Ask HN: CTO wants me to leave

This is sane advice if you're playing the standard VC game where you shop around for a co-founder, raise funds, and build a product (not necessarily in that order).

OP's situation sounds more like a bootstrapped small business where he invested his life savings and blood/sweat/tears. I'm not sure that vesting shares is ideal there -- perhaps a well defined shotgun clause or similar is more reasonable to handle unruly founders.

Keep in mind there is a strong conflict of interest. The business guys love to squeeze out the tech after launch or before a funding round to keep a bigger slice of the pie. Often they won't say that's why they are doing it, but bizarre things will happen like they'll promise to do things then not do them just to start a fight, etc..

I used to work for a startup called WorkSmart Labs. They got Google Ventures funding, but when they knew it would close they go me to agree to take a lot more vesting equity for several months. In exchange they were supposed to help with some things to help my wife's green card process - changing addresses I was taxed and paid at to a joint residence, joint health insurance, etc.. They were happy to pay me less cash, never did the paperwork they promised, and ditched me right when the deal closed so the unvested equity was worthless.

You should watch out for similar very dirty behavior. I don't know if you are in SV, but we hear people all the time talking about things like writing every single line of code for the product, then getting kicked out after funding.

I'm surprised at all of the responses calling for the CTO to be fired. It's very common to have founders who are very good at the very early stage but lack the experience to scale the technology, the team, the culture and the business.

Ask yourself these questions: * Are the CEO cofound and CTO in cahoots, engaged in a malicious equity grab? If so, you chose partners poorly, move on post-funding. If not, then there's probably something important to listen to here. Then ask: * Are your technical and project execution chops going to take the company to the next level of technical, organizational and business scale? If so, you chose a CTO poorly and your CEO co-founder is a fool, move on post-posting. If not, then you have another choice: * Are there other ways you can help the technology, organization and business grow? If so, discuss that transition instead of an exit. Otherwise, be grateful for the lessons learned and move on post-funding.

In all of the "move on" cases, assess that your equity position is aligned with your contribution to where the company will be when it's ultimately profitable or liquid. If it's still very early stage, that proportion may be very small but it will be better to have a small bit of something successful that a large portion of a failed company.

Set aside ego, consult an attorney (as advised elsewhere), don't engage in scorched earth and figure out if these are people you want to continue working with, you can contribute getting the company to the next level and if so, in what role.

> And who the fuck does this guy think he is that he can tell a cofounder to leave? You are his BOSS.

This is the key point. OP founded the company. Presumably he has close to a 50% equity stake. There are other CTOs available -- ditch this one you can't trust immediately.

This may be an unpopular sentiment, but I would do three things:

1) Hire an attorney to make sure your equity is safe 2) Negotiate for an above-market-rate consulting engagement that will continue to pay your bills in return for ~!0 hours a week of consulting and... 3) Start something else.

You have a unique skill set that allows you to start company that go on to raise money, generate revenue, and hire people. This is waaay more valuable than your ability to write code at a growth company.

Just my thoughts.