wussyib

Hi Everyone. First off, thank you all who gave feedback. It was all very helpful.

So I sat down for lunch with my friend about a week ago. As far as he was concerned, it was just to go over the first draft of the business plan. Mid way through our Jersey Mike's subs, I eased into the discussion by asking him how his work load was at his 9-5, and if he was handling everything okay. After that, I basically just voiced my concern over his bandwidth within the context of having 2 other full-time co-founders w/ no income being dependent on him and his output.

I made my case, and made sure that he understood it wasn't an issue of ability, but really just a logistical issue of him being physically available to do the work that's been tasked to him. And asked him if he was comfortable having the livelihood of 2 other co-founders (1 who JUST got married, and another with his 2nd kid on the way) in his hands. I think when I put it that way, it really dawned on him that taking a week to do anything when 2 of us don't have income is a huge responsibility on his part. Long story short, everything ended very amiably. We actually went to go see Hobbit afterwards.

Surprisingly, he said he still wanted to be a part of the project just for the sake of participating something he believed in. I told him we'd love to have him help to any capacity, but at least now instead of resenting when he was late on something, we'd be thankful for his help.

I'm 100% confident that I made the right choice. I feel we (the remaining team) have already benefited from it, because in the last 2 weeks of holiday... the ex-cofounder was supposed to help with some additional feedback since he wasn't doing anything, but I haven't heard from him since. Which is probably what would have happened even if he was still a co-founder. So at least our destiny is not in the hands of someone who doesn't have as much on the line.

Again, thanks for everything!

-Noah Kim, Kowop.com

I feel I'm taking it on because I have too. I have a 3.5 year old, and a wife who's 7 months pregnant. When 2-3 days go by with no answer to an email from one of my partners.. and I have to wake up to no job and a family I have to support, I guess I've taken it upon myself to just do what needs to get done.

Your assessment is correct in that this issue has never been communicated before. We're only 1.5 months into the project, so it hasn't had an opportunity to happen until now. Which is also the same reason why it's scary. If one can't stay motivated for a handful of weeks at the inception of a project, how's that going to look in a year?

I don't really have anything to hide from Y combinator, it's community, or my friend. This is all stuff we will be discussing shortly.

Thanks for your time and advice. I've came to the same conclusions as yourself already, but It's good to know that someone with more experience then me echo's the same thoughts. The main reason I brought him on was to be the motivator, ironically. Although I lead the product vision, as well as doing the actual front-end grunt work, I wanted to hand-off the motivation role so I could concentrate on other things. As it stands now, not am I only trying to keep myself going, I'm trying to keep him going as well.. and it's already starting to mentally drain me. Thanks again.

To be fair to him, and provide you with more details... he was on a business trip for a few days. Within those few days, I had sent him about 4-5 emails, 2 of which specficially requested some details for an accelerator application. It took him 3 days to respond to it, and he still hasn't actually provided everything I needed. It was literally just where you gradated, what year, what's your best accomplishments, etc.. I want to be fair to him, but I'm personally kind of a "don't bullshit me" type of person. I personally find it unreasonable that even in the midst of your business travel, you can't find 10 minutes to email back your co-founder when he's doing your job anyways. Am I being unreasonable?

Well, that specifically would not work for him, because he actually has money. Financially there's only about 4k into the project, primarily because me and the non-tech guy helped some living expenses for the back-end developer, who's not as fortunate as us. If we parted ways with the non-tech guy, I'll have to reimburse him 2k, which is not a big deal.

Thanks for the feedback. The one thing I was considering, was asking him to join the rest of the team by quitting his job. I'm not saying this will make him into some epic team-member, but what I do know for sure, is that his current lack of motivation is due largely in part that he hasn't "burned his ship" so-to-speak. IF i presented that, and IF he actually said "okay.. i'll do it". Does that change your analysis at all?