the beginning been unwilling to hire experienced developers. Combined with me being away for other work, this causes the application to be below my standards. Because nobody has spent any time testing the application either, our beta testers are finding some really nasty bugs that shouldn&#x27;t have been there and that will be hard to fix before release.<p>Whenever I try to make this clear, I get a lot of resistance and am faced by people who are unwilling to hear the ugly truth. The stress is affecting me emotionally and physically and I feel that continuing like this, even if we become very profitable, won&#x27;t make me happy in the long term.<p>I have therefore think that I should leave the company and am already shopping around. I don&#x27;t want to leave before the release date, since I feel that I need to finish what I started, but I don&#x27;t think I can keep it up much longer. I&#x27;m also not worried about my stake, since I feel that my happiness and health are more important to me.<p>What do you think of this situation? Is this the right thing to do, or should I, ethically and professionally, inform them so they can find a replacement, before actually accepting a new gig?
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mchannon
Obviously something has to give.

Pretend I'm the guy you'd hand your resignation letter to. Can't we talk this
over? What can I change so that you'll enjoy working here again? Why didn't
you just say so?

I believe most technical people are better-equipped to handle life's
information overload, even though they tend to work for nontechnical people.
The people running your venture rely on abstractions in how they manage
working with you and your workflow. These abstractions work most of the time
(and in fact are just about their only coping mechanism) but here is an
instance where they've failed. I bring this up because your investors are
ignoring you as their coping mechanism, not because they don't respect you but
because this is the only way they know how to deal.

Getting them to pay attention, and positive attention, is the trick. You owe
it to yourself to at least try. I'd look into offering to hire the replacement
yourself and if they agree, focusing full time on that, with two caveats: you
get the budget the job requires, and after 30 days, hire or no hire, you're
done.

There has to be a happy medium between dropping the mic and walking off and
living in dysfunctional SV hell. You can always switch to one of those if your
compromise attempt fails.

