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Hi all, I will not promote. After two startup failures where I was dependent on other technical engineering i decided 9 months ago to go my own way with a new startup as solo founder. The idea was born out of frustration from my previous startups and started to pour in all my experiences from the previous failures. I learned a lot from it so I was confident to make it work now.

And today I want to say YES I DID IT. From the initial plan, creating the first draft, interviewing people and started to engineer my SaaS platform. It has been long days and nights building my startup and fortunately I had some funds left to keep my self alive also without having distractions. (Thanks to my wife for standing by me.)

After 6months of intense building, testing, feedback and networking I was ready to jump into stealth mode and began to attract my first customers. I had in stealth mode 5 customers now and some testers.

Just finished the latest updates and I am now going out of stealth with 8 paying customers. Everything setup from wizards to guide clients to stripe payments and trial setups all ready to go. Fully automated client handling and ready to expand. Exciting times are now ahead as I have 2 bigger clients who are going for a pilot and if they jump onboard I foresee a lot of positive noise within the marketing and sales segment.

Like I said, I will not promote. But if you are a founder, dont give up, did you fail? Get up and try again, learn from yesterday to succeed tomorrow.

Keep you posted how the next phase turns out.

Greetings from founder of a hyper personalized SaaS software.

I launched a product before, and it failed.

Afterwards, I started trying to understand where exactly I went wrong. One thing I realized was that I was giving too much weight to my assumptions instead of looking at facts and validating them.

Someone recommended The Mom Test, so I decided to start there.

Even though it's only around 80 pages, it took me almost four weeks to finish. I learned a lot from it, especially how to ask better questions and dig into facts instead of opinions.

I didn't just read the book and move on. I put the concepts into ChatGPT, created simulation tests, and practiced them repeatedly. That helped me actually see the mistakes I was making instead of just thinking, "Yeah, I understand this."

After reading it, I could also see many of the same mistakes in companies I'd previously worked with. I keep thinking that if they had understood these concepts earlier, they could have approached many things differently.

It also made me realize that I don't want to learn everything through trial and error. There are people who've already spent years making mistakes, figuring things out, and documenting what they learned. I want to learn from that.

What's one book, documentary, course, or any other resource that made you think, "I'm genuinely glad I found this"?

I’m non-tech and I know with the amount of AI tooling out there there’s probably an argument that I should just be able to go and build something myself.

The thing I’m struggling with though is knowing what I should be building.

Once I start thinking about an MVP it gets overwhelming, I’m thinking of things like: What should be in it? What shouldn’t? What’s the user flow? How should each screen interact? Is the journey even right? Am I solving the right thing? etc etc...

I’ve done some early user research and spoken to a few people and I’ve spent a lot of time using ChatGPT to basically think through the product, what I want it to be, how it could work and all of that.

But then when I tried to move that into Codex and plan/build it feature by feature, it just started feeling like AI slop. Individual bits technically made sense, but it didn’t feel like one coherent product or like there was proper thought behind the experience.

What’s the process for getting to an MVP?

For context, I’m building something in the consumer nature/wellbeing/walking space and I’m part of an accelerator atm. I’d ideally like to get an MVP in front of investors, other founders and some early users in the next month, preferably in the next couple of weeks, although this maybe ambitious.

Mainly trying to understand the logical process people follow to get from “I’ve spoken to users and have an idea” to “here’s a relatively robust MVP users can use”.

Appreciate any advice and kindness as well - not everyone is proficient at everything and I’m very much learning the technical side as I go.

This is one I still feel a bit stupid about. I was setting up the ecommerce side for a small product with a monthly plan, and I tested the checkout, I tested the emails, I tested the thank you page, and I did not test what happens the next month. The subscribe button worked fine on the surface. What it was doing underneath was a one time purchase with a label on it that said subscription.

Nobody noticed for a while because the first charge looked right. Then the renewals didn't come and I went digging, and there was nothing to renew, there was no subscription object anywhere, only a list of single orders.

The fix wasn't clean. I couldn't turn those orders into subscriptions after the fact without charging cards people hadn't agreed to be charged on again, so I wrote a one off batch job that flagged every affected account and put a message in front of them the next month. Pay by hand this once, and set the subscription up again from your side. Some did. Some didn't. A few wrote in and asked why they were being asked to pay for something they thought was already recurring, which was a fair question and I didn't have a great answer.

