10 reasons why you should fire your co-founder right now

It’s been a while since I have written something for the startup community. But after hearing recent experiences of some of my close-friends-cum-founders, and looking back at my own personal experiences, I decided to write about this less-talked-more-felt kind of topic – firing your co-founders.

Your co-founder is one of those very few people who believed in your idea right from the start. He/she is one of your first ‘Yes, this is awesome’, out of those 99 other ‘this will not work’ opinions. And you will find a family in him. I did,and I still do.

After spending hours on discussing how your idea will solve the problem, how your services will reach customers, who will look after what, each other’s expertise, “Iwilltakecareofit” phrases, ‘50%-tera-50%-mera’ equity distribution and list of crazy-weird names, you will finally kick-off the company, your own company.

Related read: Qualities that can make you a better startup founder

Excited, you will start the operations of your startup; you will do the market surveys, build the business model, create your first MVP, and will collect your feedback.

You can’t tell who can save you from drowning, until you all jump into the waters.

 This is my philosophy of working with people.

You will be introduced to the ‘harsh’ realities of your product only after you take your first MVP to potential customers. You will find out what you have developed is completely different than what the customer is expecting, or you have chosen the wrong platform, or have developed a wrong product and much more. You will learn, adapt, improve, and move forward and will gain some traction, and will have some customers.

During this complete startup journey, you will go through a lot of opinion clashes, debates with your co-founders, denials, and betrayals too. And that’s when you will start getting a feeling that this is not how it is supposed to be. Believe me, this is the right moment that you should think of your vision, vision behind building the product, the startup.

When it all boils down to making a choice, vision is the best guide.

Also read: Top 10 reasons why startups fail

Here are top 10 reasons that you should fire your co-founders right now.

1. Your personal relationship has changed and you no more share the ‘beer time’ secrets with each other.
2. The excitement in the association has died.
3. They have stopped taking responsibility for the situations and have gone into a ‘go-give-a-reason’ mindset.
4. They don’t show up for important meetings with investors and your startup advisors. Their priorities have changed.
5. They care about the title more, than the responsibilities involved.
6. Your startup is a part-time, glamourous activity for them.
7. They are not adding any value to the team and to the startup as a whole.
8. They are mistreating the employees, vendors, and customers.
9. They are taking actions that are in conflict of interest without disclosing them with you in prior.
10. They have started lying about various administrative and material aspects of the startup.

Now these are only few and the most likely to be seen reasons. You can have your own reasons, and I would love to hear from you about your experiences too. So, if you have anything to share please add it into comment section below.