Ask HN: Would you walk away or push onwards?
I'm in the middle of a personal struggle and want to hear what you would do.
1 year ago, myself and 3 partners quit our day jobs to work on our SaaS product full time. I had already built an MVP on nights and weekends. We used that to raise a seed round.
Over the next year we hired a dozen employees, gained hundreds of customers, and achieved profitability.
Everything is great, except for one co-founder. For reasons ranging from lack of cohesion to poor communication to employee complaints, it was clear that this person needed to be removed from the company.
All other founders agreed and we removed this person. We offered this person a reasonable package (equity vested into, severance, keep benefits, etc) and he verbally agreed.
A couple days later, we were served a demand letter from this person's high priced litigator demanding that his full equity be vested immediately.
Due to unfortunate lawyering nonsense, the company is not likely to have this deemed frivolous by the courts.
We're now completely stuck. Our lawyers say it would cost $150,000 to fight this in court and would take 18 months. We don't have that kind of money or time to spare. We're being forced to accept an unfair deal giving this person equity he did not earn.
I don't know if I can live with this outcome. I (and my other founders) have worked so hard for what we've built. I've given up my entire personal life for this company.
I don't know how much longer I can keep pushing through this. Is this a sign to move on or forge ahead and give this person something undeserved from my own hard work? What would you do?
Tl;dr: Scumbag cofounder screwing the company over. No choice to bend over and take it. Would you walk?