How I feel quitting my own startup
aquiles.meI left the startup I co-founded 4+ years ago. The entire process was an emotional roller-coaster.
My co-founders (and business partners), who are the majority shareholder, made it abundantly clear that the company was 'theirs'. They made decisions behind my back although I am the only founder working full time on the company. I felt alienated, undervalued, and frankly quite miserable for a while.
At some point, when this behavioral pattern started affecting other team members and I realized I had nothing left to do, it was time for me to move on.
I tried to write down how I felt, keeping it politically correct.
That really sucks. I'm sorry to hear it.
I tried twice to start software companies with people I knew. Both times the other party didn't invest nearly as much time as I was putting in. And in both cases I figured this out fairly early and started to match their drive and investment into what we were building. As you'd expect, the companies folded within a few months.
What's interesting to me is that one of the guys I'm still friends with and the story he tells for why it folded is very different from my view. To him, it was me backing away and causing it fail and from my experience, it was I switched from working on it 7 days a week to working on it two weekends a month. I don't think he's being mean spirited here - I think he is just that clueless about what was going on.
My current start-up was founded differently. My partner and I did multiple smaller projects together to see if we could work together. We also went through a deep dive on "past traumas" (key life defining moments for us) along with exercises on what sorts of values we want to inject into the company (ranging from how we handle feedback, to how we respond to failure, to what our employees would say about us and the company 2 years in the future, etc.). This allowed us to understand where we are coming from, figure out if our values aligned, and help lean on each other when things got hard/stressful. It really does make navigating building something together. Basically "wtf?!" reactions can easily be replaced with "uh oh, is everything okay?"
I've found that people live in their own delusions. You have to learn how about how a person perceives the world around them and realise that there is no objective truth but simply what they believe.
Then you can still work with them as long as their incentives are aligned with what you need them to do. That is the intended behaviour fits within their perception.
It sounds to me like the two perceptions of your previous startup are pretty well aligned. You felt your partner was coasting so you checked out. They felt that you checked out. Maybe they were doing more than you realised, or maybe they were just freeloading.
> You felt your partner was coasting so you checked out. They felt that you checked out.
Yes that's basically what happened. I get that this is their perception, but find it funny how much self-awareness is lacking as to what they contributed. I'm still friends with them and still like them, but they are firmly in the camp of "nope" moving forward.
> Maybe they were doing more than you realised, or maybe they were just freeloading.
I'd love for it to be the case where they were doing more than I realized, but considering we're all engineers and I'm the only one working on designs and implementing code...and driving all the discussions...you get the idea.
I recently had a similar experience. There was no bad blood in the departure, but what I thought would be more of two people with supplementary experiences coming together ended up feeling more like an employer/employee type of relationship. Like many co-partnerships that end up splitting, one person felt like they were doing all the heavy lifting for too long and that engenders a bit of resentment.
Based on this description, I had to double-check that you weren't a particular founder I know.
FWIW, it's not just you; these seem to be non-rare things to happen.
One can guess at the likelihood that egos, differing understandings/philosophies, or just plain greed are likely to become a showstopper problem.
But, unless it's obvious that the showstopper problems are likely (some people telegraph warning signs heavily), if one is ever going to do anything, one has to guess and sometimes take a leap of faith.
Cofounder conflict is one of the biggest untold stories of the startup world. Happens all the time, but no one wants to admit the scale of the problem or get into their own specifics.
I'm grateful that I experienced "cofounder mismatch" at a young age (23) and when the stakes were small. Basically, building an app with two friends when one wasn't committed at all, and the other was about half as committed as I was. Ended exactly how you'd expect (though thankfully, we're all still friends).
This is the chief reason why I'm the sole founder of my current venture. I'm not militant about avoiding cofounders (and I have actually scouted), but it would have to be a unicorn who is exceptionally good at the exact things that I'm bad at. Even then, I'd only do it after dipping my toe in over a number of months with smaller projects to gauge their personality and level of commitment.
