My co-founder was a worthless chump but I survived | Hacker News Reader

My co-founder was a worthless chump but I survived

smackeyacky.blogspot.com

31 pointssmackeyacky33 comments

Not sure what the reader is supposed to get from this. I'm sure the situation was stressful beyond imagination. But the entire piece just seems overwhelmingly bitter. What can any external party really gain from this account? People fail to cooperate all over the world every day and it can be hard to understand from the outside what the root cause is or even if there is one. Perhaps this article was a useful exercise to the author, but I imagine it might have served better if it was kept private.

I got several things out of it...

- Vet your potential co-founder more closely to make sure they have the skillsets they claim to

- Pay attention to red flags and deal with them sooner. Withholding the admin password, for example, was a clear one.

- Maybe build in a non-confrontational exit from the beginning. Sounds like the co-founder was trying to bullshit their way through it so they wouldn't lose out if the product did well. Perhaps a small amount of equity would have been an easier way to push them out?

Agreed, and, from a comment below:

> this is one of the reasons Founder Vesting is a thing. There should be a mechanism in place which strips the founder of equity when they quit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28387927

Author here. I perhaps should have kept it private, but I am tired of having to demur and gloss over the difficulties encountered of getting the product launched. A common question over the last few years from potential investors has been "what happened", so now I will just point them at the article and they can make any judgment they like. Hiding it and glossing over it has been counter productive so far, so I'm trying something different.

I should probably know better than to moralize at people over the internet, but I feel somewhat obligated to give you my own honest opinion about this. And that is that if I were a prospective investor, I would regard this article as a red flag. It's not that you apparently ended up with someone who was a flake. That could happen to anyone. It's that you saw fit to publish and advertise a rant about them in which you chose to refer to them with demeaning language like "worthless chump" and "knobgoblin". That seems to indicate that you've taken on a level of resentment and emotional burden that may eventually cloud your judgement in other situations. I don't think it would establish the characteristic of maturity that an investor would want to see in a founder.

I would urge you not to refer investors to this article and instead just try to explain in simple terms that you felt your co-founder did not respect the timelines that were critical for your company. And list the facts, not your opinions.

Update: By the way, I'd like to add that it's clear you had a rough ride with this one and I don't feel unsympathetic. But I wouldn't want you to struggle with it any longer than is necessary. Best of luck.

I appreciate the feedback, and I do realise this will come across as a potential issue, but hiding things is just as bad. For reference, what's also seen as a red flag by investors is disclosing this after they have engaged, "keeping it private" is seen as deceptive. The company survives on revenue anyway.

I wouldn't say keeping it private and that article are your only choices. You should absolutely disclose that you had a cofounder who didn't work out because he turned out to be incompetent. Hiring a cofounder is tough and people make mistake all the time, they've seen that before.

But sharing that specific article is a mistake, instead just stating it without emotion is probably better.

I know it's tough, I was in a similar position with a cofounder who really didn't work out and I really resonate with that line "I do miss that naive me though, there is something wonderful in trusting your fellow man that I can never quite regain, which is a shame.". My experience also made me lose that bright sunshine of naivety and easy trust that I had and for a long time I was incredibly bitter about my ex cofounder. But, it's not a good strategy to be publish it with a wording this emotional, instead just being very matter of fact about it, describing the main issues in broad terms is enough.

I'm happy you had your catharsis, smackeyacky. Mental health is important, and seeing yourself reject bad behavior, as well as sharing your emotions with your peers, are both excellent ways to feel better.

If you need to share your anger with the world, this quality essentially has nothing to do with your former partner, but has everything to do with your future partners' perception of your coping strategies. The red flag is that you may spend unnecessary energy holding on to things.

The mark of responsibility is sucking up and admitting that it was 100% your mistake, and that he was just a particularly tall rock you had to climb.

To quote a musician, scream it to the trees. (Ventilate to those for whom it has zero cost; your spouse, your friends; not all potential future partners.)

