how did you not get any equity as a founder? did you not have corp bylaws to define this? (i'm assuming you're a c-corp bc you mentioned getting funding.) and when your gf invested in your company, did she not get any equity? who invests in a startup without getting any equity, especially if they put in their life savings??!! and how do you let your CEO disappear for four months without firing him? ALSO you said this guy was a CEO but not a co-founder, and later in the post you say, "if you don't know your startup cofounders that well". . . so is he a cofounder or not?? i'm sorry but none of this makes sense unless you're leaving out key details.
Of course I got equity. They just took it away.
There were a lot of cofounders.
You have a board you should bring this up with the board. Ask to discipline the person. You should have some protection if you are the original founder. Either via your voting rights equity or some bylaws. If you don’t, then shame on you for not protecting yourself.
You’d get wiped out faster than I did.
Maybe I am missing some context there.
Starting a company right now. Key takeaways for avoiding a situation like this? From my conversations with lawyers, as an immigrant I can't be a majority stakeholder but I choose the board, therefore as long as people in the board are most of them loyal you should not be able to be overthrown in that manner. For the stock part it makes even less sense. How are they going to be able to take it away from you? It is not like you have a vesting schedule as a founder, you own the stock right away. At most they could do a heavy dilution where everybody is receiving a lot of new shares excepting you; that is a lot of noise and every single worker would be very aware of what is going on since it affects the common pool. Appreciate you coming out with this. Ultimately you will have to point fingers (if you really have nothing left to lose, I don't get why you haven't already)
Plenty of founders do have vesting schedules precisely to avoid situations like this where one person leaves and other people continue working at the company
I wouldn’t start a company if you’re not the major shareholder. I gave away too much equity. It’s a private company, they can kinda do anything behind the scenes they want at that point. And if your company is ever worth anything ... you will see a new side of the people you brought on.
Never give up controlling interest. Or did you ever have any?
Something in this story doesn't add up. Either OP's pants are on fire or he's not telling the whole story. There are key areas of business law he waves away with "they just took it all away" which... Isn't convincing to anyone with any business experience.
I literally walked in the office one day and it was all gone.
Went from being worth tens of millions of dollars back to $0
You always learn from your mistakes. DM me if you need a tech founder in future. Made mistakes in the past founding a company and in a much better place now. Would be happy to talk.
Tbh they’d more likely just recapitalize not that dilution stuff. Just form a new company and come up with a reason ... make the original company a sub and transfer out the IP etc.
If this is real, what’s the company? I’d like to do some research...if it’s real...?
OnlyFans?
Lol. It’s a real company and it’s not those guys.
Sociopathic co-founders are a thing, but I don’t believe your story.
wtf give his name rn
These kind of posts are meaningless if they don’t have balls to give actual details like names or company name and warn people
Something doesn’t add up. If they raised rounds of funding and became a unicorn they’d have a cap table, vesting schedules, a board and accountability, and other infrastructure around the founding team and business that can’t just be ripped away while taking all of someone’s vested equity because one founder lied about his role. Plus the guy says he has no money for a lawyer when it would be a no brainer for a seasoned attorney to grab this on contingency. The Bay Area is full of attorneys looking to litigate against startups that raise tons of money. Smells like bullshit.