Ask HN: How to deal with a dysfunctional relationship with a 50/50 co-founder?

Re:Ask HN: How to deal with a dysfunctional relationship wit... by suhail on Monday May 07, 2018 @06:09PM (#17016882)

Step 1: Lay down the cold, hard facts (not your interpretation) in a tactful manner meant to assist in helping him vs. attacking him. Do not issue threats or ultimatums ("I will go to the board", "I'll quit if...", etc.), that will often make things much worse--hurtful to your employees/executive team. Give your co-founder some time to determine whether those facts are true or if it's just you (~2 weeks).

Step 2: If that doesn't breakthrough, then your next step is escalating with the board and letting them do a real investigation to the merit of your claims. Ultimately, they'll likely speak to someone on his team.

Step 3: If you can't do that, consider stepping down since the opportunity cost could be very high. It's much worse for the two co-founders to be at odds and potentially blow up the company at this stage. The company is learning to scale around 4 years in (usually) and if he's a first time CEO, he's probably going to be struggling.

* Try your best to remove the emotion. Consider therapy during this time as it's going to be a bumpy road especially if you've built up resentment over the last four years with each other and care a lot about your company that you started.

Email me (click on my profile) and I am happy to help you through this while keeping it confidential.

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Re:Ask HN: How to deal with a dysfunctional relationship wit... by throwaway9934 on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @05:47PM (#17025505)

Thanks for taking the time to respond first of all. The post hadn't picked up yet by the time I shut down for the night so I didn't see these responses until this morning.

I think writing my original post and reading the responses here released some pent up frustration on my part.

1: I've managed to take step 1 today. The response I received was surprisingly positive. By that I mean a sort of grudging acceptance. I'm not sure if that's because of the desperation of the situation we are in; or if it was a change of manner on my part. Probably a bit of both. This was probably the first work related conversation we've had in over 24 months that was free from negative emotion on both sides.

2: We don't have board; we retained 100% of shares for ourselves. We raised our seed capital by taking deposits based on the proof of concept we had when we started. Really lucky I know.

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