Please excuse my blatantly rude question and over-analyzing from across the pond but... you hired fresh-out-of-college/university hotshots into leading and crucial positions: CEO, CTO, "product guy", co-founders and programmers positions - what the frakk were YOU doing there? I always had the impression that, if it is your "shop" one way or another during starting-up phase you fill those positions and do those tasks, you are the CEO, CTO, "product guy" and if you are lucky and get things off the ground and only when things get TOO much to handle on your own, THEN you start taking people on board to help you out - but then you are stuck with having to lead them?
It sounds a terrible lot like you hired good résumés, probably even ready and able people, but never succeeded in uniting them, giving them a common vision, a direction to go into and you had no idea what you could request and expect from them or you failed to communicate it well, so you could only believe their big promises even they had nothing to show for it. Which would also be in accordance to that CTO bad-mouthing you, obviously you were no authority or respected person to him because you never managed to effective "jump the chasm" and switch into "boss-mode" and make the whole bunch of them row to the beat of YOUR drums.
> what's the right thing to do, how to reason about it in a logical way, how to do it, how to finish it, contingency plans, etc.
I think that also takes good leadership - not everyone who might even be FANTASTIC at their job has that quality of being a SEAL-type "lonesome wolf" who can move heaven and earth completely on his own, commando style. Most people need some sort of guidance, a feedback between expectation and how they met them to get them to a productive level.
> hired them because of a sense of urgency (e.g. need to demo X to VCs soon!),
In your position, there is no excuse to NOT knowing that throwing bodies at rapidly approaching deadlines will only make things worse and more complicated, not better... you have heard of Tom DeMarco, right?
> At the end of the two years, I think I must have went through 2 dozens of people, co-founders included.
That can also potentially poison the whole team that probably hardly ever existed to begin with because there must have been people coming and going ALL the time...
It sounds a terrible lot like you hired good résumés, probably even ready and able people, but never succeeded in uniting them, giving them a common vision, a direction to go into and you had no idea what you could request and expect from them or you failed to communicate it well, so you could only believe their big promises even they had nothing to show for it. Which would also be in accordance to that CTO bad-mouthing you, obviously you were no authority or respected person to him because you never managed to effective "jump the chasm" and switch into "boss-mode" and make the whole bunch of them row to the beat of YOUR drums.
> what's the right thing to do, how to reason about it in a logical way, how to do it, how to finish it, contingency plans, etc.
I think that also takes good leadership - not everyone who might even be FANTASTIC at their job has that quality of being a SEAL-type "lonesome wolf" who can move heaven and earth completely on his own, commando style. Most people need some sort of guidance, a feedback between expectation and how they met them to get them to a productive level.
> hired them because of a sense of urgency (e.g. need to demo X to VCs soon!),
In your position, there is no excuse to NOT knowing that throwing bodies at rapidly approaching deadlines will only make things worse and more complicated, not better... you have heard of Tom DeMarco, right?
> At the end of the two years, I think I must have went through 2 dozens of people, co-founders included.
That can also potentially poison the whole team that probably hardly ever existed to begin with because there must have been people coming and going ALL the time...