Ask YC: Startup crisis. Out of money and tech co-founder has bailed.

I was in the process of writing a long post but here it is in a few points:

Ditch her. You don't need her and her screwy demands. That's pretty decent pay, I wouldn't have given her any equity. Do what you can to part ways as soon as you can.

Find another developer, on a contract no equity basis, if you can afford it somehow. If you can't you'll need to offer equity. Learning Python from scratch is an option but not a good one in my opinion. If you can afford to outsource, you can probably afford a semi-decent developer who is prepared to accept a decent sized share. Try and find someone who isn't going to screw you over, look worldwide and not just in your own backyard. As most of the work is done and you just need to get things refined to release an alpha or beta, it shouldn't take too much money in development costs. Then you can start whoring it out and getting some money to get things going.

I don't know what anyone else thinks but don't pay yourself. Invest all you can into the business. If it means you can only check on progress for an hour a day and you need to work part-time or full-time in Starbucks, then that's what you are going to have to do. Run it like you would a normal business. No one I know would have paid themselves that well before they've even started. If the idea and execution is good, it's a sacrifice worth making.

Good luck.

no project contract was signed - I was naive and had met her through a mutual friend, so I thought I could trust her and we could save some money.

There is a contract for the company set and equity structure.

Accidentally downed instead of upped you. Sorry. Will boost up another two of your posts.

That’s a hard spot to be in. I can hear your pain on how you want you idea to be launched. Honestly, learning django is no brainer. Django guys have done an amazing job building the framework. On a side note, why is your prototype taking that long? In today’s world, you can build complex apps faster than you can think off. Here is some links that can be handy for your django learning. All the best!

This is a excellent wiki with lot of tutorial/information/samples about django http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Tutorials http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2006/nov/16/django-tips-get-mos.... http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2007/sep/04/django-accelerated/ http://www.slideshare.net/simon/advanced-django/ http://djangoplugables.com/ http://www.djangoproject.com/community/ http://djangobook.com http://showmedo.com/videos/video?name=1100000&fromSeries.... http://showmedo.com/videos/series?name=v7kABKL6R http://blog.disqus.net/2007/03/11/a-django-primer/ http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-django....

It sounds to me like this is a set of circumstances where the developer had most of the leverage, you failed to recognize it, and got burned.

Lots of businesspeople manage low-equity (or no-equity) employees. Their business isn't jeopardized when one of them threatens to quit. Some of them are savvy enough to know how to keep projects small and focused and checkpointable, so they're never more than a milestone into the weeds and can always hand working code off to the next developer. Others simply pay more than 80k for a lead developer. Many of them pay large premiums to hired gun consulting teams who will deliver pro work without caring about equity.

80k may sound really expensive to you. For a startup, it kind of is. But it's right smack in the middle of the ballpark for an experience Python webdev. It doesn't sound like you were really doing this person a favor. Chances are, when she poked her head up and looked around a few months into the project, it seemed like she was doing all the work and taking a sucker's cut.

She doesn't have to be right about that. She gets to do whatever she wants. People renegotiate comp all the time. You didn't sell her. She left. Learn more about managing people before you hire or contract more of them.