Title: I&#x27;m the technical co-founder of a pre-revenue startup. We were 51&#x2F;49% to them and took a small round of pre-seed funding (~$100k) so our cap table is approx 40% for me and co-founder, 10% option pool and 10% investor. We have very standard shareholder agreements for 4yr reverse vesting with 1yr cliff.<p>My (non-technical) co-founder spent $10k to create the initial website over a year ago with the idea. I joined about 11 months ago and since then the idea has changed a bit, we&#x27;ve built loads of products, grown from 2k users to 60k users and continuing to grow due to dominating SEO for our niche.<p>Recently my co-founder said they wanted to work on it themselves. I said I didn&#x27;t want to leave. They suggested I go down to 3% equity and they continue. I said they would need to buy out my equity at a fair price.<p>My co-founder doesn&#x27;t have the money, and the business only has around $40k cash in the bank right now. My co-founder also won&#x27;t entertain the idea of raising external money to buy me out, or monetizing the site right now.<p>To me this seems ridiculous as I&#x27;m literally just giving away my equity after spending 11 months building the tech and growing the business. Right now if we stuck adsense on the site, we&#x27;d generate $5k&#x2F;mo, and we have inbound sales leads looking to spend upwards of $40k with us. Basically, the business is primed to make money.<p>They will not entertain the idea of me buying them out for cash.<p>What are my options here? It&#x27;s basically being presented to me as &quot;Take the 3% otherwise you&#x27;ll own 40% of nothing&quot;. I don&#x27;t really want any equity in the company at this point if I&#x27;m not involved.
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