I too am glad my first cofounder flaked on me when I was just getting started. Learned a bitter lesson that I will never forget.
This is also why I went the solo route for #2 (ignoring the investor/"expert" insistence on multiple founders). 10+ years later my bootstrapped (non-tech) company is profitable, has a strong dedicated base of customers, and allows me a degree of flexibility in my company direction and life that I would not have otherwise.
Indeed, I've found some others in similar situations. Definitely a learning experience on which to build.
FWIW something similar happened to me as well, dropped out of school to go full-time as a co-founder. We put in writing several times that we held similar numbers of shares, yet nine months in discovered my business partner awarded himself nearly all of the equity. When I left due to this, the company completely lost velocity for over a year, which I suspect might happen due to your departure too.
The betrayal weighed on me for years, especially since I eventually had to involve lawyers. I think the most important thing you can do is find new opportunities to occupy your mind so you can learn from it but not dwell on it.
Sounds like something that should have involved lawyers right from the "put in writing" stage.
We had well-known lawyers from the beginning who deferred payment until we raised. The problem was that we delegated all legal to my business partner. When we traded the written equity split, he didn't disclose that he held (estimated) >80x more shares than what was listed next to his name.
How can that happen and how do you avoid that happen without ones' own knowledge?
It happened because it all seemed legit -- we were both going all-in, we had the exact share split in writing, did reverse vesting, received founders stock, etc. I even noticed that the shares seemed to exceed the total, and my business partner sent minor corrections, explicitly affirming I had the most shares of anyone. You have to trust your business partner at some point.
Legally speaking, my business partner secretly created a small equity pool for all co-founders excluding himself. There was no reason to believe we were in a pool, since co-founders split the entire pot.
This caused the percentages to seem about as expected. To the best of my knowledge, there were only two tells in the written contract:
1. The total shares were listed as ~1M, which at the time sounded perfectly logical. Unbeknownst to me, this was only the shares in the pool. I now know that startups often first allocate 10M shares, apparently for psychological reasons.
2. The vesting documents were titled an "equity incentive plan". At the time, this made perfect sense to me; the entire reason for us all reverse vesting is to provide incentive to stay. However, I now know this specific phrase often indicates an equity pool.
I recommend all founders speak with the lawyers jointly, instead of delegating it to the CEO. Ideally, also pass the contract by a startup-savvy lawyer. (In our case, one of our co-founders showed a CPA who said everything looked normal.) I recommend not signing until the exact cap table with zero errors is jointly signed. (As I mentioned above, I pointed out a mistake to my business partner then signed after he replied I had the most equity.) I also recommend contacting your business partner's references if you haven't worked together, especially since they will be providing those to VCs later.
The way you explain it makes it sound like explicit fraud which is completely actionable....
Or were all communications referenced verbal rather than written?
Every communication referenced was in writing. The equity was only one of many very unsavory things that happened, and I eventually had to hire a lawyer. He suggested we sue and took the case on contingency, but by that time the company had minimal assets.
So, since the a hole engaged in fraud the veil was broken, no?
That makes them personally liable iiuc...
Perhaps I was too nice. Most VCs recommended dropping/settling the case, since
(1) it was only a year and many startups go bust anyway;
(2) the best people spend their energy on the future, not the past; and
(3) regardless of the facts, many people are wary of working with someone who sued his business partner personally. (As Trump shows, portraying yourself as the victim of a baseless lawsuit often elicits sympathy, while justifying bringing a lawsuit often requires a careful factual explanation.)
I'd say you were too nice.
Even if it didn't help you personally, having pursued it more vigorously would have been a public good as it would ensure a documented record of the misdeed which future prospects could use to avoid the bad actor, as well as discouraging new bad actors from developing as they would see the loss rate as exceeding the win rate etc.
