Ask HN: How to deal with lazy cofounder?

Hi everyone,

We're a small startup of two. Lately, I found my colleague is working less and less. The code he writes is mostly buggy and undocumented. Even the unit tests are not working; so when we run them, we thought something was wrong but then saw the problem was in the unit tests themselves.

I don't want to micromanage, I don't want to be a bitch, but I also do not want to be the only one working in the company, or to see collapse of our hard work.

Is there any way to deal with this, or is there anyone who've been in a similar position?

Have the difficult conversation now before you have "kids".

I have seen something similar and it didn't end well. Though the partners brought very different things to the table. People also invest energy in cycles so it could just be "founders doubt" or "burnout".

Make sure you are both still having fun...and use all of the lessons you can from dating and marriage. This could be like the business version of "seven year itch".

When we started a product, we agreed to split shares according time spent on the product. For example, I worked about 40 hrs per week (we all had another (main) job initially), but other 3 people worked ~10 hrs per week. So in the end I had higher stake.

If you both work full-time, this strategy will not help. However, you can find a measure of value. Maybe your partner is good at something else, like promotion and marketing. Then you should discuss responsibilities and maybe he can do some smaller features, but will focus on something else. If that will not work, I think you just can't keep work together, that will be a waste of time and a road to failure.

I guess it depends in part on how strong your relatiomship is and how feasible it is to determine what the root causes are and effectively address them. Due to my undiagnosed health issues, I was always accused of laziness as a child. I found it an unfair accusation and was very frustrated. Because of that, I was pretty tolerant of the appearance of laziness in one of my children. He and I have been able to resolve underlying issues of various sorts and he seems a lot less lazy these days. Similar issues with his father could not be resolved and we divorced. My relationship to my ex was just not as strong as the one I have with my kids and he was not as willing to look for and resolve the root causes.

Best of luck.