The CTO left. The product still needs to ship. Here's how to keep moving.
When the technical cofounder leaves — for equity disputes, personal reasons, or strategic disagreement — the non-technical founder is left holding a codebase they can't read and a product roadmap that's frozen. We assess the current state, fix what needs fixing, and get the product moving again.
Technical cofounder who owned the codebase has left, leaving a non-technical founder with a product in production that nobody is actively maintaining
The technical cofounder departure scenario is one of the most stressful situations a non-technical founder faces. The product is in production — there are paying customers, there's a roadmap, there are investor updates to write. And the person who understood the codebase is gone.
The immediate concerns in order of urgency:
Access credentials: Who has the AWS keys, the database credentials, the deployment access, the domain registrar login? The first 48 hours after a departure are critical for credential audit — before the departing cofounder's access can cause problems (accidental or intentional).
Product stability: Is the product currently stable? Are there known issues that were being managed? Are there time-sensitive dependencies (expiring SSL certificates, upcoming API deprecations, infrastructure renewals)?
Codebase quality: What did the departing cofounder leave behind? Clean, well-structured code that a new developer can understand, or tightly coupled code that requires extensive knowledge transfer to work with?
Deployment process: How does the product currently get deployed? Is it automated or manual? Is there documentation, or was it all in the departing cofounder's head?
Codebase assessed, critical issues identified and fixed, product back on a forward trajectory with a developer who can maintain and extend it
Credential audit
Full audit of all infrastructure access: cloud providers, domain registrar, code repository, deployment platform, third-party services. Credentials rotated and transferred to founder control.
Codebase assessment
Review of the current codebase state: stability, quality, documentation, test coverage, known issues. Written assessment delivered within 1 week.
Critical issue remediation
Any stability or security issues identified in the assessment addressed before new feature work begins.
Deployment documentation
If the deployment process is undocumented, it's documented during the assessment phase. Automated deployment set up if the current process is manual.
Ongoing development
After the assessment and stabilization phase, forward-looking development resumes on the product roadmap. The working relationship is the same as any fixed-price engagement — defined scope, fixed price per project.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Codebase assessed, critical issues identified and fixed, product back on a forward trajectory with a developer who can maintain and extend it
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Non-technical founders need cost predictability, especially when navigating a cofounder departure. Fixed price for each phase.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
If the codebase is hosted on a GitHub org the founder controls, access can be transferred. If the departing cofounder hosted on their own GitHub and is uncooperative, the legal path (depending on the equity and IP agreement) may be required. This is a legal question, not a development question — but the development assessment can't begin until codebase access is secured.
The assessment takes 1 week. Critical issues identified in the assessment are addressed in 2–3 weeks. Ongoing development begins after the stabilization phase. Total time from first contact to active development: 3–4 weeks.
Assessment and stabilization: from $8k. Ongoing development: project-by-project fixed price. Tell Ryel about the situation for a specific assessment.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.