As long as everyone keeps letting shit go, letting bad actors off without penalty just because it would take more effort than it was personally worth, then we will continue to see these behaviors manifested and likely at an increasing rate as it proves it's effectiveness.
> I now know that startups often first allocate 10M shares, apparently for psychological reasons.
Heh. My company has exactly one (1) share, probably also for psychological reasons.
The short answer is always, always have your own lawyer review these things.
The lawyer preparing the corporate documents is the corporation’s lawyer. That person cannot also be your lawyer. Every founder should have their own lawyer review and advise them on the paperwork.
Amazing people think that’ll work. Might be OK if the person doing that is the majority of the drive behind the business. But if not of course it will collapse.
How can people be so sketchy and still sleep at night is out of my mind
Psychopathy is a hell of a drug
And incredibly rare!
They use their stolen money to buy very nice mattresses.
"White noise machine" is the answer from the joke.
Life is too short to stay miserable, OP. You launched a startup that has lasted 4+ years, that in and of itself is a huge accomplishment. I've had several startups fail over 20 years and each was a it's own heavy learning experience.
You've gotten much further than most ever will. Good work aqui!
Thanks! I try to stay as positive as possible, and looking forward to the new opportunities that'll appear.
There is always what’s next for people who don’t finish learning and experimenting .. and consequently peaking.
Keep moving, Inward onward and upward
It is probably no consolation for you, but now your former co founders have "their" own company that's four years old, still has no customers or an MVP, and apparently no one really working full time on the company...
Seems like they get what they deserve...
Well, there's one product, one MVP, and a team of 8 full-timers... My biggest concern was the people, trying to find a situation that somewhat guarantees their short-term future and they can then go from there..
If the full time people don't identify a founder leaving as an existential threat and look for their way out that's on them.
Also it is a job. People can get fired (impacted I mean) at any company. They weight it all up like any other job. Company is family never really existed.
You can keep people off balance enough that they don't have time to think about finding another job. That's what a 60+ hour work week is for, after all.
You work and sleep.
Honestly not your problem at this point.
I had to check I hadn't written this in my sleep overnight. You're describing a very similar experience to mine, and I'm honestly shocked at how common this experience seems to be.
2 weeks ago I signed the contract to "sell" my shares for my startup of ~7 years. I'm just now starting to realize how utterly miserable I had been for a long, long time.
It's a very difficult decision, but it gets easier every day (on average, some days can still be tough).
It's only going to get better.
By leaving you gave your co-founders what they wanted and they probably celebrated that their nasty behavior led to the expected outcome. Sometimes it's worth fighting and not avoiding conflicts.
Sorry to hear that. How did you end up in a situation where you're the only founder working full-time but the other founders have more equity and control over the business?
Maybe they funded it?
Why is it always that the most practiced storyteller on a project seems to tell themselves the story that their contributions matter head and shoulder over those of everyone else combined? "We wouldn't be here if I hadn't pushed thus and such."
At some point they forget that the value others brought to the table was a big part of what made them participate in the first place. Now they devalue all of those other players.
Sorry to hear. Reminds me of the "cofounder" that I had who wanted a sizeable equity but ended up bringing nothing technical or managerial to the table. The startup failed after 1 year, and we just wrapped everything up. I was secretly glad it failed.
It also reminds me to only work on startups with someone who you really know and trust, like a best friend.
Great way to ruin a great friendship.
I don't necessarily agree with this statement - if I know my best friend inside out we will have a super large room for flexibility, and that often prevents conflicts.
My practical experience is that there is no way of separating the two things, friendship and co-worker. And I believe there is more to lose than to gain in this arrangement. When a problem comes up I rather not argue with my friend (sorry, co-worker) about how my position is right and his is wrong.
Thanks for the insight. In that case, I'm wondering what would your preferred network be, if you're looking for a cofounder?
How'd you end up as a minority shareholder? I feel like this is a fairly common story, and I'd be interested to know if there are signs/how to avoid it.