Likewise as an investor or prospective employee I would look at this and quite easily be turned away. Here is someone who doesn’t have the register of a leader, and whatever red flags people willingly broadcast, the obvious signs are often only the tip of the iceberg.

The explanation can be shared with potential investors in private if needed, as part of due diligence. There's no essential need in the piece being public.

The author claims to be the victim but his writing reeks of someone you wouldn't want to share an office with (to put it mildly).

In partnerships, I don't think it's fair to blame incompetence. After all, you're the one evaluating their competence at the beginning, and it's really your fault if you choose someone who doesn't have the needed skill. It's not their fault that they signed up for a job they couldn't do, since it's hard to see ahead just precisely what the job description is going to be. Things in startups are just that hectic, and there's a lot of learning-on-the-job and wearing multiple hats.

That's why it's so crucial to pick the right co-founders. You just gotta see through the chutzpah and do your due diligence. Once you've made the decision, you don't have much of a choice but to ride or die.

> [He] explained he didn't really know electronics and didn't understand what needed to be done.

> This was devastating.

This was a moment of honesty and vulnerability for him. To me this seems like good communication: stating exactly what your weaknesses are. I question why this was not openly shared before. Either there's some deep rooted insecurities in the co-founder or the culture at the company just didn't allow to be vulnerable.

I hope both of you find a way to move on with your lives.

> This was a moment of honesty and vulnerability for him. To me this seems like good communication: stating exactly what your weaknesses are. I question why this was not openly shared before. Either there's some deep rooted insecurities in the co-founder or the culture at the company just didn't allow to be vulnerable.

That's more easily explained by the cofounder being a master of bullshitting and realizing that the chips are up. It's not a moment of honesty and vulnerability when you've sold yourself as someone who can do those things and lied by using designs made by someone else.

Finding a good cofounder is similar to hiring and not treating the same way is what leads to this kind of issues. It's hard for someone who is new at it to properly vet the competence of someone random especially when it's in a field that person isn't an expert at

Wow that was a funny read, every one of those situation is upside down in a different way.

Though the author seems to have been legitimately maligned, I suggest there's also another side to the story.

Also - I would suggest to the author to take it down. It feels good probably to get it off your chest ... but in the end these things don't win any favours or make you look good. Imagine you have 200 employees, major customers, serious business, how is that going to look? It will look small, maybe even a bit petty in the big picture. You're bigger than that now, so you can put it in your past and laugh about it with customers in the future, just not in quite such a public way. Save the abridged version for the big network interview in 10 years or whatever when it's not so ripe and it can be told from a more easy going posture, like a 'funny thing that happened' instead of out of anger.

Great read; thanks for sharing this personal story. I’ve been in both your situation and your cofounder’s situation (as far as not contributing, not the gaslighting etc.) Sometimes, for whatever reason, it’s impossible for someone to actually make progress on their share of a startup, whether they have the skills or not. In either position it’s a great relief to both sides when one either bows out or fires the other.

> He admittedly had started a new job in a field he was keen to get into (IoT) after a period of being unemployed and was reluctant to devote too much time to SmartShepherd. This was fair enough but by now we had missed an entire season. In October 2016, I quit my job and started writing it myself.

>> was reluctant to devote too much time to SmartShepherd. This was fair enough

Huh? Your cofounder is openly reluctant to devote 'too much time to their own startup and your instinct is to regard this as "fair enough"? At some point, you need take personal responsibility instead of just flinging insults at someone else.

Your co-founder sounded overwhelmed with work. I don't understand what the author contributed to the company if he had no technical skill

Edit: I was mistaken. Author says responsibilities were balanced

Assuming the author isn't exaggerating, he selected the co-founder based on this:

"He knew electronics, he knew firmware, he could design and write the firmware for a device that would collect the information."

Then, at the end:

"We went out to the lab at the back of HAX where the Knobgoblin explained he didn't really know electronics and didn't understand what needed to be done"

Regardless of any load from his day job, it sounds like the co-founder had none of the skills he was selected for. Which would explain the ThingWorx hail mary, the earlier "find some other existing board that sorta meets the requirements" event, and so on.