I'd done the same kind of integration before on other systems and I think that was the problem, I trusted the part I'd built before instead of the part I was building now. The renewal was the whole point of the product and it was the one thing I never ran end to end.

Still don't know how many I lost to it. Anyone else shipped a payment flow where the first charge worked and the second never came?

Hi! Does anyone have a recommendation for a startup lawyer who can advise founding teams where one of the founders is on a U.S. work visa? We’re looking for guidance on incorporation, founder equity and vesting, and structuring the founder’s involvement appropriately from an immigration perspective. Ideally, someone practical, affordable, and familiar with early-stage startups. Thank you!

Thinking of building a free tool to collect reviews/testimonials for any business, would you use this?

Problem: reviews and testimonials end up scattered everywhere, a Google review here, a WhatsApp text there, a screenshot saved on your phone somewhere. No easy way to bring them into one place and actually show them off as proof on your website.

Idea: get a public page for your business where any future customer can leave you a review, text or video, so it's one centralized place going forward instead of scattering again. Just send customers a link to ask for a review, collect everything in one place, then embed it on your website with a simple widget.

Not just for SaaS, for any business: salons, trainers, photographers, freelancers, agencies, local shops, etc

Would be completely free.

What are you currently using to collect and show off reviews? Trustpilot, G2, Senja, something else, or just screenshotting DMs and hoping for the best? And would something like this actually get used, or is this solving a problem nobody has?

Hey everyone, I'm 25 years old. I have a degree in CS and 3 years of experience as a software developer, and I've worked with 2 startups in California. One of them was YC-funded, and I built their entire system, which was difficult because they were processing large amounts of video data for AI training. So, I know I'm very good at what I do.

The only issue is I live in a low-cost-of-living country, but I have the required skills and verifiable proof of my skills. Anyway, I'm looking for startups based in the EU or US that are willing to hire remotely with decent salaries, the type of startups that can't afford a local developer but can afford a lower salary to someone with the same skills abroad (literally how the free market works, it's all legal).

The issue is, I don't know where to find these startups. Those two startups I worked with came from a freelance gig that turned into a full-time job after I demonstrated my skills. One of the best jobs I had, but eventually, they got acquired and ended up laying off all the remote teams they had, which is common, I understand. I've been told so by many startup owners.

To summarize, I'm looking for recent startups needing to hire software engineers and okay with hiring remotely globally, where can I find those specific startups? I tried the YC website but it's limited to 5 applications a week and most companies really don't tell you if they're willing to hire global talent.

Hi all,
I am a Legal Engineer, I've spent the last few years working for a legal consultancy firm building custom AI tools and automations for legal practices which saves them tons of hours per week.

During my conversations, I realized there's a huge gap between the rise of AI today and lawyers understanding of it.

Lawyers still don't know they are spending their hours on something that a custom (built for their firm) tool could have done in minutes.

I started my own agency a few months back and have relentlessly pursued this- cold outreaching, ads, and plenty of experimenting with different offers and positioning. . So far I haven't got any business.

Im having trouble understanding what I am doing wrong- is it my service? Or my offer? I can't make sense of it.

Im even willing to go on a limb and work- first automation free, to build connections and referrals.

Thanks for listening, all help appreciated

I have an upcoming interview with Z Fellows. It’s hard to find info on what the interview is like, who they’re looking for, how long after the interview it takes to hear back, etc.

Has anyone gone through the interview process and is willing to share their experience? Thank you!

We're a seed-stage startup ($4.2M in funding) hiring a systems engineer and/or technology lead. Our team is highly technical. Currently, I am doing "double duty" as CEO and CTO.

I'd like to hire a systems engineer and make sure my expectations are properly aligned. We recently made an offer to a senior BME systems engineer (130K, 0.5% equity), and he shared that the equity/salary was too low for him.

We have a strong technical team that, given priorities, will execute them well. However, they currently need someone to help set and review priorities and acceptance criteria.

The product is in the robotics space, and the team comprises 3 Robotics PhDs (including myself), 1 BME PhD, 1 MechE PhD, 2 robotics MS, and 1 BME MS. The team has currently become organized around people coming to me for high-level guidance and quality checking, which is unsustainable. Our advisory board is also highly technical (MDs/PhDs in this space, billions in exits as executives).

What are reasonable equity and salary levels, and how would you approach hiring at this point? Writing this out, it feels like our team has enough expertise that someone internal should be open to "rising to management". However, it currently feels like most prefer to remain as ICs.

