"The product is too complicated", "The product isn't interesting", "it's been hard to retain developers" and the founder is burned out. To my casual viewing, i

"The product is too complicated", "The product isn't interesting", "it's been hard to retain developers" and the founder is burned out. To my casual viewing, it seems very like the founder is exercising too much control over the product. Especially if the founder hates their job, and there is a revolving door for the developers -- the problem is not likely to be that the implementation is too boring. The problem is more likely to be that the work environment is stifling -- or there is a lot of conflict on the team. My experience has been that in this kind of situation, the founder is afraid that the workers will fail. To be honest, this is very likely. However, allowing controlled failure is how you build a strong team. Rather than chucking the whole thing in the bin, why not start planning fun things that the team can fail on? If it kills the whole company, at least you had fun. If it doesn't, then you have built pillars on which you can build a platform of trust. And yes, open the purse strings for at least 1 senior dev who can shoulder the load of fixing inevitable broken things.