31–40 of 72 posts
It's very hard to advise when we don't know what your revenue model is... Is it an ad rev or freemium web app or are you selling tires online for example? If you clarify just a little the advice will be orders of magnitude better..
My gut says your cofounder is not the main problem.
Identification of the real cause of the problem is your top priority. Rather than some of the suggestions in this thread that would most likely result in an unpleasant ending of your venture I'd suggest that both you and your co-founder seek help from a third party you both trust to give you good advice, and that has relevant experience. Another thing you should do is talk to your customers, and figure out what it is…
My first advice would be for both you and him to read "The Art of Profitability" by Adrian Slywotzky. It's essentially an encyclopedia of deals and a very good book. (Derek Sivers summarizes it here: http://sivers.org/book/ArtOfProfitability)
Really depends on the niche and target audience, but if you become very vocal about what you do, you might be able to snag a few initial customers to get things rolling so you can then have some breathing room to make the right decision.
In my opinion, this means he admits he cannot live up to his end of your verbal contract. He should step aside and relinquish at least enough of his stake to attract someone good enough to do it right and take over.
"My co-founder sux. I met a friend, with whom I founded a company. He is the tech guy, I do the sales. Now he is "finished" with the service, but it isn't the quality we need and doesn't have the features our customers want. It's very tough to sell this beast. He always argues that those are the best features and won't implement what customers want as they do not know what they need. He's always comparing his work to…
On the consumer end, everything is perfect. Sales are up and user base is doubling every 2 weeks. Mixed responsibility. (I do customer support, SEO, design, etc and we share marketing ideas)
On the business end, we are still stuck with crappy deals: low margins, poor brands, etc. His responsiblity.
We are currently considering bringing in a sales guy/girl (for equity & comission). But while I still have a ton of work on the tech side, my co-founder who was supposed to be CEO and sales has so far failed on the sales dep and is not impressing me with his biz decisions nither. Thats the big worry.
Everyone is great at Sales if they are passionate enough about what they are trying to create. Think differently about that as well.
Who calls the shots? If it is you, you need to call a shot right now or drum this up as future business experience. A great leader will accept responsibility and do something about it.
Good luck as those who hope die fasting according to Hemingway. You have a great chance to be a leader and turn this situation around. However, it may be a case of cutting your losses and moving on. If you want something bad enough you can bounce back. Savings/Smavings... non-sense talk.
You can position the route of x (him staying) = Death/failure (if you believe this in his current role). Thus, you may be able to offer Y (maybe some "departure" equity shares) so you can maybe bring in some more aligned resources. Bottom line, this is your marriage, so you need to get communicating or you are bound for failure.
I hope this is not the case.
A co-founder is no different from a marriage. Communication is everything. Hell, go see a marriage counselor if you have to.
"My co-founder sux. I met a friend, with whom I founded a company. He is the tech guy, I do the sales. Now he is "finished" with the service, but it isn't the quality we need and doesn't have the features our customers want. It's very tough to sell this beast. He always argues that those are the best features and won't implement what customers want as they do not know what they need. He's always comparing his work to…
Guess I should of been more clear. We are a marketing startup. We have contracts with businesses and our product is sold to consumers (average Joe). On the consumer end, everything is perfect. Sales are up and user base is doubling every 2 weeks. Mixed responsibility. (I do customer support, SEO, design, etc and we share marketing ideas) On the business end, we are still stuck with crappy deals: low margins, poor bra…
Don't you mean their product ? Or are you reselling/rebranding ?
In other words, is the transaction with the end-user yours or is it make by the businesses that you have the contracts with ?
Getting big name brands to sign off on an unproven scheme can be pretty hard, using lesser known brands as a way to gain entry is by itself not such a bad thing, and bad margins can be incrementally improved upon proven performance, so you have some leverage there if you work at it.
I understand your reluctance to spell the whole thing out here but if you want actionable advice then you probably should take the plunge or take it off-line somehow.
Even a salesperson that you bring on board is not going to be an instant game changer, bringing a sales pipeline up to speed takes considerable time.