My Founder Sucks

4 ljpg16 1 7/23/2025, 8:04:23 AM
I'm the first hire, 9 months into the job. Moved from US to EU for the job at a pre-seed AI startup. I'm an ex-founder, exited last year. These guys were looking for a growth hacker to help them find traction with their MVP, aiming to raise another round by the end of this year.

Founding team is two engineers and an ex-PM. The engineers are 100% product, never talking to customers/prospects or sharing about the building side of the business publicly. Just in their zone building, which is fine. The other described his role as the commercial player on the team and he needed my help with GTM and communication.

In these 9 months, almost every customer I've closed has churned over poor product experience, no one else on the team has secured new business, and product has not improved.

Founder on the commercial side does not communicate publicly about the product, makes zero sales calls, writes zero sales emails. I don't know what he does. He mostly just vibe codes and looks at competitor websites. All ideas, no action.

This is clearly not a rocket ship and I acknowledge I'm not perfect or the best at this. I had a great idea and started a company a few years ago and it changed my life. We had a core product that our customers loved and it solved a specific problem.

These guys have been building for two years and can't explain what they are building to the average person on the street and still have weekly meetings to figure out their ICP.

Not looking for ideas on what to do or how to fix the situation. I have my own ideas, just needed to vent. Cheers.

Comments (1)

sublinear · 11h ago
Quit.