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Comment by oncletom | Hacker News Reader

We agree this should be the case. And eventually bank account reports should be available to anyone in the company as long as the details do not create a possible business threat.

On the other hand, I requested the account details but never got access to them. What do you do when you insist and get nothing? At some point you stop asking.

Considering the structure we had in the company, I am not sure there were legal obligations for the company to deliver the accountancy reports. If the CFO and CEO do not want to share the information… I never found a legal way to oblige them to do so. The CEO owned 52% of the company. Aka `root` access to the machine.

Maybe I am wrong on that part, feel free to add anything I have missed (I do not pretend to know everything, I just wish I would have know all that sooner).

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OK, I may have misunderstood quotes like this...

"The tension between us (the cofounders) eventually arose and grew. I paid less attention to ours conflicts because I felt it was useless to waste energy."

I took 'cofounder' to mean an ownership stake. Therefore at least as regards my limited experience, a seat on 'board' and therefore access to management accounts.

Were you an employee? (I'm the one volunteering to proof read the blog post, so its best if we are clear).

Yes I had shares in the company.

Technically, there were two companies:

- a holding where the cofounders owned shares as of 52, 30, 12 and 6 percent. This company had no business activity and no employee. I owned 6 percent of its 100K capital; - a startup which was 100% owned by the holding, sharing the same CEO. I was employee and paid by this company (well, "paid"…).

I had a vote decision in the holding, not the startup. And for some reason I had a reason not to work anymore for the startup (including being fired when we think about it), I would have to sell my shares. If you want to evict someone, this is a great system.

Also, the 12% shares were held by the spouse/partner of the CEO, creating a 50/50 balance which let all the power in his hands, whatever the scenario is.

That is a reason why fighting was useless. And making a viable platform was more a chance for us to get funded, to have an external observer who could eventually rectify the power balance.

when i was very young - 20 years old - i was a part of similar situation once. I hope i learned form my mistakes :) The main lesson is that you're just an employee with 6% of [easily claw-back-able] shares, nothing more. Whereis you sound like you felt like you were something more than that. You didn't even had the power to initiate audit check of paperwork and financial info - minimum power of a "minor" stakeholder.

And this even without getting into having CEO girlfriend in the mix. Man, the time-proven standard practice to not have GF/relatives/etc... in the chain of command of their BF/relative/etc.. exists for the reason.

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