https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/nn3cbo/startup_dream_turned_to_nightmare_partners_tried/ Press J to jump to the feed. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts [ ] Log InSign Up User account menu 250 Startup dream turned to nightmare. Partners tried to zuckerberg me after getting accepted into YC [renderTimi] General Startup Discussion Close 250 Posted by5 hours ago HelpfulTearing UpHugz2 Startup dream turned to nightmare. Partners tried to zuckerberg me after getting accepted into YC [renderTimi] General Startup Discussion TLDR; lifelong friend and partner backstabbed me and forced me to step out after the first indicative of a very successful business. :( Hey guys, I was living the startup dream and in 24 hours It all went overboard. Until yesterday I was the CTO of a successful startup. My co-founder and lifelong friend came up with the idea a year and a half ago and I agreed to build the MVP. It took me around 6 months and had to quit my job because i thought there was a nice opportunity to make a solid product and business, my first venture. When I finished the MVP my new partner and I negotiated percentages and agreed on doing 50/50 as he would do CEO work (we fought about majority but we agreed on this because we thought no job was more important than the other). My cofounder suggested bringing in a COO shortly after, I agreed to do so since he had experience and was clearly talented, we would give him 10% ( I massively fucked up here). We constituted the company with these percentages. Things kept going well, we gained some traction and increased our revenue. We put together a team and pulled version 2 of the product which a week ago got us into the YCS21 batch. My founders inflated our revenue and exaggerated our churn and somehow managed to lie through the diligence process ( I was never ok with this but whatever) My CEO had financial problems and had a full time job at Google as a sales rep. I never complained because he was pulling his work load. We as founders were m paying ourselves a small amount just to get us going and keep hiring more devs , customer support and sales reps instead. YC people were insistent in him quitting so it was sort of a requirement to get in, he agreed. We get accepted and he calls me on to a meeting with the other founder just 2 days ago and essentially tells me that in order for him to quit google and be fully committed to our company he thought he deserved more equity so that he could feel like he's valued here. CEO and COO proceeded to tell me that at that point i was less valuable than them and how my skills and expertise where subpar to theirs so I didn't deserve the equity I had. I had previously talked with my COO about his inconformity with his stock and thought about being generous and giving him 6% of my stock as his performance had been outstanding. My CEO then somehow "convinced" our COO to give him the 6% I had just agreed to give him so he could "feel happy". I was baffled by the ease he gave him his stock I had just given him. Something was up. CEO now had 51% They wanted me to sign a stock transfer contract on the spot to which i rightfully declined. I wanted legal counsel. My CEO got defensive and threatened he wouldn't leave google and would pull YC funding. I stood up and left. Later that night I was revoked access from all repos, accounts and relevant tech permissions from the company. I was ignored and was told by my CEO we would talk tomorrow about it. I arrived very early at the office as I was worried about the situation and found my founders taking to team leaders in a room. I entered the meeting I wasn't invited to and found out I was being trash talked about my leadership abilities which were complete bs. The product my dev team and I built had just gotten us into YC. My CEO and COO started telling everyone about how I hadn't pulled my load and how company success was truly because of them. They told everyone that they deserved more equity and that I had to forfeit 25% so that equity would be left at 60/20/20. I looked over at my employees and they were scared to say anything even though I saw in their expressions they knew this was wrong. Arbitrary numbers being thrown around with no chance to negotiate and no previous communication with concerns about my performance. We would be signing that day the new cap table and there was nothing I could do apparently. CEO promised everyone we would take this to the moon and that he would "make it happen" now that he was full time. They pressured me into signing that same day, I tried to reason with them about the unfairness of the situation and how there was no justification to what was being done with no avail. Reason was no match for sociopathic behavior. I contacted my lawyers and advisors and was told to not sign anything of course. I told my founders later that day that I would not be signing anything and that I would be taking legal steps for stock purchase on whatever end or company dissolution, whatever my legal team sees fit. These people thought they could step over me and were willing to kick out a lifelong friend and cofounder and labeling me as "egocentric and unhumble" and that I was willing to put the company at risk because I didn't want to give away my stock. Luckily I know all my employees are very smart so they know CEO was proyecting and now they're stuck with a sociopath. I wrote to the YC partners that accepted us about the whole ordeal because I don't think more people like this should be running the tech industry. I communicated to them about the lying and the backstabbing done by the founders and how I had intention of taking legal action. I don't make products for the money, I make them to help people and i think this is what got us into YC. A superior product which focuses on UX. I communicated this vision and mission with my founders but it seems they had alternative motives from the very beginning. I got played. I wanted to share this story because I think it's a very clear indicative on the type of people you'll run into and how you should be careful when picking your partners. I am happy about the experience as I was capable of building something which got us to a team of 25 people and into YC. If I can do it once I can do it again I feel no resentment whatsoever. I was happy i stoop up and defended my honor and knew that even if I had managed to keep my 45% I would be working together with a sociopathic CEO with complexes and would risk my mental health. I truly feel sorry for him as he picked money over a lifelong friend and this sort of behavior is most likely going to lead him towards misery, money or no money. I felt wrong about writing to YC but my advisors told me to do so as these people deserve to be called out so that this type of behavior is not allowed to be reinforced in any way. I hope YC takes necessary action and kicks them from the batch but that's up to them now. Thanks for reading and have a great day! 107 comments share save hide report 98% Upvoted Log in or sign up to leave a commentLog InSign Up Sort by best [renderTimi] level 1 Startup Ecosystems 4 hours ago * Stickied commentLocked DO NOT ask OP to name any names. Such comments will be removed. If OP reveals such information the submission will be removed. Keep the discussion healthy and positive. Feel free to share insights and experiences while abiding by our rules. Thank you. Vote Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago Everything in the startup world is not hunky dory. Long post where the OP is pouring his heart out but take the time to read it. 110 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 2 hours ago This start up will fail, 100%. 