The Co-Founder Relationship
Oh boy. I could write about this ad infinitum, so I’ll keep it as brief as I can.<p>I left my business a bit over a year ago, and while I can cite dozens of immediate issues as the reason (literally dying from stress and anxiety - hospitalisations, inadequate compensation, dissatisfaction with direction), the fundamental problem was the relationship between me and my cofounder.<p>We were always a slightly odd pairing. We&#x27;d known each other since childhood, drifted apart, and drifted back together 12 years ago through a shared passion for making neat and innovative stuff - namely e-commerce sites. He was design, I was code. Simple stuff when it was two of us.<p>We grew, our roles shifted. He ended up orchestrator, managing day-to-day production, and generally ensuring that the team pulled together efficiently. I ended up sales, hires, customer relationships, strategy, and driving the technology - we built a nifty platform that allowed more efficient production. It worked well enough - he was good at tactical thinking, me strategic.<p>Where it fell apart - friendship, and our differing approaches to it. I covered his ass day in, day out, to clients, staff, and the investor who came in in our sixth year. I protected him from himself - and took the fall for pretty much everything that ever went wrong, as my attitude is that if nobody will take responsibility, I will, as only then can we actually do anything about it. I even did this when he actively undermined initiatives agreed upon in board meetings, damned fool that I am.<p>In return, he gaslit me and threw me under the bus, daily - and I never did anything to let him know this wasn&#x27;t OK, as I still saw the fragile boy who&#x27;d had a tumultuous childhood and had crazy social anxiety. On the odd occasion when I did say &quot;you broke it, you buy it&quot;, or &quot;you need to tell the investor why this isn&#x27;t happening&quot;, he&#x27;d stonewall me and the rest of the company for days on end. I never did figure out how to broach the topic.<p>Retrospectively, I got this really wrong - I should&#x27;ve let him suffer for his errors, so that he might learn from them. Instead I shielded him from reality, and took it on my shoulders.<p>I slowly but surely became a maniac - walking off the reservation when it got too much, stoning myself to sleep every night, and finding myself going into a full blown panic at the smallest things. I used to be, and am once more, pretty much implacable.<p>The final straw for me was when I had to go and renegotiate all of our client contracts, cap in hand, as we were overservicing for our fee schedule - mostly because the technical initiatives that would&#x27;ve helped efficiency got strangled in the crib in production in favour of short-term &quot;wins&quot; (not wins at all), as nobody, not me, not the architects and dev leads who I&#x27;d hired and nurtured could push back against him. I couldn&#x27;t in good conscience send the new client services director off to do this, as it would irrevocably taint guide relationship with clients, and I already knew the writing was on the wall for me, so him surviving me was essential if I was to leave the business without it being a total train wreck - so off I went. There was a lot of crying and shouting on clients&#x27; parts, and I had no option but to play officer hardass. Had I some, any, support from him I would have weathered it - but instead he gave me a hard time for upsetting the clients, and not a shred of thanks when I&#x27;d come back from days on the road, getting clients to agree to a 100%+ hike.<p>Ultimately, the investor lost confidence in me, the clients all hated me, as I was seen as the source of all problems, real and imagined, my mental and physical health took a massive slide, and I was asked to leave. I did so, gladly, and negotiated an exit which wasn&#x27;t terrible.<p>The last year has been illuminating, insofar as 2&#x2F;3 of the team has turned over (30&#x2F;45), they&#x27;ve gained only one client (I&#x27;d usually make 6+ £2M+ total value sales a year), and lost a few.<p>I can&#x27;t even feel schadenfreude over this, as it&#x27;s my damn fault for not stepping up and dealing with the elephant in the room - his and my relationship - and everybody suffered because of it.<p>My next business, I&#x27;m doing alone.<p>Also, it&#x27;s been great training for marriage, which I did shortly after leaving - I fucked up royally with wife #1 (co-founder - not actually married, but it&#x27;s a very similar type of relationship), and am endeavouring to do it right with real wife #1, by allowing her to make her own mistakes and learn from them, rather than shielding and protecting, which is my first instinct.