I’m relatively young (22m) and I run a SAAS company with two business partners (3 including myself). I started this company about nine months ago, and it’s been a long road to get to where we are now, but we are at a point where things are getting really serious and we are doing really well as a company. By the end of next year we are on track to being a multimillion dollar company if we keep growing at the rate that we are now. The problem is that I started this business with my two business partners, and one of them is great (Steve). He helps me with everything; he’s the CTO, he’s extremely talented as far as it goes with software, and he’s extremely eager to fix issues and streamline the company along with me in order to push us in the right direction. On the other hand our other business partner who was a very key part at the beginning of the company and approached Steve and I with this idea and told us about the entire industry, has been sleeping all day, making promises to clients and then not delivering (which has caused a lot of our clients to question our abilities), doesn’t contribute to the business at least 70% of the time and as far as roles go he doesn’t have one that couldn’t be replaced for a fraction of what we pay him or couldn’t be handled with little to no added work by Steve. He also has a false idea of what being an entrepreneur looks like and posts all day about going to the gym and parties and talking about being rich while leaving Steve and I to do all the work. I know one of the biggest things people are going to bring up is “Well, have you tried talking to him?” and the answer is no, I haven’t. He sends me to voicemail 90% of the time I call him and hasn’t come to a meeting in a few weeks. Anytime I talk to him about his productivity, he says, “Let’s just look into hiring someone to do my job,” but it’s a very simple job that could be handled by one of us, so at that point, why would we even want to pay him 33% or even at all? He is a really good guy, and he is a good friend. It just isn’t fair to me or Steve that we have to do everything, and we’d like to not have to rely on him to make decisions, especially since Steve and I both work all day and commit our lives to this business. We would however like for him to leave on good terms, and we’d like to let him keep some share of the business (~10%), but we just don’t want to deal with this anymore. Note: we haven’t formed an LLC yet, and in theory I could just tell him that we don’t want to work with him anymore, which we don’t want to do, and we’d like to be fair. Steve and I just started talking about this a few days ago because he’s starting to get to the point where he’s rude and doesn’t understand why we’re upset with him when we do talk to him. He’s a good friend of mine, and I’d like it to stay that way, although he isn’t being fair to us because he doesn’t do anything. But then again, I don’t see him being too fond of the idea of being bought out because “it was his idea”. I’m just at a point where I don’t know what to do anymore. We’re about to hit our end-of-year goals, and Steve is considering dropping out of college to pursue this full-time, so the extra money would be very beneficial. Thanks for your advice, and I’m not trying to “play victim,” so if you have any questions, comment below and I won’t have any problem answering them. Steve and I are far from perfect, but we still do everything we need to every day in order to keep things running. Thanks!