I don't know how to approach this situation so I'll detail my situation. We started a startup conceptually since 1 year ago, went full force in developing in May, and are now about to get clients/ship product.
My partner and I are former web designers/developers who can't do web application programming but can sell ice to an eskimo and have great marketing/business networking experience. We put both of our life savings to get front-end development done (are main product is a dashboard tool). Our other (kinda founder) who has been with us since the beginning does the back-end programming, without him it would've been hard. We are paying him about $25/hr below his market pay, but he went to college with me so he is helping with discount. The backend shouldn't be more than about 150 hours of true programming (not including research time).
Here is the situation. The programmer is a dick. He has a house and baby so we try to cut slack, but he keeps on missing deadlines. He has almost no communication skills when we want to meet and work, he doesn't show passion like a founder. We wanted him to come on board as a full equity stake founder, but we've learned to him this is just a project and that's it. We haven't had that come to Jesus talk yet, but we're afraid it may leave us in a bad spot. He's the only one familiar with the backend. It's causing us to lose clients and not gain momentum, not including how our advisors/investors are eyeing us.
Please any advice will help. We would love to find a new programmer founder, but how do we make the next steps in a crucial time like raising funding? Also please note as just a key employee we were going to give him 3-5% equity in the company.
I count six red flags. You're paying below market rate; your programmer is a college friend who probably agreed to take the job as a favor; you've given a time estimate which is probably wrong; you excluded "research time" from the time estimate when you clearly shouldn't have; and you show obvious disrespect and no gratitude.
And you wonder why you aren't getting his best work?