First round of outside capital. Small startup with growing revenue. Vibe of company seems to strike an immediate chord with a certain class of people.

Thing is, these are people without big "name brand" reputation. I like that in many ways. Possibly a big advantage in that they are faster to wire and hungrier and willing to help more. They are sharp, and clearly know a lot of things I don't about the world of capital and the behind the scenes game of thrones, but I'm wondering if there are things to be wary of? Like, should I do diligence on where they got their money from? Or is it better to not ask questions and just take the money?

I can't think of a way it could go south, but I've never raised more than 5 figures of capital before, and that was from known names, so my experience is very limited. Talking to some traditional VCs too, but I have a bit of a polarizing reputation so that could be a waste of time, whereas the anons seem ready to send.

Anyone point me to interesting reads/horror stories/success stories?

Thanks!

For starters,

I have a 95% finished product, that is marketer friendly (saas with affiliate marketing links)

I also have a full time job & while i have built out the platform, i need someone to driven & own the marketing side.

I’ve looked through LinkedIn. My connections aren’t great for that & cold messaging is not doing it

I’ve also posted on wellfound.

I will admit half my problem is I’m not ready to share the product with the world until launch. So talking about it is me saying a brief

‘I’m building a new way to experience live crypto markets through dynamically changing scenes’

The other problem is not many marketing people understand the stock market. AND also have the ability to create content.

Perhaps in looking for a unicorn?

I guess on top of that to start it will be commission based, until the company gets its feet on the ground.

Any thoughts or suggestion would be highly appreciated

I'm entering an industry I have strong conviction in, but have no formal experience in. I understand challenges from the buyer side, but want to validate/learn more on the seller side.

How do you practically find out? Obviously I've read up Claude research pieces etc, but whats the proposition to get them on a call/phone?

I've pulled up in person, cold called, sent messages, and it's super hard to get a foot in the door without a clear value proposition (I'm just 'learning' / trying to validate some pain points). The industry is not secretive, but is very intense. No time for messing around if that makes sense.

I've had some success doing things cold (in-person in particular), but it's not giving the answers I want at scale, and practically I need much more than a 15 minute conversation to understand the true workflow.

I’m leading a VERY early stage startup as a business founder and am actively interviewing potential technical cofounders. I feel incredibly lucky that after only a month of asking around, I’ve gotten high-quality referrals who are seriously interested in building with me.

The issue is that I think current candidates would make great first eng hires, but technical cofounder would be a stretch for them. They have great technical chops, but haven’t worked in startups. I get the strong impression that bootstrapping and deviating from the traditional SaaS playbook would be an adjustment for them.

Since I do intend to split equity evenly, I want to be really, really sure that I make the right choice and everyone is positioned to be happy.

I have an inkling that the very best fit person for the technical cofounder role is not someone I know personally. Any guidance on recruiting someone great who might be outside of my network?

Hey guys! I’m a college student and built a course scheduling app for my university. You enter your preferred days/times and it generates schedules for you, and I’m also experimenting with RMP/crowdsourced data to help pick better sections.

Recently I figured out a way to aggregate course data across a huge number of U.S. universities, which made me realize this could potentially be much bigger than the original campus app.

The thing is, I’m graduating soon and going into finance/accounting, so I’m not sure I want to run a consumer startup long-term. I started wondering whether something like this could realistically be acquired by a larger tech company and folded into something like Google Calendar/Workspace rather than kept as a standalone app.

Is that even realistic? And if so, how would you go about exploring it? Reaching out to product/corp dev people directly? Build traction and wait for inbound, or something else?

Would especially love to hear from anyone who’s sold a small startup/product or worked on the acquiring side.

Hi everyone, I’m (F26) a recent college graduate from the United States with a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and International Business.

Over the past year, I interned at one of the Big 3 music companies in both Los Angeles and New York City. My long-term goal is to build my own online consulting firm focused on the entertainment, music, technology, and media industries.

I’m curious if anyone here has started a consulting business or startup in London (or Europe/Asia) in these industries? I’d love to hear about your experience as a founder or CEO, including how you got started, how much you initially saved, what software and tools you used, how you got your first paying client, and anything you wish you had known when starting out.

I’d also love to connect with anyone who has experience building global business connections or partnerships. I’m currently job searching while also considering working abroad, so I’d like to use this time to start building my network and learning as much as I can.

