Oh boy. I could write about this ad infinitum, so I’ll keep it as brief as I can.

I left my business a bit over a year ago, and while I can cite dozens of immediate issues as the reason (literally dying from stress and anxiety - hospitalisations, inadequate compensation, dissatisfaction with direction), the fundamental problem was the relationship between me and my cofounder.

We were always a slightly odd pairing. We'd known each other since childhood, drifted apart, and drifted back together 12 years ago through a shared passion for making neat and innovative stuff - namely e-commerce sites. He was design, I was code. Simple stuff when it was two of us.

We grew, our roles shifted. He ended up orchestrator, managing day-to-day production, and generally ensuring that the team pulled together efficiently. I ended up sales, hires, customer relationships, strategy, and driving the technology - we built a nifty platform that allowed more efficient production. It worked well enough - he was good at tactical thinking, me strategic.

Where it fell apart - friendship, and our differing approaches to it. I covered his ass day in, day out, to clients, staff, and the investor who came in in our sixth year. I protected him from himself - and took the fall for pretty much everything that ever went wrong, as my attitude is that if nobody will take responsibility, I will, as only then can we actually do anything about it. I even did this when he actively undermined initiatives agreed upon in board meetings, damned fool that I am.

In return, he gaslit me and threw me under the bus, daily - and I never did anything to let him know this wasn't OK, as I still saw the fragile boy who'd had a tumultuous childhood and had crazy social anxiety. On the odd occasion when I did say "you broke it, you buy it", or "you need to tell the investor why this isn't happening", he'd stonewall me and the rest of the company for days on end. I never did figure out how to broach the topic.

Retrospectively, I got this really wrong - I should've let him suffer for his errors, so that he might learn from them. Instead I shielded him from reality, and took it on my shoulders.

I slowly but surely became a maniac - walking off the reservation when it got too much, stoning myself to sleep every night, and finding myself going into a full blown panic at the smallest things. I used to be, and am once more, pretty much implacable.

The final straw for me was when I had to go and renegotiate all of our client contracts, cap in hand, as we were overservicing for our fee schedule - mostly because the technical initiatives that would've helped efficiency got strangled in the crib in production in favour of short-term "wins" (not wins at all), as nobody, not me, not the architects and dev leads who I'd hired and nurtured could push back against him. I couldn't in good conscience send the new client services director off to do this, as it would irrevocably taint guide relationship with clients, and I already knew the writing was on the wall for me, so him surviving me was essential if I was to leave the business without it being a total train wreck - so off I went. There was a lot of crying and shouting on clients' parts, and I had no option but to play officer hardass. Had I some, any, support from him I would have weathered it - but instead he gave me a hard time for upsetting the clients, and not a shred of thanks when I'd come back from days on the road, getting clients to agree to a 100%+ hike.

Ultimately, the investor lost confidence in me, the clients all hated me, as I was seen as the source of all problems, real and imagined, my mental and physical health took a massive slide, and I was asked to leave. I did so, gladly, and negotiated an exit which wasn't terrible.

The last year has been illuminating, insofar as 2/3 of the team has turned over (30/45), they've gained only one client (I'd usually make 6+ £2M+ total value sales a year), and lost a few.

I can't even feel schadenfreude over this, as it's my damn fault for not stepping up and dealing with the elephant in the room - his and my relationship - and everybody suffered because of it.

My next business, I'm doing alone.

Also, it's been great training for marriage, which I did shortly after leaving - I fucked up royally with wife #1 (co-founder - not actually married, but it's a very similar type of relationship), and am endeavouring to do it right with real wife #1, by allowing her to make her own mistakes and learn from them, rather than shielding and protecting, which is my first instinct.