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Ask HN: How to deal with a cofounder not pulling their weight?
I'm a technical founder who connected with another cofounder a year ago through YC matching. At this time, we connected pretty well because they saw the vision I had and seemed to be pretty motivated.
It's been a few months now and I'm very frustrated now. For reference, this is for a B2B product. Our current beta testers are people who are in my network that I've connected with over the past year or two.
Red flags for me:
- I've assigned them multiple tasks where he's only completed 10% of them in a subpar fashion and has yet to deliver on the other 90% for weeks or months. And yes, I've assigned him tasks. These tasks are tasks any normal intern can do in less than a week. Yet, they are unable to deliver in a competent manner.
- The fact that I even have to assign them tasks is very frustrating. It adds a new management load to my plate that I should not have to deal with for a cofounder. I feel like I'm managing an intern. I feel like a babysitter.
- I get texted a lot of ideas about the grand future, cool features, and raising money, which is great, except ideas are meaningless. Especially if they are just a 1-2 sentence idea. I always ask them to flesh out the idea more by drawing up some quick wireframes, clarifying the CUJ, and figuring out an actionable plan for what it should look like in reality. I have yet to receive even one document or plan.
- Texts me a lot of surface-level insights about our competitors or about the industry, no real value-adds. I thought this was fine at first because they were still getting used to the industry, but none of their insights have gotten deeper at all. They are the bare basics that anyone in our industry should know. But it throws me off now because it makes me doubt the experience and understanding they have of the industry.
For reference, we're both working on this on the side. I'm a FTE in big tech putting in 30-40 hrs a week on this, sacrificing performance at work and my sleep. They just graduated college (but doesn't have a FT job lined up). Seemingly this would technically mean they can contribute more to this startup (at which point I'm happy giving up more equity).
I know I'm not perfect. I'm a good coder and I have distribution channels for this product thanks to connections and other things I've done in the past. I would 100% prefer to have a cofounder (just someone who brings effort to the table), but I feel like a solo founder in all of this.
And yes, we've talked multiple times about this and it's not changed at all. I'm getting to my limit. I'm tired of having to ask if something is done every week and get an excuse over and over. --TLDR-ish:Basically, I feel like he's the second guy in this tweet: https://x.com/ayushswrites/status/1804221219958325258 https://x.com/ayushswrites/status/1804221219958325258 Talker, not a do-er.
TLDR: Cofounder is underperforming and delivering subpar work to literally nothing at all. He's not pulling his weight and bringing value to the table, should I fire him? What else can I do?
- MeetingsBrowser 2y agoTalk to them like an adult instead of ranting about them to Hackernews. But to be honest, the “I’m an amazing engineer who does everything well and he’s just a college student without an internship” comes off as being petty.
- andyjohnson0 2y agoLot of potentially identifiable detail there. Does your co-founder read HN?
- MichaelRo 2y agoEven with a real cofounder, unless you have a bulletproof contract, each of them can take their toys (I mean the code they have access to) and leave. And this guy's a buffoon, not a partner. Only perplexity I have is what in the world drove you to hook up with such a loser? You seem to be fairly competent and accomplished ("I work a job in Big Tech") and he seems to be less than useless ("a [semi-technical] college student on summer break"). I guess the "semi" part is only as much as he was able to fake some basic competence while tickling your fragile ego, I bet he's unable to write FOR i=1 TO N without looking it up in ChatGPT.
- radicalbyte 2y agoI think that the OP is himself just a year or two our of education and in an entry-level position in Tech. It would explain a lot.
- constantcrying 2y agoApparently not: "On one team, I was the head engineer at a small, seed-stage, venture-backed startup. I reported to and worked alongside the CEO. On my second team, I was an individual contributor with 10 others at a well-known Big Tech company (Meta, Google, Apple, etc)." From OPs linked blog. How an apparently successful software developer, believes that having a college kid as his co founder, is a good idea is baffling though.
- 2y ago