I’m not sure any of what I’m about to say is good advice, but having been through a number of cofounder break ups (and helped others) here are my observations.

I’m not sure any of what I’m about to say is good advice, but having been through a number of cofounder break ups (and helped others) here are my observations. 1) Have the conversation with your co-founder right away. It sounds like you’ve already done this. People need time to process. 2) the new CTO will likely rewrite your app from the ground up. This might not seem, or be, likely. But I’ve never not seen it happen eventually. It’s more important to find someone you think could do that and then share your lessons learned. Smart people tend to make the same assumptions before they are knee deep in the problem. 3) You are the best recruiter for tech talent. Say you are looking to hire a founding engineer with the opportunity to become CTO. When you meet, let them know it’s a short trial period. 4) pick what you are going to demand on stock buyout and own it. A solution is to have new investors buy your shares so the cap table stays open. At the pre-seed stage there’s really nothing to buy your stock with but other people’s money. To justify that to investors, you’d need to find a new hire that improved your ability to raise capital. That is straight-forward: 0. Lives where your HQ/investors live 1. Went to the right schools 2. Worked at the right companies 3. Was responsible for a project or team that was successful on solving a problem relevant to your value prop as a startup Searching keywords on LinkedIn or GitHub is the best way to look, but posting for that explicitly here on HN and wherever your dev friends are is crucial. Sum up: The best thing you can do is to find your team a founding engineer who is better than you & knows the space better. Buying out your stock so that person can have it is an easy decision. If all the above seems challenging or not doable, you probably don’t have the network to safely launch startups. Build your network. And good luck!