RichardDL

We have this terrible situation where our late co-founder is underperforming badly. I mean way below any expectations. But of course in our contract we don't have anything about expectations or performance and we are in Europe(Spain). Things are not going well with him, this was way harder than expected for him. And he is willing to leave the company, but he wants his shares to vest before the cliff period. Otherwise he is happy to stay in the company.

And it just feels bad to give someone 5% of the company because he was with us for 8 months and sold to 0 customers.

Is the only way to bite the bullet and give him 5% or is there anything else we can do?

We are in an unusual situation where a potential angel investor wants to become a temp partner. We are a pre-seed recruitment AI tech startup and he has been a CEO and director for the last decade in one of the biggest recruitment firms in the world. He recently quit that job and now he is exploring things and would be willing to work with us for ~9 months. He would connect and sell the app to people in his network. He wants to help us grow quickly for about 9-12 months. Afterwards, he would be happy to step away and move on to something else. For our next meeting, we would need to come up with some options/proposals for equity and expectations.

We are thinking that he could be a great asset in terms of credibility, and connections and help with bringing in other investors. He also wants to put some money and lead other angel investors.

What are some things that we should be wary of? What should we consider before signing anything? How not to get screwed here?

A couple of months ago we brought in a new Co founder to be the head of growth. We are a young startup with a product and a few paying customers.

The new Co founder is experienced and smart. I'm sure he works hard. But today I expressed the concern that if we don't meet some minimum sales targets I won't be able to pay my rent and I will not want to continue with someone who isn't able to meet minimum sales targets. To him this sounded like an ultimatum, a deadline with the worst consequences. I realise it's not great to put conditions like that, adds pressure and risk. But on the other hand if I'm not clear with the expectations and consequences from the beginning I'm afraid this will happen abruptly at the end. We are all fulled by dreams and equity here. How to manage this situation where he is understandably afraid that I'll walk away with the app and he will be left with nothing if he isn't meeting some targets in another 4 months. It's like a probation period. And I don't really want to be stuck with someone who isn't able to sell. Any advice on how to manage situation like this would be very much appreciated.

I'm being asked to sign a co-founder agreement, but I'm not feeling very comfortable because, for the last 5 months, we had a product that was way beyond an MVP and so far we have only 1 client that found us and 1 partnership that he found. We had about 6 pilots and 2 of them were successful, but we didn't get any of them to pay us. We are a B2B Saas in the HR AI industry. And I'm worried that if nothing happens I'll be tying myself to a co-founder that is not able to bring clients and partnerships and later investments.

I'm the CTO and I'm the only one that can build the product, so I'm not worried about the product, but I'm worried about the business side of things. I'm not sure if I should sign the agreement or not. I'm not sure if I should ask for a clause that would void the agreement if we don't get any clients in the next 3 months.

I have been bringing this issue up for a while now, but he always says that he is working on it and that we have to be patient. Frankly, my confidence is not very high at this point. He is working hard, he is smart and a good person, he is dedicated and really wants to make this work. But when someone send out 200 emails in a month and gets only 1 reply and gives up on emails and starts to focus on things that are not related to getting clients, I start to worry.

I know reaching out to people is hard work and can be tedios and I know that it's not easy to get clients, but I'm not sure if I should be worried or not at this point. Also it's not the lack of clients that really worries me, but the lack of learnings about our product market fit.

He would be a CEO and we are onboarding another co-founder who would be focusing on sales because he isn't able to sell. But I'm not sure if that would be enough. And having a CEO who is not able to bring clients seems like a problem. I mean, you wouldn't make someone a striker that hasn't scored any goals.

It's a sensitive situation and I don't want my lack of confidence right now to destroy our relationship. But I also don't want to be tied to someone that may not be good enough.

Any advice would be appreciated