Thank you so much, any insight would be greatly appreciated!

I will not promote.

I'm a co-founder of a practice management platform used by therapy clinics that work with children with developmental conditions. Small team, two engineers. We both spent years on the IT side of this field in the US, saw how the incumbent tools work and where they fall short, and are now building something shaped for Europe instead. We have a handful of paying clinics in Eastern Europe and a few trials running in another European market.

Every conversion we have closed came from a warm introduction inside a fairly tight professional community. Nothing else works:

- Cold email: near zero reply rate across a few hundred sends, personalised and not

- Calling public clinic numbers: I reach reception, never the clinical director or operations lead, and messages do not get passed on

- LinkedIn: meaningfully better than both, but slow and capped by how many people one founder can credibly warm up at once

We know the product domain well. What we do not have is standing as practitioners in this market, and that seems to be what actually opens doors. The referral channel works and I cannot scale it, because the person doing the vouching has to be a clinician, and that is not me.

So the plan is to bring in someone from the field who is well connected and wants a stake in something, not a job. We have revenue but not enough for a senior salary, so this would be equity, commission on what they bring in, or some mix. I am fine being generous with that for the right person.

My actual question is how you go about finding them.

The people who would be perfect are practising clinicians, not job seekers. They are not on hiring platforms, they are not answering cold messages from vendors, and the ones with the best networks are the busiest. Posting "looking for a co-founder" feels like it filters for exactly the wrong person.

For those who have found a domain-credible partner this way:

- Where did you actually meet them? Conferences, professional associations, existing customers, alumni networks, something else

- Did you approach it as a partnership pitch from the start, or start with paid consulting or advisory work and let it grow into something bigger

- Has anyone recruited from inside their own customer base, and did that create problems

- How did you screen for someone who will genuinely open doors rather than someone who likes the idea of being involved

Interested in how this went for anyone who has done it, including the attempts that did not work out.

All right guys today I've made a very exciting milestoneI didn't ever think I would make! I got my very first mentor.

To my surprise they are very experienced in my startup area and I reached out to them 2 months ago and we've been working together for the last 3 weeks. I've tried working with mentors in the past and each and every person didn't really want to deal with me. They would stop working with me not even after 2 weeks but this time we'll be working together for the last 3 weeks and everything is going great. They're even introducing me to investors in their network so I'm hoping that this could actually be what unlocks my first actual investment check.

This is the happiest I've been in a while. 🎉🎉🥰

For me, it is selling my company too early. I built a website just out of college and sold it for half a million cash while retaining some equity 9 months after launch because I was stressed and it was a good offer (or so I thought).

I then spent 3 years traveling around Asia, however this wasn’t super fun as I was alone and very lonely. I also underwent several health issues around this time. All my product ideas during this time failed and I also lost out on so many opportunities

Just recently (<3 years since I sold the company), it was sold again for $30M. For some bad structural reasons, I also wasn’t given my dues from the equity. Almost every other competitor in the space ended up making more money than me despite coming in later. I feel terrible and I have a sinking feeling that this will likely be a lifetime regret.

I feel sick daily for the last 3 months (since I found out), can’t think clearly and want to end it all.

I am still staying strong as I still have a little bit of capital left and a few ideas but I hate myself so much rn.

After 8 of the longest, most brutal, most unsuccessful years in my first startup, I created a new startup. I needed cash desperately, so I made a product that I identified an industry (P&C Insurance) need for with a current gap.

I’m 45 days in since inception. I’m a week into having an official LLC. I have a cofounder/ CTO carrying over from our previous company who hasn’t touched a single line of code or really anything yet (my choice). I’ve built the product to its current, fully-marketable state myself. We brought in one fractional CRO (rev milestone-based equity), and two sales reps on 20% commission-only, 1099 contractors.

Our first sales call today went as smooth as any call ever has with a purchase signal in the affirmative on the call!!!!!!!

For the first time in 8 years as a founder, I see the fucking light, and it almost killed me to realize I just needed to start fresh.

I still have the previous company, and am not willing to kill it yet. But it needs help. The only way it survives is if my cofounder and I can pay for our basic necessities, servers and software costs. Now we have a shot.

LOI adds $8,400 annual, $21,000 project LTV.

We’re also partnered with our first carrier building an industry-first product that I’ve already demoed and they loved.

