Ask HN: I'm lost. Please help

If you don't respect your co-founders then you need to either address the fundamental interpersonal issues or quit. Everything else is an excuse.

If you choose the former, it should start with a frank but non-confrontational conversation among all of you where you discuss what is and isn't working with your relationship. Don't overfocus on the business. The day-to-day of a startup grows from the relationship among the co-founders. That's always at the root.

For example, if the business model isn't working, why don't you have a relationship where you can say "Guys, this business model isn't working. We have to do something different. Let's figure this out."? Over-focusing on the business will result in a laundry-list conversation when everyone just unloads their grievances all at once. It's not productive.

If going into the conversation you feel the urge to let your co-founders "have a piece of your mind" then don't have the conversation. You need to be calm, in control, and aware of the real source of your own frustrations.

Most likely there's a long series of missed-but-unstated expectations, both big and small. You have to acknowledge your own responsibility in this situation, viz., as a co-founder you have a responsibility to bring these up the second they happen to avoid a "blow up" situation. Yet here you are, in just such a situation. You're partially responsible for that, whether your co-founders are actually idiots or not.

You have to be prepared for your co-founders to feel similarly about you. Avoid the trap of allowing the conversation to become a tit for tat. "You forgot to publish that blog post." "Yeah, well, you forgot to follow up with a potential investor!" etc.

It might help to reframe this conversation from one where you're going to tell them all the things that aren't working to one where you ask for help with the things you think aren't working. If you don't want your co-founders to be defensive then you need to be vulnerable -- probably much more vulnerable than you're comfortable being.

Good luck. Welcome to startups.

and these are also family members. Doing business with family can be very tricky, let alone when you try to create competition with your own family...

Have you considered freelancing ? It may provides a salary, with enough free time to keep going on the project without having to sacrifice your free time. You may also learn from it the basic of business, which can help understand or argue with your cofounders.

This would send a clear message to them, too : your project is not my main one anymore because I can't get a living from it, and you're about to loose me.

You can then put a stop on new features building and only focus on bug fixing, until actual money is raised.

If they finally succeed, you can easily stop freelancing. And if they don't, you will have made contacts that make it easier to find a new job not on the corporate side.

I really feel for you situation, and I would love to help by chatting. I've been involved in many different startups, from working with friends on no salary, to our current $12 mm series-A endeavor. I've seen tons of startups rise and fall, all sorts, and I think I may be able to lend some advice or just be a sounding board.

Please send me an email if you're interested: carter@gameclosure.com.

Everyone seems to be talking about "sunk cost" here. But it seems like you're working on a product that believe in. Is it possible for you to disrupt the company's current trajectory and try to get things onto a better course?

If your co-founders are doing things wrong, perhaps you can do some research into their side of things and figure out how to do things better. Teach them things, and learn together. Do their jobs for them if you have to. Since they are family, perhaps they will be easier to persuade?