Dispensing with a Co-founder

My about-to-be co-founder expressed hesitation. He's an undergrad student who left university for several years to work in IT, then returned and basically had to start over, so he's got a couple of years left, while I'm graduating in about seven months.

Effectively, he said that he didn't want to incorporate because the expense (90 bucks, if) wouldn't be justified if the venture failed, plus we'd be out the $35 required to formally dissolve.

Instead, we just bought a couple of domains from GoDaddy, and a year of hosting.

As you can imagine, this left me unsettled and severely doubting his commitment. The idea is going to be very capital-intensive, and simply can't tolerate founders who are going to waver on it. Although he brings some pretty good knowledge and connections, I wouldn't call him indispensable. My biggest concern going forward would be not having enough time to find a better co-founder, since the window of opportunity for this business is somewhat narrow.

We've got excellent personal rapport, but I don't think I can choose short-term goodwill over the chance to build something great. Sanity check? Advice?

Even in times when I was completely college-student broke, I could find ways to come up with $100 for the right opportunity.

I'd also question his availability and opportunity to contribute if he will still be finishing studies for a couple of years. The first couple of years are arguably the hardest, and most formative part, of the whole operation.

He's not planning to do that work. Yet. Don't dump him immediately. People are complicated, and sometimes they grow into things very quickly, or there was only one little thing missing. And it's possible you misunderstood his reasons for hesitation, or there was some other kind of miscommunication.

So, go talk to him again and explain your vision carefully and how much work it will be, and why $135 is trivial. It's worth a try. And if you can't agree, OK, then go find someone else, with his blessing, since he will see that he doesn't want to be part of your vision (at this time in his life).

But it also seems the timing isn't right. I think in the back of his mind he might still want to do the school thing. I know I do.

I always thought it was several hundred at least