Firing a co-founder is like a divorce — painful but sometimes necessary. Here’s what I learned from firing co-founder #4.

Hiring is arguably the most difficult task entrepreneurs face. Many times I had to let go of employees who weren’t up to their mission, or who weren’t up to their mission anymore.

Your judgment might be wrong when making a hiring decision. It even happens to HR professionals. A good friend of mine has been in HR for more than 10 years and says it’s common to make wrong hiring decisions. Often, it has to do with people making an effort to pretend something they aren’t during the probation period, only to show their true personality some months after the end of the probation period.

So far for regular employees. But how about co-founders?

The Proposal

Founding a company with co-founders is a bit like getting married, building a house, and starting a family together. You’re on a mission to build something out of nothing, day and night. Weekdays and weekends. Celebrate wins and suffer setbacks together. Get market feedback to improve your product. Make sure you can satisfy all your customers. And do whatever it takes to win new customers.

You do all this at below-market rate pay, and on top of that you scan paper invoices yourself, take the trash out in the office, and fly long-haul in economy class. People often think being a founder and creating a company is fun. Most of the time, it’s one hell of a ride, and you need dependable co-founders to survive this wild ride.

The Divorce

We started with a team of four co-founders. Spoiler: There are only three co-founders left. I had to fire co-founder #4.

Think of this like a divorce. It’s not something you do easily, just because you’re arguing about a petty thing. I’ve had many rows and arguments with all of my co-founders, yet I only ended up firing one of them. Why?

Without celebrating long work hours, being a co-founder means “company first, personal interests second.” The remaining three co-founders have always demonstrated this attitude, no matter if it was about filling a gap in a financing round, changing weekend plans to take care of a water leak in the office, or doing an on-site presentation on a public holiday in a faraway country.

And there was co-founder #4, who always put his free time first, and who didn’t give a flying fart about market feedback. This resulted in endless discussions, gradually boiling up the heat in our relationship. But like in a marriage, it takes way more than endless discussions before you decide to part ways for good.

In our case, it was when co-founder #4 went on a 3-week cruise in Antarctica, leaving behind a delayed and messed up mobile app project. He blamed other people in the company for the delay, and I had to jump in and try to get the project back to plan whilst co-founder #4 was having a relaxing 3-week holiday without any connectivity.

When he was back from his vacation, I discovered that he went over his vacation days allotment. I confronted him with this and asked him to produce a plan on how he would get his vacation days allotment back to normal. He told me that he would have logged his work hours in the past, and that he has worked significantly beyond the 8-hour daily work hours, and because of this he would be entitled to compensation for his “overtime”. He also told me that if I wouldn’t accept that, I would have to fire him.

That’s when I took a deep breath, loaded the gun, and fired him. Co-founders don’t get overtime compensation, and co-founders don’t prioritize their vacation over the company.

The Aftermath

In the aftermath of his dismissal, he made our lives difficult wherever he could, including claiming an additional month of salary due to sickness during the termination period, playing cat and mouse with social security funds and unemployment insurance, and even requesting the repayment of a loan that was converted into shares five years earlier.

Because of the unity of the remaining three co-founders and the support of our board, we managed to settle everything, and even buy back the shares from co-founder #4.

The New Life

When everything was settled, I breathed a sigh of relief. I fortunately don’t have any experience with settling a divorce, but I imagine it’s the same for a divorced person when the judge has finally settled the marriage. That’s a relief, and at the same time, you’ll get a new burden as a single parent.

That’s what happened to me, too: I am now not just the CEO of the company, but also the CPO of the company. On top of my CEO duties, of course. No additional pay, no additional vacation days, no overtime.

Welcome to a founder’s life.