Let's say you meet someone at a bar whom you proceed to tell about your plans to build a spaceship, and the stranger says 'oh yeah, I know ships, I know space, we can definitely get a prototype spaceship done'. You believe him, with apparently doing zero due diligence. Months go by, and there is no spaceship. The stranger you met at the bar then confesses 'I don't actually know anything about building spaceships.'

Replace the location and area of expertise, and this is the same story that transpired here. Sure, the other party is a fraud, but the eponymous "chump" is not the other party, it is the first party.

Is this bar at an aerospace engineering conference? Come on. Anyway, the author admitted to naivety and I thought their list of things to check at the beginning reflected what they learned.

It's very easy to write a post trashing someone else. Very, very easy. Much of that trashing may or may not be deserved, we don't know because we only have one party's account of it. What we do know, however, is the behavior of one party - the author. And the whole posts reeks of a failure to take personal accountability, minor add-on sentences here and there notwithstanding.

I don’t think we’re obligated to come to a judgment. The article resonates with people because they’ve had similar experiences (e.g., elsewhere in the thread I mentioned I’ve been both kinds of cofounders.) It would be great if the other cofounder would share what happened to them and how they saw things, but in the meantime it’s fine for one person to tell their story. Most personal accounts are written by the person who experienced it and comments aren’t solicited from all involved parties as they would be in a journalistic article.

But most personal accounts are truthful. Unless it's a criminal conspiracies to defame the other personal most statements will be truthful. It might not be all the truth but this writing is still a witness to events

Author here. My background wasn't firmware or embedded systems, more databases, mobile and server software. I found building firmware extremely difficult, the rest of the system was well within my range of experience. The rest of the time I was solely responsible for organising field trials, getting customers, finding money, and still finding the time to build the software stack. This probably doesn't come through clearly in the post.

The author states that he wrote the android app, the firmware, the web prototype and then the rewrite of the web service - what about that suggests he has no technical skill?

This was a great read but at the end of it all it's not a lesson anyone can learn from. It reads as a vent session with an underlying point of "check co-founder references". Would love to see a rebuttal from the other co-founder.

I think I found where the co-founder got the board. Not exactly the same, but very close:

From Alibaba: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Original-ODM-OEM-TI-C...

As a bonus, it appears to already have a physical button :)

The picture from the author's article: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wJjSUagWqGQ/YTAPCPEPDII/AAAAAAAAN...

Not to blame either side, but this is one of the reasons Founder Vesting is a thing. There should be a mechanism in place which strips the founder of equity when they quit. A lot of venture firms these days require it. But even if you not plan on rising venture capital, it's a good thing to have in place just in case.

It's a sort of thing you'd set up before starting to work on the company, to know what the ground rules are from the very beginning. Knowing that your stake is not a given is very humbling.

You can always have things like accelerated vesting in the event of a liquidity event, if the company is sold prematurely.

What if one founder is incompetent or doesn't work much, but also doesn't want to quit? Just wants to work 15 h/week and keep all stocks, the others working 60+h

I wonder if there're founder vesting agreements that handle such cases

This is why you don't start a company with a stranger. An all to common story.

> I feel there is zero chance that dude will ever read any of this anyway

Given that this hit HN, I estimate there is a pretty high chance the counter-party will read this.

> That little circle of exposed circuit? That's a touch pad. Yes a touch pad. Not a switch. No, a switch circuit with a physical switch doesn't look like that. Yes I'm sure.

It's funny how confident he is here, because that is actually not a touchpad, it's a trace for a membrane pushbutton.

> I think sharing this story reflects poorly on me also. Perhaps finding out somebody has been telling you lies so they could continue to participate isn't a great sin. Perhaps I was simply too focused on getting shit done in impossible timeframes to realise not everybody can cope with that kind of strain. It's all yesterday now and little can be done about it, other than document it for posterity (and full disclosure) and move on.

A self-aware essay that comes from the heart. Thank you for posting.

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