I've made > 100 pre-seed investments and the #1 cause failure in the first 3 years is founders quitting because of unresolved cofounder conflict. The first time I saw an obviously valuable, fast-growing company blown up because the founders couldn't agree on a $5000 travel expense I was astounded. Now it's something I've grown to expect - just one more risk to be managed.
To try and mitigate this my #1 question each time I meet with the founders I invest in is "how's your relationship with your cofounder(s) going?". If the answer to this question is anything less "fantastic!" we have a long conversation about why, before we talk about anything else.
A low cadence of communication between founders is also correlated with higher failure rates, so another fun question is "when was the last time you spoke with your cofounder?". Again I've stopped being surprised by the amount of founders that answer with "last week/month", which again needs to spark a conversation about why.
>> I've made > 100 pre-seed investments and the #1 cause failure in the first 3 years is founders quitting because of unresolved cofounder conflict.
Can you comment on the most common cause of conflict? You mention something trivial to make the point that they can be over trivial things, but what is the most common cause of conflict?
There’s no one specific cause that stands out as common. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
What IS common amongst terminal cofounder conflict is a series of ruptures in the relationship without any corresponding moments of repair. Over time the ruptures build up into complete relationship breakdown over an issue that seems trivial. People gradually work themselves apart and can’t come back. Some of my biggest failures as an investor have come from not understanding this dynamic.
What I’ve observed is that great cofounder relationships display a pattern where conflict is followed by a moment of restoration so that a strong positive relationship builds over time. The biological analogy of this is muscle hypertrophy. You repeatedly lift something heavy and your bicep muscle fibers are damaged. Under the right conditions of rest your body repairs the damaged fibers by fusing them, which increases muscle mass and so you get stronger over time. Or you don’t have a repair cycle and instead keep lifting heavy things without rest until you eventually get a traumatic failure and can’t lift anything for a long time (if ever).
In the stress of a startup conflict is inevitable, and to a certain extent at times it’s also required for progress. So the insight here is not “great cofounders have zero conflict”, but rather “great cofounders follow conflict with moments of repair”. If you consider each conflict a small tear in the relationship with your cofounder then for every tear their needs to also be a compensating motion of repair.
What I’ve learned to do now as the investor in the loop is to help cofounders notice early when ruptures are occurring without repair. Most of the time merely drawing attention to this dynamic is enough for them to course correct.
This is a great insight, explained well. Thank you for it.
Given poor communication, trivial things lead to conflict. This is the case in every relationship. The takeaway should be that you need to communicate well, not that you need to pay attention to one specific subject.
I went thru this seven years ago, leaving my startup which I'd been with for about 15. I still considered it a startup after all that time. The opportunity had long since been missed and all that remained was a long slow grind down to nothing. Which is exactly what has happened as it continued after my departure.
For me it was as close as I could imagine giving up a child would be like, but in hindsight it was the best choice and I grew hugely as a result.
I'm in a similar boat currently. I've been in the same startup for almost 6 years now, pretty much since day one of its creation. I've been with the founders through every step of the way and my closest circle of friends is among the employees.
But at this point it feels like the product is going nowhere fast. I'm worried about my career (i don't have much else on my CV) but being the very first hire I'm afraid quitting would kill any confidence remaining in the company and trigger an exodus.
If things at your startup have been run equitably, then after 6 years you should have some equity that's all yours.
That makes it fine to quit. You'll stop getting salary, but that equity is your stake in the future as things unfold.
If you don't have any equity after 6 years then it's time to bail anyway.
Although it wasn’t as a founder, but I can relate, in one of a small startup I got hired as the first engineer, rest were a founder and sales guy and a part time HR girl, so as expected, I solely built the architecture, few fully fledged platforms, dozens of PoC, successfully delivered projects, then after 1.5y the second engineer got hired, now I’m guilty as probably you mentioned being emotionally attached to my work, after all, I really was invested in it, I even designed the icons for these platforms and the proper catchy names in addition to the software/hardware engineering design, to writing the docs and even pitching the work for technical clients since sales guy had no idea what the work was beyond the concept.