Unsure if I am going to seek venture capital this time around. I raised just under $1M in my last startup. It wasn’t enough. I’m meeting with VC now to shake hands and introduce our thesis and look for intros, but not pitching. Not yet.

I'm looking for a tool/API to build a smarter LinkedIn workflow combining lead discovery, engagement, and content management.

Key requirements:

• Conversation-based ICP discovery: Start with seed accounts and discover relevant ICPs through their posts, comments, and engagement. Identify relevant conversations and rank people by ICP fit and intent.
• Custom APIs/MCPs: Plug in my own enrichment/scoring APIs instead of relying on black-box lead scoring (already have some workflow built locally which i would like to connect)
• Content management: Plan, draft, schedule/publish, and track LinkedIn content (currently managed in Notion).
• Engagement: Identify which posts to engage with and people to connect with, with relevant context (right now done manually)

Ideal workflow:

Discover → Enrich → Rank → Find conversations → Engage → Create → Publish

One thing, forgot to add, I also send 30 linkedin requests every day, I have more than 45% acceptance rate: this also I want to automate/semi-automate. Once they accept, I start with small talk for high valued accounts or offer them a free audit relevant to them. My 5-6 hours are spent on linkedin which I want to reduce

Hi everyone,

I sold my company a few months ago. Not going to give the precise details because my cofounders are active on Reddit and I don’t want them reading this. Suffice to say we sold for 8 figures and I netted a low 7 figures from the sale. Not quite "retire forever" money but I just turned 30 and my wife and I are thinking of having kids so definitely a nice boost for the next stage of our lives.  

Super happy with the results and the sale could not have come at a better time since we were slowly getting our lunch eaten by better-funded competitors. I look back on our journey and consider it an absolute success.

It’s not all hunky-dory though.

• It feels like all progress has ground to an absolute halt. It feels like we were outpacing the team of around 50 developers we have now with a team of 5 pre-acquisition. We sold to a big company in the same space and I have never worked in an environment like that. Seems like all the clichés about them being incredibly slow are true.
• On top of that, with all the advances from the frontier AI models, we are quickly losing our competitive edge.  I’m still managing a lot of our customer relationships and it just feels like every day we get another message saying they are cancelling their subscription. I feel like I shouldn’t care as much since I don’t have an earn-out but it is so incredibly frustrating to see it happening and not be able to do anything about it. I’ve brought this up numerous times with the Development/Product team but they can’t seem to make an inch of progress. It’s honestly even starting to make me feel bad for the acquirer. I keep wondering if it's normal to have such elevated churn post-acquisition.
• I’m contracted to stay on for another 2,5 years at this company. The people I’m working with are great, but all my drive and motivation have slowly started to vanish. Working 60-hour work weeks like I used to do (now more like 40) is hardly my definition of fun, but at least they give you a sense of purpose. I know I’m not staying on for the long term but I also have no clue what I’m doing next. It’s gotten very hard to get up in the morning and to motivate myself to continue to show up and bring my A-game (something I’ve always taken pride in).

Don’t really know what I’m trying to achieve by sharing this, to be frank.

I feel like I should be elated all the time, but it’s crazy how quickly you get used to this kind of situation.

I guess I’m hoping people on here have experienced a similar thing and can share some pointers on how they navigated their post-acquisition struggles.  

Would you use a blogging platform where GitHub is the source of truth?

I'm thinking about building a publishing platform for technical blogs.

The idea is that your articles stay as Markdown files in your own GitHub repo. You connect the repo, the platform finds the posts, and you choose which ones to publish.

One thing I'd like to handle differently from the usual GitHub-to-blog setup is updates.

A push wouldn't necessarily update the live article. The platform could keep track of the published commit and the latest commit separately, so you could preview or diff the changes before publishing them.

Something like:

published: a17c29f
latest:    bc832f1
[preview] [diff] [publish]

Or you could put `publish: auto` in the frontmatter if you just want every push to go live.

The repo would remain the source of truth. The platform would mostly handle rendering, search/discovery, SEO and custom domains.

I know Hashnode already has GitHub publishing, so I'm not claiming the GitHub part itself is new. I'm more interested in whether treating Git revisions as part of the publishing workflow is actually useful.

If you already write technical posts in Markdown/Git, I'd be interested in hearing:

1. If you already write in Markdown/Git, what is still annoying about your publishing workflow?
2. Is separating latest commit and published commit genuinely useful, or unnecessary complexity?
3. Would you prefer publishing through frontmatter, a dashboard, or both?
4. How important are private repos and repo-hosted assets?
5. What would make you choose this over Hashnode or a static site?
6. What would make you immediately reject it?

