Help, what should I do when 2 founders have had a falling out?

If I could upvote this 1000 times I would! These two mentalities seem to cause the most conflicts if you don't address them soon. But if you make it work, wonderful things can start to happen.

You guys need to stop justifying your points of view to each other and empathize more. Observe:

> Tom mentions (1) that we both have not volunteered to write content for the website. - I respond (1) by saying I am not very good at writing and currently I am swamped with a lot of work. ... Jerry responds (1) by saying that he's swamped too, he's working on three different projects simultaneously,

So, he says "the website ought to be done," and you guys start explaining yourselves and brush him off. This is bad, it makes people upset. Instead, you ought to go - "yeah man, I understand, the website is important and it sucks it hasn't gotten done yet. What would we have to do to do that, while also keeping up with our other commitments?"

It's like customer service - you can't always fix the problem, but if you tell the customer they're wrong/stupid they're going to get pissed no matter what. At least say, "I heard you and understand that's frustrating you." Then ask how you can get it done without the ship sinking. At that point, Tom might even say, "Well, let's just do an hour a week to make sure it doesn't stagnate, but mostly have it on the back burner" or something like that - heck, you might even not do the hour a week at that point, but now he's saved face instead of gotten embarrassed. You guys sound like very logical and intelligent people, but don't underestimate how important it is for people to feel taken care of emotionally and save face.

> and says he’s been working (2) around 12-14hrs and on weekends for the past month. - Jerry accuses (2) Tom of not putting in as much effort as the rest of us are putting in. - Tom responds (2) by asking if we consider the website to be important (as it has not been updated for over a year). - Jerry responds (2) by saying that current projects take a priority,

No good, see? No empathy. Just accusing/defending yourselves. This always leads to bad places and isn't productive.

> and suggests (3) we could consider updating the website when work is less hectic (once we have transitioned the work to the new developers we hired). - Tom responds (3) by saying that he envisioned all us founders to be done with writing code by this point, and expected us to all be managing the developers or the sales/marketing side of things. - I try to explain (3) to Tom that we are still very small, we cannot afford really experienced developers, I can't envision (3) running our startup successfully without all of us coding for at least part of our time every day for at least couple of months more. I explain that we need to focus more (3) on the marketing and sales side of things but we can’t just jump into doing it fulltime right now. - Tom says (3) that we should use the developers we just hired to complete the projects. - I explain (3) that they are fresh out of college and need to be trained before we can trust them to handle a project and deliver it successfully. - Tom disagrees. (3)

Etc, etc, etc. Look, lots of arguing, not much empathizing and cooperating. This leads to bad places. I agree with Jacques that you guys need to lighten up, but also empathize more. Tom thinks the website and plan is important. You've got to say to him, "Tom, I understand you think the website and plan is important, and I agree. At the same time, we need to keep serving our customers. Do you have any ideas?" Listen without judging/disagreeing/explaining. You'll probably come up with something reasonable.

This doesn't seem fatal, no one's stealing or fistfighting or anything too bad. Some low morale during a bad economy and some arguments. Survivable. Just stop arguing, accusing, explaining, explaining, justifying, disagreeing - more empathy. Empathy fixes problems.

What I hear in the story is that Tom is feeling incredibly frustrated at having to not only plan for the company's long-term growth, but that he's repeatedly brought up the fact that you and Jerry's reactive strategies work to help increase everyone's workload. And this particular latest straw, in which Jerry not only agrees to extra work, but then tries to reassign it to Tom, is viewed by Tom as something only a dedicated crazymaker would do.

If I were in your shoes, I would hire a facilitator for the next meeting. An earlier response mentioned being on the same page as being very important and I have to agree. I think having a professional facilitator will help you, Tom and Jerry (wait -- Tom and Jerry like the cat and the mouse?) hear each other.

Good luck.

I think that's the best advice here. Under normal circumstances they could probably resolve these problems with little difficulty. It's easy to focus on the symptoms, but that's not the real problem.

The problem is that they're under the influence of an extra high dose of stress. They're not really themselves right now. The best thing they can do is constantly remind themselves that they're in a really stressed out state. If they can get past this and find a way to reduce their stress it's quite likely they'll be able to work together happily again.

I read once that in Heaven there are two golden thrones waiting for the first business partners who die liking each other.

Those thrones are empty.

So, to the fullest extent possible, don't worry about it.