44 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 2 hours ago Not only in the startup world this is everyday shit... Associate of mine works at a company... Company was founded by Best Friends who both busted their ass to grow the business... One of the best friends dad funded alot of it and took no ownership. The dad and son brought in their brother... So the 2 best friends and brother had ownership in company... Was successful for awhile and 9 years later the company blew up in sales... thats when the family decided to boot the other partner... attacked him exactly how OP mentions. 10 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago Love that Zuckerberg is now a verb 92 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 4 hours ago honestly "Zuckerberged" doesn't roll off the tongue that well. I prefer calling it "getting Zucked" and I think thats the better way to call it. 48 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 2 4 hours ago What does it mean in this context or what does he have to do with it? 3 Reply Share ReportSave Continue this thread level 1 4 hours ago It happened to me too, after 50M - hang in there buddy. 50 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 32 minutes ago Wow now you need to do a post on this 2 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 Comment removed by moderator3 hours agoMore than 1 child Continue this thread level 1 4 hours ago COO was a new hire essentially and not an investing founder. Giving him 10% was a massively generous slice of the cake already, share unconformity be damned. Then you gave up 6% of YOUR equity to him because of his performance. The first problem here is it sounds like you never considered discussing with the CEO first? Because if you had, then cooler heads would have prevailed and actually you both could have given up 3% each to your COO. Regardless, If he was performing so well, he would have added value long term to his 10%. That's his reward for a job well done. Giving him more equity was not a smart move. Again, this COO was hired in, not seeding founder. You played yourself. Also, I'm not one to pick apart stories here. I don't know the full situation either. But how do you have a 3 person executive team with a CEO that is part time build a 25-person team? Even with generous seed funding this doesn't add up to me. Most YC batch entrants have ~5 ish employees if they're lucky. 50 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 Original Poster3 hours ago Yeah, COO getting stock was entirely on me, I put myself in minority position. That's on me for trusting the wrong person. I knew giving him extra was overdoing it but previous discussions were held about it and my CEO was resilient on doing so. I felt like ceding a bit of my share to him would be necessary towards everyone feeling contempt and continue to perform. The next step of the negotiations where he was willing to give that 6% to the CEO who already had more was what threw me off. I then knew shitshow was about to start and took back my offer. Threats followed. Do you mean our team was too big or too small? We were completely boostrapped and from LATAM so very cheap to scale. 10 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago I'm gonna go the other end and say hell yeah for 1. building something that received that sort of traction, growth, and attention 2. standing up for yourself Looking forward to hearing about your next venture my dude 29 Reply Share ReportSave level 2 4 hours ago Number 1 alone should make him valuable to his next venture. 5 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago Good job dude, there are way too many egocentric sociopathic losers in the tech world namely in startups. Great to hear you stood your ground and somewhat vindicated after revealing the truth to YC. GL in your endeavors 23 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago This sounds exactly like what happened with Outcome Health, an advertising startup in Chicago that was at one point valued at over $5 billion. Long story short one of the original co-founders that got sidelined and (almost) screwed over stood his ground and eventually got a buy-out. Definitely don't sign anything until you've consulted with a legal advisor. 21 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 3 hours ago Hey - do you need a job? We're hiring :-) 15 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 5 hours ago Great story. You sound like youll success somehow eventually. Id like to hear opinions of experienced entrepreneurs 14 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago Thanks for sharing, it seems like you made the right judgement call. Can you keep us updated on what YC says in response to you? 42 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago When I look back, I have zero regrets about times that I stuck to my guns and refused to compromise on my principles - even if it made my life temporarily difficult. In fact, my only regrets are times when I didn't say exactly what I think. 10 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 4 hours ago CEO promised everyone we would take this to the moon Oof. 10 Reply Share ReportSave level 1 2 hours ago Since you still own 45%.. Step 1 - hold it all until the very end.. Step 2 - tomorrow, go start a new company, get some funding, and go and snipe all the staff from the current company. One message on LinkedIn and your team will come over real quick. 4 Reply Share ReportSave View Entire Discussion (107 Comments) More posts from the startups community Continue browsing in r/startups Subreddit Icon r/startups Welcome to /r/startups, the place to discuss startup problems and solutions. Startups are companies that are designed to grow and scale rapidly. Be sure to read and follow all of our rules--we have specific places for common content and requests. 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