Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

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I know you're trying to avoid doing the slam dunk obvious right thing. There's almost zero upside to what you want to do. Even if you're cofounder hadn't left the odds are that your startup would fail. That's the nature of startups.

The $10k won't change that. Your cofounder leaving makes it even more likely your startup will fail. And that means that should the startup fail, your startup will have failed and you will have done the wrong thing.

On the other hand, if you disclose the status to the investor, the worst thing that can happen is that you walk away from a troublesome project with a potential future investor who sees you as a person of integrity. The best thing that can happen is exactly the same as the best thing that can happen if you don't disclose. And the odds of that best thing happening are improved because you don't have to waste energy on a web of deceit and because you have an ally who will talk well of you.

A person is only as good as their word.

"Even if you're cofounder hadn't left the odds are that your startup would fail."

I think that's a shitty outlook. Of course your startup has odds of failing, but if you quit on your idea because of this hiccup, your chance of failure is 100%. These things happen. Be 100% up front with your investor, tell him you need some time to find a new co-founder, and then go find one. If the investor can't stomach this challenge and wants his money back, all good - his money wasn't worth the hassle of having an investor with a low risk tolerance. But perhaps he's someone who either believes in you or your idea, and would want you to persevere and get this thing off the ground, not jump ship at the first sign of difficulty.

Your other options are to hire some freelancers/developers to help you take your early stage prototype to a public-facing finish line. Or learn to code yourself, that's always an option ;)

> If the investor can't stomach this challenge and wants his money back, all good - his money wasn't worth the hassle of having an investor with a low risk tolerance. But perhaps he's someone who either believes in you or your idea, and would want you to persevere and get this thing off the ground, not jump ship at the first sign of difficulty.

That's not entirely fair. If the investor had been told there was a team in place, and relied on this in making an investment decision, a co-founder leaving is a material event that the OP has an ethical if not legal duty to disclose. This is especially true since none of the money has apparently been spent.

It was my mistake not to explain correctly the situation. The investor knows the fact that the co-founder leaves and I hire a freelancer to continue with the development, no matter this, he decide to invest.

> Of course your startup has odds of failing, but if you quit on your idea because of this hiccup, your chance of failure is 100%.

I don't think brudgers was being negative, but rather saying something like, "this event doesn't suddenly change the most likely outcome of your startup, which was, and still is, failure."

This is an opportunity to fail or pivot with integrity (or, of course, to stay the course and find new talent).

Suppose everything goes swimmingly and the prototype gets finished for $10k of freelance work. The company is still in a bad position because the money is gone and so is the development talent. So to continue it probably has to raise more money. But now it does so with a track record of not being honest with investors...remember, the original investor put their money in with the expectation that after the $10k was gone there would still be a way to get development done...but there isn't.

Even if every person really does have their price, $10k is pretty low to sell one's integrity. At least among anyone I'd care to associate with.

The truth is that the investor knows the situation, te co-founder leaves before the investor decide to invest and he told me that the situation doesn't change the fact that he want to invest and he is doing so because he trust in me.

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