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It's interesting that when it involves a founder we're suddenly no longer considering the obvious scenario that the author is one of the many coders who is simp

It's interesting that when it involves a founder we're suddenly no longer considering the obvious scenario that the author is one of the many coders who is simply not good enough and has to go. And the author himself has already admitted his limited competence. It's perfectly reasonably for the CTO to ask him to leave as a coder. In fact, setting those standards and making those decisions is what you hire a CTO for. Unless he's been asked to surrender his equity and/or not take up any other non-technical position, everything else about being "squeezed out" is strictly speculative. This may strictly be a matter of competence. (Doesn't mean the author shouldn't be taking precautions, those any founder should take from the moment they involve external funding. From whatever angle or for whatever reason, the issue of ditching one of the founders will come up.)

kamaal 13y ago
>>It's interesting that when it involves a founder we're suddenly no longer considering the obvious scenario that the author is one of the many coders who is simply not good enough and has to go. Sure, Pay up the fair compensation. Then he can have a clean exit.
trevelyan 13y ago
I would really not assume competence on the part of the other people in this arrangement. Once this guy goes, the CEO is locked into an expensive team, and will need to find equity and cash to motivate them. They can dilute this guy's share to start, but why stop there? And how well are future funding rounds going to go when the investors realize this? No sane startup would ever get rid of a technical cofounder who knows the stack and can be motivated by his ownership stake to keep the servers running in a worst case scenario. So it really sounds like the CEO is incompetent and doesn't realize he needs to preserve his ability to remain independent in order to have leverage with investors.

kamaal 13y ago

>>It's interesting that when it involves a founder we're suddenly no longer considering the obvious scenario that the author is one of the many coders who is simply not good enough and has to go. Sure, Pay up the fair compensation. Then he can have a clean exit.

trevelyan 13y ago

I would really not assume competence on the part of the other people in this arrangement. Once this guy goes, the CEO is locked into an expensive team, and will need to find equity and cash to motivate them. They can dilute this guy's share to start, but why stop there? And how well are future funding rounds going to go when the investors realize this? No sane startup would ever get rid of a technical cofounder who knows the stack and can be motivated by his ownership stake to keep the servers running in a worst case scenario. So it really sounds like the CEO is incompetent and doesn't realize he needs to preserve his ability to remain independent in order to have leverage with investors.