"I'm leaving on the six o'clock train." — When a co-founder leaves unexpectedly
By Chloe Pahud
Many years ago I met a guy with an idea for a start-up, and a passion for making societal impact that was contagious. I was not necessarily looking to start a business, especially a tech business, but I whole-heartedly bought into the idea and the vision to empower citizens to influence local and national politics. We kicked off the business and realised we needed a CTO to build the technology. Again, through random circumstances, we got to know this very young guy who had loads of energy and the right skill set to join us. It felt like a match made in heaven, in what got off to a great start with a great team.
As time passed, as with any start-up, we ran into challenges and road bumps. We all dealt with them in our own ways, but I could tell that the CTO was struggling. He was completely committed to create perfect tech, but sometimes circumstances mean that is not possible. Sometimes even though you built the perfect product, customers are reticent to use it for other reasons, and working with governments means you encounter a lot of resistance and unlogic behaviour. Furthermore, requirements and specifications change rapidly. It can be a frustrating experience as CTO.
Still, it was not clear to me just how much he was hurting from this frustration. Not until a sunny Tuesday morning at 10am when he walked into my office and told me he would be leaving — for good — on the six o'clock train. My initial feelings were of fear, anger, and sadness. Fear that the business would not survive losing our co-founder, anger at him not having given us a chance to prepare, and sadness because it was clear that he was not in a happy place.
The initial days and weeks after his departure were chaotic. We had one junior developer left and we had to work hard with him to understand the state of our systems and the immediate and urgent needs for the technology were. We talked to all our staff to explain the situation and ensure that they would not lose faith with the business. And we spent quite a bit of time discussing why this had happened, and what we could have done to prevent it. It was in this phase that I had another revelatory experience.
In one roundtable debrief, someone else pointed out the signs of distress in the CTO, little things like irritability, fatigue, frustration. I was deeply moved for two reasons; first, that even though I had seen these signs, I had not taken them seriously enough, and second, that I saw exactly the same signs in my other co-founder, the then-CEO. A few days later I took him aside and had an earnest conversation about his own feelings about the business. Fortunately, I was right, he was also drained and conflicted about staying. At least in this case, we were able to do a controlled exit over six months, at which point I took over as CEO.
This time was a very turbulent time for both the business, and me personally. I realised how important it is to look out for signs of burn out, and the physical and mental health of the team, and how it is important to openly talk about how we feel. I also decided that the organisation should not be dependent on any one individual, and re-organised teams and team members to be more distributed and self-sufficient. The team really bonded and embraced our new working methods. It was a painful experience, but we learned from it and came out a stronger organisation.
Chloe Pahud is CEO and Founder of Civocracy. As a major European player in CivicTech, Civocracy work with governments in Europe and international organizations of all sizes and cultures. But the priority focus is to equip citizens. Civocracy envisions an inclusive world where people collaborate together to solves society's most pressing challenges. Every day.