After a while, same thing started to happen, promises were made these platforms can deliver even though technically is impossible (so you can guess later when the client know these promises were BS), not getting invited to critical meetings, sales team (grew later than one guy) is gatekeeping the communication and only dripping to engineers the client requirements after they add their own unrealistic expectations, started to exclude me for training clients on how to use these platforms as only sales team are doing those (funny as most of the time, the first question they get asked and they are stuck, and ended up they calling me during the session remotely), and after long discussions that it isn’t possible to be carried by sales and need a technical team, they quickly hired a co-op to act as one during these sessions… among other issues, I call these situations are simply sabotaging the company/startup based primarily on greed, in this case it was by the sales and CEO followed later.
Now I had my lessons learned in that experience, but I’m sure your situation is worse being the founder, but I felt a good peace of mind after leaving them so hopefully you did the good thing.
As long as you have significant stock it probably doesn't matter much. Like for that engineer with 10% of Yahoo, or chief cook at Google. If you are ambitious, then you need an assistant to do what you are doing now. Better a small team under your leadership ;) The difficult part is to make them believe it.
> As long as you have significant stock
Minority shareholding is actually pretty shitty, as I am sure a few people on this thread would agree.
Most of my savings came from minority stock. It was a nice surprise when I finally moved out. Could be better if I didn't sell it right away, but you never know...
Money from private stock should always be a nice surprise. Don't make it part of your calculus. Having it over your head is how they motivate you. But it becomes all stick.
I wouldn't want to hold stock in such a situation. His ability to influence the business positively and therefore increase the return on his stock is limited.
I’m struggling with making this decision at the moment and it was interesting to read this.
I’m not a founder, but I’m the first hire and the first engineer – there since day 2. Six years in, a couple of pivots, and now we have a team of 100 people with a gigantic series A just closed and an excellent PMF. I built most of the product myself – it’s genuinely game-changing and commercial demand is through the roof. Enough equity that if we were acquired now I’d be set for life.
But I just don’t know if I can hack it anymore. The commercial and product teams are pushing wildly unrealistic timelines for new features, which then the technical teams end up the bad guys for not being able to deliver on. Internal communication is all over the place, with nobody seemingly aware of deadlines and deliverables. The CEO is pretty visibly complaining about some teams not working hard enough, because he doesn’t see them in the office or working evenings and weekends. Meanwhile I’m on 18 hour days, under pressure to squeeze performance out of a team that I already think is delivering good quality at a pretty rapid pace, and being badgered constantly to provide KPIs and metrics for them so that the C-suite can deicide if they’re pulling their weight.
It’s almost exactly the opposite of the culture I’d want to create in an engineering team. Instead of teamwork and transparency aimed at producing a cohesive vision, everyone’s pulling in a different direction. Everyone is overworked and making mistakes, and instead of trying to build systems and processes to avoid these issues, it’s become a blame game. The answer to any problem always seems to be “work harder”, rather than providing the resources and support that teams require. Features are being rolled out to customers against engineering advice before they’re finished, meaning a massive drag factor as we scramble to patch them – and engineering leadership desperately trying to protect the rest of the team from having to pay for these decisions. And there’s this message being communicated from the top that suggests technical teams aren’t working hard enough that just feels utterly toxic. I’m probably making it sound worse than it is, but for certain the last six months have stopped being “I’m excited about working on this”.
How do you make the decision that it’s time to call it a day? Is it practically possible to shift the culture? Or is it feasible to detach yourself a little bit from it – concentrate on the areas you can change, and stop caring about those you can’t? I’m a well-paid engineer in an interesting field, and I’m invested financially and emotionally. It’s hard to be objective about whether it's time to quit.
