Title: Hello HN,<p>First off, I'm a regular HN member with 4-figure karma (if it matters). I'm at a loss and need advice.<p>I am the technical co-founder of a 5 year old company with $2M in annual revenue and 5 F/T employees. Over the past 18 months, I've become increasingly at odds with my business partner. My partner already has a relative working for us, then last year brought in a "designer" who is a close, personal friend and gave this person free reign on redesigning all of our print and web properties. Problem is, this person is a traditional graphic designer with no web experience. My design skills aren't superb, but I know UI/UX basics, how to measure and test things, seo fundamentals, etc. My partner has basically given this friend an executive marketing position.<p>Our traffic has been flat for a year or more. Our sales are down slightly. Instead of hustling, working on SEO/SEM, learning analytics and a/b testing, good product and customer development–basically all the things a non-technical co-founder should do–my partner and collegue waste countless hours dicking around with pointless design aesthetics or useless networking events. Over the same period, my partner has had personal issues as well (left his wife).<p>Last year, after some conflicts between myself and this designer, I told my partner this person had to go. He agreed but never followed through. When I pressed this issue, he simply claimed this person is "too valuable". Since then, we argue constantly. Maybe I'm wrong, but as I see it, a year + is a long enough "experiment" ... this person is doing nothing to improve sales, there's a major conflict of interest, and should go. With my business partner, we might be past the point where the damage can be repaired. There is definitely no trust on my part.<p>We each own 50% of the company and are the only board members. In multiple meetings with an attorney, I discovered that our company has no deadlock provision for resolving major decisions. Even more interesting–I never signed the buy-sell agreement in our corporate papers (he did). So, technically, I could sell my stake to anyone at any time–but he can only sell his shares back to the company. Other than an outside company acquiring all or half of the company, the only other option would be for me to move to simply dissolve and split or sell the assets.<p>There is so much technical knowledge about the business in my head, that I'm fairly certain it couldn't function well without me (at least not without a solid transition period).<p>What to do? I have a family and the company has treated me well financially. But there are a lot of things I still want to do startup and entrepreneur-wise. Do I give an ultimatum? Can I shop my half of the company to others in the industry without alarming them?<p>Thanks HN. You're a constant source of insight and inspiration.
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