Ask HN: Working with a Co-Founder with ADHD

1 points by buzzthro 8 hours ago

I'm the CTO of a pre-seed startup. I've been working with my co-founder who's the CEO for about a year. We're both first time founders in our mid-30s with wife/kids. No prior work history together (though we worked at the same company). It's just the two of us right now and some freelancers/consultants at the company.

My co-founder is extroverted, great at schmoozing with people and forming personal relationships, great at emotional control etc. but not at getting stuff done. I'm usually pulling double hours on pretty much everything, even sales, legal, investors etc. If I don't take ownership of something, it doesn't get done for the most part. Here's what I've observed about my co-founder in the time we've worked together:

* Trouble being organized. There is never any planning or sprints or tasks or goals or anything. We're always winging it as a company. Things don't get done until the very last minute and I have to figure out a way to work weekends or late nights with them taking a toll on my personal relationships.

* Dropping the ball on things they're supposed to do. When confronted, they tell me they don't like it or it's boring (like reaching out to sales prospects). There was a time where they just disappeared for 6 weeks doing just the bare minimum - attending standups but no actual work.

* Never having the patience to read anything long form including legal contracts. It usually falls on my lap at the n-th hour because a contractor is waiting for us to get started.

* Trouble paying attention to things - they say if something isn't conveyed to them clearly and precisely within the first few seconds they tune out. This kind of comes and goes - there are good days but a lot more of the bad ones. Sometimes this results in them projecting it onto me saying that my communication style is verbose and rambly. In the almost 15 years of working, I've never had anyone say this about my communication style.

* Trouble communicating their thoughts clearly. We've heard this from investors, contract employees, mentors etc. Both written and verbal communication turns out to be everything everywhere all at once.

* Trouble remembering things and connecting the dots. We'd have had a conversation with someone just a day prior or a week prior and they would have said something important that we'd discuss after. But that fact gets completely forgotten. They can't square that with something else another customer might have said to start noticing patterns. The interesting part for me at least is that they'd remember a random fact from a call (like the person we were speaking to driving a Porsche) but not something relevant to our business (no we're not in the automotive space). I started adding otter.ai to our calls to make sure there are notes at the end to help them out. But those notes seldom get read either until I point something out.

I've long suspected that they might have ADHD but I couldn't put my finger on it. If I try to discuss they'll usually have an excuse that it was the kids or they have a cold etc. but this pattern of behavior I've described is quite persistent in the time we've worked together. I've seen a lot of blog posts and content from founders with ADHD that describe how they're able to run companies successfully despite the condition or others saying how much of a superpower it is to have ADHD, but as the work partner of someone with ADHD it is utterly exhausting to go through this. So in this thread, I'd love to hear the perspective of founders or early employees who worked with someone with ADHD that wasn't able to manage it well. How did you keep your sanity or what did you end up doing? Are there any effective techniques to deal with this situation and make sure we're progressing as a company?