I'm a technical founder who connected with a semi-technical cofounder in January. At this time, we connected pretty well because he saw the vision I had and seemed to be pretty motivated. We talked for hours about the idea, vision, poked holes through it, etc. He was a go-getter who wasn't afraid to DM people and reach out to people to ask for things.

In the beginning, he made a pitch deck and applied to some grants, which I thought would be an indicator of motivation. We got rejected for those since we need more traction before we continue forward. However, since then, there has been no substantial work done on his part.

It's been a few months now and I'm very frustrated now.

Red flags for me:

- Everything has been ideated, designed, and implemented by me (other than the name + logo). He has 0 contribution other than feedback on what the screen looks like. And even the feedback is mostly "this looks great" or "this looks bad" without any actionable follow-up or suggestions on what to change.

- He found a designer online that I'm paying for out of my own pocket, who has provided 0 value. We've used none of the designer's designs because he wasn't able to manage the designer properly, yet I will still have to pay this designer for their "work."

- I've assigned him multiple tasks where he's only completed 10% of them in a subpar fashion and has yet to deliver on the other 90% for weeks or months. And yes, I've assigned him tasks. These tasks are tasks any normal intern can do in less than a week. Yet, he's unable to deliver in a competent manner.

- The fact that I even have to assign him tasks is very frustrating. It adds a new management load to my plate that I should not have to deal with for a cofounder. I feel like I'm managing an intern. I feel like a babysitter.

- He texts me a lot of ideas and "we should do this" statements, which is great, except ideas are meaningless. Especially if they are just a 1-2 sentence idea. I always ask him to flesh out the idea more by drawing up some quick wireframes, clarifying the user journey, and figuring out an actionable plan for what it should look like in reality. I have yet to receive even one document or plan.

If there is the bare minimum of Excalidraw wireframes (yes, i'm not asking for much) and a quick bullet point list of the user journey, I can implement anything super fast. But I don't even get that - the mental load is on me to do it all from end-to-end.

- Texts me a lot of surface-level insights about our competitors or about the industry, no real value-adds. I thought this was fine at first because he was still getting used to the industry, but none of his insights have gotten deeper at all. They are the bare basics that anyone in our industry should know. But it throws me off now because it makes me doubt the experience and understanding he has of the industry.

I thought about the good things that he's done.

- He came up with a great name and logo for the company. - He had some creative ideas on the main 2 core features for our app (which I had to still flesh out, design, and implement).

For reference, we are not full-time on this yet. I work a job in Big Tech and am putting in 30-35 hours a week on this, sacrificing performance at work and my sleep/social life. I have a track record of building things from 0-1 and have built things to 4-5 figures of MRR before. He's a college student on summer break (no internship lined up). I'm starting to think maybe partnering with someone with no real work experience was a mistake.

-- TLDR-ish:

Basically, I feel like he's the second guy in this tweet: https://x.com/ayushswrites/status/1804221219958325258

Talker, not a do-er.

TLDR: Cofounder is underperforming and delivering subpar work to literally nothing at all. He's not pulling his weight and bringing value to the table, should I fire him? What else can I do?"