[trapexit]

Your co-founder's code is mostly worthless at this point without the continuing involvement of the co-founder. Developers have their own idiosyncratic coding styles, and without a multi-member dev team providing continuity of design, I expect that a new developer would rewrite it as the product evolves.

At the same time ... if you've been at this for 6 months already and you don't have any meaningful traction, you should strongly re-evaluate whether this is going to be a viable market for you.

[djsamseng]

Also want to second this. The team behind the code is much more important than the code itself.

[sciclaw]

FWIW, figuring out what to build is often more difficult that building a product. It would probably take much less than 6 months to rebuilt the product given the knowlege you've gained along the way. Maybe it's worth getting a new technical partner or hiring some devs and re-building the product. Perhaps you can ask your co-founder to let you use the current product and pay for support in the meantime while you find a team to build the next version.

[cloogshicer]

That's correct. If the co-founder is gone, the source code has lost most of its value.

I wrote about this in more detail recently: https://hiringengineersbook.com/post/autonomy/

[weusedto]

This is a great point. I had thought a little about this but wasn't sure to what extent this code would have value with a different technical partner. Thank you!!

Agree on the lack of traction - I'm not convinced it's dead yet, but I recognize there will soon come a time when it is time to put this behind me, I'd just like to try a little harder before doing so.