A classic story: best friends become co-founders
A year and a half ago, one of my best friends came to me, an IT developer, with a crazy idea. Since there was no financial risk involved, I jumped on the bandwagon and now we have a profitable company with one employee.
I was completely new to his industry so during our startup I did all the tech-related stuff and he did everything sales. He's that guy who lives on a cloud, has crazy ideas and an ideological view of the world. I'm the practical guy who gets things done and is always looking for the most efficient way to work.
He has little familiarity with technology and this quickly ensured that in a mostly digitally-run company, a lot of tasks came to me: marketing website, social media posts, developing our platform, drawing out operational flows.... But I can't blame him: technology doesn't interest him much more than sending an email or whatsapp message.
Along the way, it turns out that I'm a better sales person than him, so over time most sales came to me. I'm also more analytical and anticipatory so accounting, finance and the strategic part also became mostly my part.
We've been in the situation for six months now where he mainly performs operational tasks that I have fully conceived and developed. He hardly takes any initiative to further develop our company. He is less communicative than I am, which causes me to still not know what he wants to achieve with our company. When I ask him about it, he himself indicates that he is someone who has no definite idea about this and needs someone like me to take the lead. As a friend, I don't have a problem with this, but as a co-partner with 50-50 equity, it's sour that I'm taking the lead in pretty much everything and he's laid-back just doing some administrative work and has some low-effort salestalks.
I have expressed my concern and frustration about this several times and how I feel to get sucked out. I have two young children and a very busy family-life whilst he's still on his own. It would great if he could take some of my tasks away. But even if he tries, they always end up back to me because he lacks (technological) insights to ge things done.
When having this chat with him, he always confirms my concerns and recognizes that he falls short in these matters and will grow in this. I notice that I make him insecure and stress him with these kind of conversations, which is not my intention. I just want to know where I am up against.
But I know by now that I will change little about this guy on the cloud. I am confident in our business and its potential but I realize more and more that he cannot or will not be an essential part of the growth process ahead, if we want to grow.
I have no desire to have this difficult conversation with him again because I know he will once again prove me right, I will make him feel inferior, but the conversation will ultimately change nothing.
I am distraught.
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