throwfrustrated

I'm starting to realize this may be the only way to go for me to feel good about the whole thing. Thanks.

Even this way, it doesn't repair the last two years, where I've felt like I put it a lot more work, it would only make things fair from now on, which is only a small part of the problem.

As far as I (and our accountant) understand, the structure we have is not a problem at all from a legal point of view (We're not from the U.S.), so no worries there.

As a bootstrapped Internet company, we didn't invest any more money than to pay servers. And actually, a close person to me invested a certain amount of money (because I asked), and he spent most of it on things I didn't agree on (neither did I know of, since I didn't have access to the bank account at that moment). We gave it back to the investor once we made it back, but that's another experience that shows me this is not a guy I feel comfortable sharing a business with.

Well he never demanded me to work more. I spent those 1-2 months barely working because we had serious issues. When we resolved them, and I decided to just think of him, as I said, as lucky early investor, I started working again. The thing is, I DO love the company and I think it can be very big.

Well that "equity split" was when I decided to go part time, at that point, we effectively had done the same work (almost nothing).

And no, I don't get any salary as a full time employee, all profits are divided, so we effectively get the same amount of money every month.

The first option I tried (not by choice), when I was for 1-2 months doing only the essentials to keep in running. This was like 8 months ago when we had another big dispute (told around the end of the main story), and he didn't say a word.

Well his idea in the way of "let's do this!", but he's had it for years. Don't we agree that ideas are a dime a dozen if not executed?

As of contacts, well they got in play after 6 months of part time work, and while they got the thing rolling, as of now maybe only 1-2% of our current customers are people he knows. Yes, it would have been a lot more difficult to get it rolling, but I'm not sure this "one time good deed" is enough to get 50% of it, while I've been working on it full time for years after that.

While I would prefer commitment and involvement, if he'd done as you say on his own (hey, I feel I should at least give you half of my salary), at least I would've thought he's not committed, but fair. At this point, I don't want or need half of his salary.

About taking a vacation, I feel he wouldn't step up (or he'd do a bad job), so it'd would be basically abandon the business to its own luck (or best case scenario, waste time in limbo). Not sure I want to do that unless it's a last resort option.

This is a really good piece of advice, thank you. We actually have some common friends who are either web devs or entrepreneurs themselves, and I've always had this whole thing hidden from them. Might be a good time to bring it up and ask them to mediate.

I guess my fear is that, confronted with the choice of: I get money, and you don't; or we rethink our equity; he'll say "You know what? I think I'm ready to be working full time on this!", which doesn't repare the past two years, and to be honest, at this point I'm not even sure I want him full time on this, given his total lack of commitment. "Deciding" to go full time when given an ultimatum, is not enough for me.

Well our current equity is, but there's no vesting or anything about "what you have to do in order to earn that equity".