My very first co-founder took all the money, domains, clients (worth ~$50k) and just said “goodbye” 😁

It was 2016. I was young and stupid. I did not know what to do. But I knew exactly that I want to make Internet things.
I learned html+css+js from free Indian youtube classes and started working for clients.

One of my clients said: “hey, you are a smart guy. let’s build an internet thing together. i have an idea”.
I was fed up doing freelance work so I instantly agreed.

He had an idea of making an HTML template and selling it online.

We stopped the freelancing stuff, rented one small studio to live together and cut our costs. And started to build.

The guy had skills, intuition and passion. I only had skills. So we agreed to split it 60-40% in his favor.

We made the HTML theme and it was a success. We made another one. And some other products. All of them were success.

We earned ~$20k in the first year. It was a huge achievement for the people who never built their own products, only doing freelancing.

But in 2018 I decided to leave my co-founder because we had different visions on what to do next.
He wanted to create a website builder for creative people, I wanted to make one for startup founders.
So I left, and I made Unicorn Platform.

Now the dark part 😈

When I was leaving, I was like: “so I leave, but I still own 40%, right? I want getting 40% of the profits we are having now for a couple of years. If the profit grows, it is all yours, since I do not work on growing it anymore. if you sell one of them, I also get a cut (not 40%, but something)”.

I seemed fair and obvious to me. But not for him.

He paid me 40% of the profits for a couple of months and then said “since you left, you do not own anything anymore and I do not owe you money. bye!”

I was pissed off and angry at him because it felt so unfair. So rude!

😤😡🤬

For me it sounded like this: “look all we built is because of me. your role was to provide code. a work that a monkey can do. so please stop wasting my time on dreaming about your 40%, be thankful for the experience and the salary i gave to you up until today and just go already, okay?”

It was painful to hear. I got really really mad at him. I never felt that angry in my life!

But instead of spending energy in a destructive way, I decided to spend it on creating things. So I built my own SaaS and it was successful. Way more successful than that we achieved together when i was playing an unimportant role of a coding monkey.

I share this story only 6 years after it happened because now I’m calm down. I can reflect and not being toxic.

I forgave my co-founder for taking all our money and domains.

The reality is the guy was highly emotionally attached to the products. He could not forget me leaving the team. He behaved like an angry mom who restricts seeing children when a dad leaves.

Was that unprofessional? Hell yeah!!!!

But does it make him a bad person? Does he deserve hate, anger, punishment? Nope.