> A few days later, he gave me documents to sign over all my equity and gave me half of what the company had in the bank.

Agreed. That's what I get from the article as well.

Cash is not the most valuable asset of a company. In this case he lost the clients and a valuable worker, which his partner took from him. Could be considered as stealing, but we don't know the other side.

It wasn't stolen it was ransomed. Half the money in the till was probably a fraction of the value of the company.

That's still debatable. I assume there was probably more to it, but from the post it doesn't sound like they really tried to work out the differences of opinion about contribution, work hours etc. - sounds more like he just snapped one day and made a bad decision.

Clearly he also had a bit of an over-inflated ego, believing he was so important to the company that it would collapse without him when it sounds like it was actually able to be a sustainable business (from the other founder "enjoying the recurring revenue for years"). So if they had been able to communicate and work out their differences it sounds like he could have chilled out and worked less if he wanted also...