I'm the CTO and I'm the only one that can build the product, so I'm not worried about the product, but I'm worried about the business side of things. I'm not sure if I should sign the agreement or not. I'm not sure if I should ask for a clause that would void the agreement if we don't get any clients in the next 3 months.
I have been bringing this issue up for a while now, but he always says that he is working on it and that we have to be patient. Frankly, my confidence is not very high at this point. He is working hard, he is smart and a good person, he is dedicated and really wants to make this work. But when someone send out 200 emails in a month and gets only 1 reply and gives up on emails and starts to focus on things that are not related to getting clients, I start to worry.
I know reaching out to people is hard work and can be tedios and I know that it's not easy to get clients, but I'm not sure if I should be worried or not at this point. Also it's not the lack of clients that really worries me, but the lack of learnings about our product market fit.
He would be a CEO and we are onboarding another co-founder who would be focusing on sales because he isn't able to sell. But I'm not sure if that would be enough. And having a CEO who is not able to bring clients seems like a problem. I mean, you wouldn't make someone a striker that hasn't scored any goals.
It's a sensitive situation and I don't want my lack of confidence right now to destroy our relationship. But I also don't want to be tied to someone that may not be good enough.
Any advice would be appreciated
And this is a two way street so you have a say in what gets put in the agreement as well. I would strongly advise you to sign unless you are 100% on board with everything that is in it, and to go through some possible future scenarios (failure, moderate success, success, home-run) to see how the agreement will work for each of those situations as well as situations where regardless of the success fact you guys decide to stop working together and what happens to the shares etc.
I've seen more than one start-up crash to a grinding halt because the shareholder agreement wasn't well thought out and did not foresee the typical crisis that a start-up can go through in its lifetime.
Best of luck!
If you have an draft, I'm happy to take a quick look. Lots of experience with these things.
* Remember "4 Years with a 1-Year Cliff"
* Who gets the 51%?
* Is the new cofounder his friend? Your friend?
* What is "business development and project management"?