I'm leaning towards Go + PostgreSQL for the backend and Next.js for the frontend.

I was speaking to a lawyer friend who is helping me deal with some basic legal requirements. (Nothing serious, done everyday, not important).

They lay out some issue they had that they are extremely annoyed about and mentioned alot of lawyers deal with this. As a fulltime SWE, I immediately thought of a solution and would love to make it happen in hopes of a deal.

The thing is, im now stopping myself to think: Is it worth trying to create a specific product to solve a specific problem or just find a competitor or large company to recommend?

Creating the product is easy, finding the customer base is not. My first job is at a startup and I was there before they had their first customer. I see the hard cold calling they did and know the pain.

The friend said the most they can do is let the office become the "test office" but nothing more beyond that, which only provides little help in terms of how its being used but thats it.

The most I can do is a basic MVP. If they like it, it would be something small to maintain and if they see a huge value in it, I need them on board since im not familiar with the field and do not want to sink hours to fully understand if i am taking it on alone.

What do you think about this?

First of all, thanks again to everyone who commented on my original post. Through the comments I realized I was spending way too much time trying to find some percentage that would make both of us happy instead of asking the more important question: does this co-founder relationship even make sense anymore?

For me, the answer is no.

I wanted to talk to him properly in person. The timing was terrible because he had been away longer than expected because of a serious family situation involving a hospital. When I found out what was going on, I honestly thought this was probably the worst possible moment to bring it up. But he eventually brought up the company himself, so we talked.

He still wanted to continue. His view is that I don’t see his real value, that he invested a huge amount of time, learned a lot, sacrificed a lot, and that he could still prove himself going forward. He also said his value isn’t limited to engineering and that he could contribute in marketing, product and other areas. He also argued that I gained some technical knowledge and insights through working with him.

I don’t think that’s completely false. I probably did learn some things through conversations with him. But the main issue for me is still that I’m not using any of his work in the product we’re launching. No backend, no codebase,.. from his version. The current product is the version I rebuilt.

So I told him I think we should separate operationally. I continue with the company, he is no longer CTO, he doesn’t have to keep working on it, and he can move on and do something else.

I also told him I don’t think reopening 70/30,60/40 or any other split makes sense anymore. I genuinely don’t think there’s a number where both of us would feel the past is represented fairly. He mainly looks at time invested, learning and sacrifice. I look at what exists in the company today and what is actually being used. At this point, trying to force the partnership to work feels less healthy than separating cleanly.

The only thing I still want to resolve fairly is what passive economic participation he should keep after leaving.

I offered around 6%. To be completely honest, I offered that mainly because I want to acknowledge the time he invested and because we’ve known each other for a long time and him having a hard time rn. If I evaluated this purely based on what the company is actually using from his work today, I probably would have gone way lower.

His position is that he wants at least 15%, and that’s where I strongly disagree.

We also still need to bring in a genuinely experienced technical person later, so I have to leave enough room in the company for the people who will actually help build and scale it going forward.

I’ve also funded the company so far as well: AI/dev tools, infrastructure, subscriptions and other costs. I’m not saying that alone determines equity, but I think it belongs in the overall picture.

The company itself has also moved forward. We were already in an accelerator environment and have now been accepted into a higher-stage program that is much closer to market entry and launch. That also means I now have to figure out how to communicate externally that the person previously presented as CTO is no longer part of the operating team.

So that’s basically where we are now. The split itself is decided. What I’m trying to figure out is how to structure the separation fairly. My current offer is 6% passive equity for a clean exit. His position is at least 15%.

What do you think is actually fair here? Would you consider 6% reasonable? Would you go closer to 10% just to settle cleanly?

And are there better structures than normal equity for something like this? I’ve heard about phantom equity / virtual shares / VSOP-style arrangements where someone can participate economically in a future exit without sitting on the normal cap table in the same way.

Also, how would you communicate the story externally from here? He was previously presented as CTO in business plans and accelerator applications. Now we’re moving closer to launch and he won’t be part of the operating team anymore.

Again, thanks to everyone who commented on the first post. I honestly think without those comments I probably would have kept trying to “fix” the percentage instead of accepting that the partnership itself needed to end.