Ask HN: Should I continue the VC process with my cofounder? equity advice?

2 pointsjoeyxiong2y ago1 comments

Hi folks, I recently launched an open-source project few month ago on GitHub that has got hundreds of stars and was in the on Hacker News front page for few days. Now, I'm considering making it be a product. I have been working on this project alone for several months, but recently I asked a pre-partner who is my former colleague and university classmate to join my startup. We applied for a VC together using my project and received an interview invitation.

I am the CEO, and he is the CTO, but it seems like he wasn't fully passionate with this product yet and hasn't contributed almost anything. we have several meetings and he always thinking of other ideas, but his ideas are seems unproved to be commercially viable. He has committed to dedicating half of his time to the project in the next 1-2 months, but I'm uncertain about how this relationship.

Should I continue with this partnership for the VC process? If not, is it advisable for me as a solo founder to apply for a VC and is it OK to apply VC alone? If I continue work with current pre-cofounder, how should we approach equity distribution given the current situation (he proposed 50% each)?

I would appreciate any insights or experiences you can share.

1 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

siegel2y ago

Yes, you can apply to VC alone. Some investors want to see a founding team. Some don't care.

But other than the desire to a have a co-founder in theory or to secure investment, why on earth would you continue with this co-founder? If they aren't contributing anything, why do you want to work with this person?

And 50-50 is absurd. 50-50 is, of course, always a recipe for deadlock. I've dealt with countless 50-50 co-founder situations where there was a breakdown due to deadlock. And those are almost always situations where the co-founders were enthusiastic working together at the start. (I'm a lawyer by the way - so I see worse case scenarios all the time.)

Here your prospective co-founder isn't contributing. You need to move on.

Happy to discuss my experiences with this and how you can extricate yourself as best as possible.