Basically I can sympathise with the emotions you’re going though and thanks for writing about it. Hang in there!
I kind of hope you hold onto this throwaway account so you can tell us what you ultimately decide to do - from what you've said it sounds like the right course of action for you is to exercise your options to lock in your equity (assuming you have enough spare cash to do so) and move on, starting things off with a long vacation because you've been working crazy hours. Or you could start by just taking a long vacation and deciding what you want to do. Or a short vacation to work up to the long vacation - at the very least, a disconnect from the grind would probably really help.
I say this as an individual contributor though, and I imagine it must be tougher to consider walking away when you're a manager and you have a team of people who will be directly affected if you leave.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway778:
user: throwaway778 created: December 31, 2013
This reads like reasonably normal high growth growing pains. Miserable but common as everything is constantly breaking (not just the product but organizational systems and processes) as the company piles on new hires and new customer demands.
Communication breaks down completely as you leave the “everybody knows what everybody else is doing” stage and need to figure out coordination across siloed teams and work streams. Many people who were there at the smaller team stage get stuck in that mode of operating and it’s a painful push to formalize communications and build reliable/trustworthy systems.
Someone else mentioned this too but you should be past the 18hr/day phase now. It’s time to start building systems and spreading the work in a more sustainable manner.
Not sure what the situation is over there but it’s common to need to bring in a strong VP Eng who can help firewall the department, push back on unrealistic C-suite demands, counter strong personalities from other teams, and provide more stable prioritization. This is the most effective solution that I’ve seen when an eng team feels under the gun constantly, management is punching through to pressure individuals, people are feeling jerked around, etc.
> This reads like reasonably normal high growth growing pains.
Not the parent, but I don't see how this is normal. Your sales team giving customers high expectations is a recipe for customer disatisfaction. Releasing broken things binds resources on unnecessary things that would have otherwise been used to stabilize foundations or add new features. So you essentially have a sales teams sabotaging the plans of the engineering team by extorting them with things they promised to customers.
These are the signs of a dysfunctional and badly managed organization. Your sales guys should have a realistic image of your capabilities and customers should get things when the lead of engineering deems them ready. And if you don't trust their judgement on that, it is either a you-issue or a them-issue.
Completely agree with the ideal situation you present. The problem is that this doesn't hold up under the pressures of small teams chasing high growth.
Nobody is intentionally sabotaging anyone else (usually) but everyone stretches a little bit in the name of growth and things break down at the edges. Revenue growth can be life or death for small companies so, even though it sucks, promises are made and things are rushed. A perfect foundation and completely bug-free features don't matter if the business is dead.
There's a lot of sub-optimal juggling going on around this growth phase where you sometimes need to just focus on keeping the ship afloat until you hit the next set of milestones -> prove your worth -> raise -> grow the team to help shore up the foundation. Even if you aren't raising VC it can still be a similar grind where you need more cash flow to hire more to meet the exploding customer demands.
I will note that this only applies to high growth companies. If you have a pile of cash, strong product conviction (and skill), and the willpower to keep your feature set limited while turning away potential customers, you might be able to build the solid foundation -> sell the rock solid product. That isn't how most startups operate though and once you take VC the clock is ticking.
> Is it practically possible to shift the culture?
Yes. But it requires saying no to lots of things you used to say yes to (and vice versa), which can be extraordinarily difficult
It may not feel like it, but if you have been around since day 2 you’ll be respected enough to try anything you like, as long as you actually do it and don’t complain (not saying you’re a whiner but some people are). You basically have tenure.
Ask yourself if you're really that essential to things going forward? If not, then feel proud of what you've done and do what you need to do.
And I mean really ask yourself. As you say, teams are scaled now, individual effort has less of a multiplier. In most cases, they'll probably be fine without you. That should feel liberating.
