Hello everyone, for obvious reasons this will probably be a bit light on specifics, but I'm looking for some personal opinions and a bit of perspective really.

I'm in the position of co-founder in a startup, and I'm having serious doubts about the commitment/benefits of the other founder.

He approached me initially with an idea, we brainstormed casually for a month or two off-and-on, and then decided to make a go of it... and that's where his contributions have ended.

It was the plan that we'd both build the app together, we're both capable coders, and we'd split responsibility for all the non-coding tasks. It started well, we both collaborated and code was produced; however, due to his family/personal commitments I took on a heavier workload for the programming and he volunteered take responsibility for the more businessy side of things (registering the company, hiring an accountant, acquiring appropriate licenses, hosting, payments etc...).

Fast forward 3 months. The app is now almost complete, 99% by my hand (he contributed literally 1 class in the end), and I'm starting to put in place the finishing touches for launching. I've also taken on all the admin/business duties too, in order to keep the ball rolling.

His contributions:

  * Initial idea
  * Brainstorming of ideas/vision
  * 1 class in codebase ;)

My contributions:

  * Brainstorming of ideas/vision
  * All development
  * Register and manage servers (CI, test, and a prod box, email, database)
  * Register company, handle the accounts, and bank account
  * Licenses/legislation
  * Payment processing

I like the guy, and it was his idea, and we did both do a lot of chatting about what the idea should become; but I'm not really seeing that he's really pulling his weight to own 50% of the company, right now I could've probably got the same value out of chatting to a friend at the pub. I have no feelings that he's deliberately trying to screw me or anything of the sort, he's just not actually doing anything.

I'm not that short-sighted though. I'm aware that doing it alone could be significantly more difficult than with a partner. I'm conscious that he may very well come through in the long haul.

What do you think? Am I being a fool for thinking like this? Or a fool for going 50/50 with this guy because we're friends and it was his idea.

Thanks for reading! Any advice would be much appreciated.

tl;dr: Should I pull a Zuckerberg on my co-founder for welching on his responsibilities and leaving all the work to me?

user:	emerika
created:	December 3, 2011
karma:	2