Dear HN,<p>I&#x27;m in the middle of a personal struggle and want to hear what you would do.<p>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.<p>Over the next year we hired a dozen employees, gained hundreds of customers, and achieved profitability.<p>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.<p>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.<p>A couple days later, we were served a demand letter from this person&#x27;s high priced litigator demanding that his full equity be vested immediately.<p>Due to unfortunate lawyering nonsense, the company is not likely to have this deemed frivolous by the courts.<p>We&#x27;re now completely stuck. Our lawyers say it would cost $150,000 to fight this in court and would take 18 months. We don&#x27;t have that kind of money or time to spare. We&#x27;re being forced to accept an unfair deal giving this person equity he did not earn.<p>I don&#x27;t know if I can live with this outcome. I (and my other founders) have worked so hard for what we&#x27;ve built. I&#x27;ve given up my entire personal life for this company.<p>I don&#x27;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?<p>Tl;dr: Scumbag cofounder screwing the company over. No choice to bend over and take it. Would you walk?
Ask HN: Would you walk away or push onwards?