Wtf… 100 people and you’re still doing 18 hour days? Y’all are past the point of needing the switch to sustainability.
the sense of frantic feature building is normal for a high growth startup. feeling constantly behind is also normal. a high growth startup is not a loving, nurturing, comfortable place. it's a mad dash for money and everyone is going to be pushing as hard as they humanly can, both in terms of work but also in terms of pushing others.
you're on the right track with the detaching yourself, but that can only get you so far. at the end of the day you still need to deliver things that sell. having people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about demand all sorts of wild shit from you is normal.
in the end, it's just difficult. you're being compensated with money and equity - if those aren't up to snuff, negotiate for more. if that doesn't work, you need to make the decision to stay or leave. there's a chance they give you what you want when you threaten to leave - and then you will have some leverage. but just realize this is not ever going to be a walk in the park. millions of dollars are on the line, people are not going to behave rationally because they see you as the limiting factor between them and their riches.
this is not the culture human beings should support or tolerate at their workplace
my comment is descriptive, not prescriptive. i doubt anyone even knows the difference anymore because of all the smarmy posturing these days.
"this rock is hard, and has sharp edges. it will cut you."
"no! that is terrible! rocks should be soft, with round edges! how dare you! nobody should accept rocks that are hard and sharp! that's dangerous! why do you support dangerous things?!"
No it's not, it's a false equivalence. What the original commenter described has way more pathologies than "startups are hard", and it does not smell like success to me. To pick up on your analogy, it's more like a rock that has been drenched in poop by someone, and you're supposed to use it to cut your food. There are other sharp rocks around, and most of them are not covered by poop, so you might be able to cut your food with it without getting a terrible disease and puke all food out again in the process.
okay, so your position is that he should leave because everyone is too mean. that's valid.
Don't put words in my mouth. OP mentioned significant equity and the possibility to be acquired, without any details. This could both provide them with something to show after enduring all the suck, as well as with a real chance of changing management. If the question was to join the company, or no equity was at play (including if there's either no realistic chance of that equity being worth something, or if the equity does not lose its value for OP after quitting anyway), then yes, likely best to leave immediately.
Simplistic phrases are not going to help in complex situations with lots of details.
> because everyone is too mean.
No, because it sounds like a business bordering on dysfunction. You should know the difference.
> because it sounds like a business bordering on dysfunction
yeah, that's what a startup is.
its not even a good way to maximize output
Tell the owners that the train might derail and that you wont be on it when it does, so they either have to slow down or risk crashing.
I think this is mainly an issue of a lack of formal structure. A bad way to start a company with your cofounder is to expect to reach a consensus on decisions and only that moves forward. It’s hard for 2 people to consistently reach consensus, it’s impossible for more than 2. There needs to be a clear formal hierarchy, people lower in the hierarchy can always disagree voice out the thought but they must commit once the decision has been made (Disagree but commit). If as the leader you see employees doing things behind your back, first you fire them especially if it is duplicitous. Then you have a long reflection on why your decisions were bad enough that employees felt the need to do this. It may be time to hire a new CEO if you think you cannot hold employee respect and trust. There is a sort of prevalent myth in Silicon Valley, that friends start startups and the company structure is flat in its initial days. There are far too many examples disproving this (Amazon, Facebook, PayPal etc) and even in the case where you have friendly cofounders, you still find an implicit hierarchy built on respect and trust which is probably the ideal form of hierarchy. However lack of hierarchy is a recipe for a mess of a company, formalizing hierarchy kills a lot of politics.
There is never a real lack of hierarchies tho. It is just that everybody has their own (which turns out to have a similar effect). If you are lucky all of the hierarchies people have in their heads align with each other. But it helps to have this formalized.
As someone who worked on quite some film sets: Contrary to the assumption many people have, clear roles and responsibilities are good for creativity. In the end the director ans the producer will decide on things, but on a good film set the best idea wins and so the director and producer would be idiots not to listen to their team when they have them.
