If you truly believe in them, as a person, irregardless of their new idea, I would stick together and find a way to make it work.
Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
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Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#12You are not a co founder, you are an employee. hint. founders get shares, employees get options.
you are now in the situation of whatever you can bargain for, you can get, whatever you can't bargain for, you don't get. Dealing with what you call a highly risk adverse person makes it hard to negotiate, because the most risk adverse action is bury the code and say goodbye (what they have proposed). It is likely you can change the action only by suggesting a less risky course of action.
I have been in a similar situation before, and tried to use Greed when only Fear was going to work. Many situations are like this. I now know more about sales now. I didn't get the source code (which I wrote and was useless to them) and it was probably for the best. If I didn't have the motivation to rewrite, i didn't have the motivation to start a company. Likewise, if you don't have the motivation to get new, fresh code written, you don't succeed either. There are many many ways to get code made, if you believe in this, find one. it will be the first of many trials.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#13I would look to some respected third parties in order to present and test your respective business bets. Maybe that would help each of you reassess risks and returns. What do your judges think the potential is for each?
Six programmer months of code is a lot of work, but also in the bigger view it is not that much for someone else to redo, especially if you've a clear model to work from. Perhaps you can secure rights to operate the service while someone else writes a new code line.
The other question is how does your founder see replacing you in his pivoted venture? Maybe your participation is worth more to him than he realizes.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#14>My co-founder has written all of the code >he holds a majority of shares >My co-founder has decided he wants to pivot >My co-founder has said he would be fine with me pursuing the initial idea >asked my co-founder for rights to use the existing code in my new venture, he refused Are you sure you are a co-founder? It sounds like you are an employee
I kinda disagree with this. Depends what percentage of the company OP has. Growth + marketing + content are critical functions despite what the HN crowd thinks.
Op has 0 percent is how I read it. Op has options.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#15You are not a co founder, you are an employee. hint. founders get shares, employees get options. you are now in the situation of whatever you can bargain for, you can get, whatever you can't bargain for, you don't get. Dealing with what you call a highly risk adverse person makes it hard to negotiate, because the most risk adverse action is bury the code and say goodbye (what they have proposed). It is likely you can…
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Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#16Sounds like you're walking away with a good lesson about finding the right cofounder and being aligned on the vision :) Probably not ideal in your current state of mind, but very valuable.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#17Stay true to your path, dear sir: you have conquered one quest, only to question another. The path ahead is fraught with forks in the road, but stay true to your ossified idea and question yourself as you do others.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#18Something I’ve found helpful: imagine you were starting from scratch today. Is this still THE problem you would want to work on? If not, move on. You’re right that 6 mo is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Sunk costs suck, but there’s no getting them back.
If it’s still a good problem, then maybe your cofounder is right and the solution you were working on won’t solve it. If he’s the tech guy and you’re the business guy, I would assume you’ve done more of the talking to customers, but maybe there’s a tech challenge he sees. Worth investigating.
Strongly suggest against getting wrapped up in cofounder conflicts - that definitely doesn’t solve a problem.
If this is THE problem you want to work on, and you think your solution was headed in the right direction, modern no-code tools like Bubble make developing an MVP doable for a nontechnical founder. Depending on exactly what you’re building, something even simpler like a newsletter or some Google Forms integrations can do it.
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#19I'm not sure if this is the correct advice but here is how I'd do if I were in your positions. Create a working MVP using no-code tools (they are all over these days) and try to get dedicated users or better yet some paying customers.
Now, start looking for a technical co-founder who shares your idea and vision. YCombinator's upcoming StartupSchool seems to have a dedicated focus on finding and matching co-founders. Try that.
If you are in the Valley, start pitching investors; if not, look for an Accelerator. :-)
Re: Ask HN: Co-Founder pivoting, what are my options?
#20>My co-founder has written all of the code >he holds a majority of shares >My co-founder has decided he wants to pivot >My co-founder has said he would be fine with me pursuing the initial idea >asked my co-founder for rights to use the existing code in my new venture, he refused Are you sure you are a co-founder? It sounds like you are an employee
I kinda disagree with this. Depends what percentage of the company OP has. Growth + marketing + content are critical functions despite what the HN crowd thinks.
Likewise. If their co-whatever wrote all the code, they sound like the employee. Bosses, visionaries, and founders typically don't write code, they delegate it to people who do.
Being an "idea person" is not comparable to being an "implementer." Truly exceptional individuals can be both, but I'm willing to wager that this whole venture was OP's idea, thus making him the "one true founder."
Diplomacy would be best for OP, but they shouldn't close the door on exploring their legal options. Especially if they have anything dated or timestamped that clearly establishes them as the originator of the idea or concept.
All in all, this is a valuable lesson for OP and they will walk away from the experience with wisdom to help them in their future ventures. Best of luck, OP.