Ask HN: My co-founder is dead. What now? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My co-founder is dead. What now?

41 pointscaretvii13 comments

Hey all. I lost my co-founder and best friend 3 days ago in a car accident. We are a startup of 5 people and he was the CEO. We are all friends and this has deeply affected us emotionally and I know that, without him, the startup will be on life support soon. What are we supposed to do? many online services were attached to his email, he was talking to customers, he had loaned a lot of money to the company, he was raising capital, he was recruiting... he was pretty much the father of the company. We are lost and any tip would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much HN.

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Check if there's key person insurance on him. That would help financially with the transition.

Potentially useful resource:

https://www.pashalaw.com/business-owner-dies/

Couple of maybe kind of resources:

https://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/hr-and-management/what-happe...

https://www.quora.com/What-happens-to-a-company-when-the-CEO...

I'm really sorry, this sounds awful for you all. Get your attorney to help you with your immediate obligations. Notify potential investors/creditors/partners of your loss and ask to follow up with them in the second or third week of June, depending on volume. Take care of each other.

Thank you! I had our attorney go after this immediately. One of the biggest challenges is keeping the team together and ensuring customers and investors that we'll be fine.

Filling the hole left by a person can be very hard practically and emotionally, so try to stay calm and go slow.

Legally, presumably you'll have to work around the executor of his will?

Do nothing for a week if you can, then starting doing tasks like changing contact details and the like. I can't predict the future, but be prepared to find a few (Legal/Financial in my experience) oddities that rely on waiting around for companies to respond to fix.

Man, I am sorry and my thoughts are with you :(, such a hard thing to have to both process while picking up the pieces of what sounds to be a budding company.

Take some time and just make sure you want to go forward with this on your own or with someone new. That might mean that you are going to go in and do the busy work needed to keep everything running and give the team the support you need. Just make sure you get the support you need as you also need the space/time to make sure you want to keep it going.

If you want to talk there is a contact link in my profile. I'd be happy to chat and help you think through the process.

Do you have a board of directors? Once you’re past the immediate grief, they and your investors can be a good resource to lean on in terms of quickly finding someone to serve as an interim CEO while you look for a more permanent solution.

I am really sorry. Take break for some time. With my experiance one of ur team will step up and slowly fill the gap. Stay in market, in long run business will teach u everything.

setting aside the emotional aspects of mourning your friend and taking some time to clear your heads.

What did you do when he was sick, or on vacation?

Practically speaking this is no different than an extended vacation.

We started the company about 1.5 years ago. Since then nobody has taken any meaningful vacation; however, if he wasn't around and we had any question we'd just call him! Right now I'm the de-facto CEO but I'm seeing the team freaking out exacerbated both by grief and the gloomy prospects of our company...

First start by contacting your companies attorney. They’ll be able to get the ball rolling on reclaiming these various accounts that belong to the company. Unfortunately, you will need the police report and or death certificate to initiate these proceedings.

If you're currently the defacto CEO, this is going to be a lonely thing to do, but you might need to be the one to set the example of optimism in your work. That doesn't mean you need to appear upbeat and happy, but your friends/coworkers could use your help here. Even if you don't feel optimistic internally, rather than giving up, perhaps after making sure investors and customers know what's going on and a short break, you should set the example of moving forward (I intentionally don't say "moving on", which is thankfully not a prerequisite for moving forward). This doesn't have to be the end of this company. I don't know what moving forward looks like for you right now, and you probably don't either, but the best thing for your employees is to see you optimistically giving it a go (again, you don't have to be happily doing it, that's not really what I mean by optimistic)

My condolences, I wish you the best in this difficult time.

you need some distance. wait 2 weeks.

It might be a good idea that everybody takes a little time off and regroup. This is a situation that needs to be approached with sensitivity and care.

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