That’s a great point, never thought of it that way. Hierarchies always exist, if everyone’s aligned you need not formalize it (very rare), else formalizing it helps.
Hi OP, it's a truly sad event when people conspire against you. Have you received legal advice? Even though you are not working for the company anymore, you still have rights as a shareholder. A lawyer can help articulate and fight for those rights.
I've been the founder who has been fired by his cofounder, and I've been the founder who has had to fire a cofounder. It was really terrible from both ways. Hope things get better for you!
Side note, but the small font size + light grey text on the white background made it a bit of an eye strain for me to read your story, would definitely benefit a bit from some more contrast.
Well, frankly, it’s a real shame he’s hanging up on this one. There’s much to be done with light sheet. I only exist at the fringes as a bystander but have seen some incredible imagery come out of it. Compared to all the “disrupt the phone sanitizing market!” cruft I’m used to reading about, this one actually seemed worthwhile.
This echos some of my feelings planning to move on after 14 years at the same(non-startup) place. Thank you for writing it.
even thoug i dont know u. for me i relate in this way. i love to start things, motivate others, and dream big. however, at some point though it makes me sad, i feel like the idea is better off in other peoples hands. i struggle to focus and .... just want to start new things and motivate new ppl. i dont do startups for this reason but actually you writing this blogpost makes me feel maybe there is a place for me. to get the ball rolling and then leave it to people who are good at being consistent and seeing things through, but maybe less at starting and gathering motivation in the early stages. everyone has their own strengths and pitfalls. each end is a new beginning and i am sure after this tough breakup u will have learned a lot and find a new wonderful thing in ur life! =) all the best!
> Going away at this moment sounds like an irrational choice, but I was one I had to take, I had to place myself and my peace of mind ahead of anything else.
I can relate to this. No, I didn't leave my startup. I've worked with three startups altogether, including one of my own, which started off with a co-founder back in 2012. In the not-my-own ones, I was once the founding engineer, and once the fourth engineering hire.
Why didn't I leave my own bootstrapped startup despite the amount of pressure, chaos, uncertainty, and pain, all of which were setting in at the same time? Not to mention immense difficulties in dealing with co-founders and all the social pressures (home life, relationships, real day job at a fortune 500) and burning hard-earned cash to keep the thing running in the face of uncertainty and the very real likeliness of failure.
Why I nearly did walk out:
- Extremely unpleasant co-founder. Unsociable, condescending, biased - for instance I'm quite sure he perceived me as being worth less than himself because I had no wife and kids situation going on. Treating me as employee despite having equal shares in the company. - No VC capital or outside funding. The expectation of having close to 0 in the bank account once the pay-day happens from the "real" job (and rent+bills have already been covered) sucked really, really much.
A few things spring to mind as to why I did not walk out:
- Luck. We seemed to have the right timing. There were almost no products on the market which attempted to solve the problem the way we did. There was a tremendous interest in our product, but we just couldn't get any significant number of people to convert, despite seemingly offering the right product.
- Having listened to feedback and tweaking the product (most notably the pricing/business model), we managed to achieve decent market capture (it took almost 3 years from) and that came mostly as a result of persisting through the cash-burn, listening to and evaluating all customer feedback, and iterating on many aspects of the product dozens of time. Fixing broken things and solving weird edge-cases which weren't weird in retrospect pointed to the fact that we were simply inexperienced. We still pressed on and sought to break through this barrier of having no freaking clue about this emerging market.
- The real break was the actual realisation of the for-reals breakeven. It changed the game - the point at which no money needed to leave our personal bank accounts to pay for cloud services, domains, tax accountants, templates, logos, you name it, was one of the greatest feelings ever. At point-breakeven the whole thing went from a "somewhat successful side-project which has been draining our personal bank accounts" to a project which could potentially provide enduring sustenance, and we might be able to take it further. At that point it became all the more compelling to press on.
This saddened me. Best of luck, truly.
A finishdown, if you will.