I would really not assume competence on the part of the other people in this arrangement. Once this guy goes, the CEO is locked into an expensive team, and will need to find equity and cash to motivate them. They can dilute this guy's share to start, but why stop there? And how well are future funding rounds going to go when the investors realize this?
No sane startup would ever get rid of a technical cofounder who knows the stack and can be motivated by his ownership stake to keep the servers running in a worst case scenario. So it really sounds like the CEO is incompetent and doesn't realize he needs to preserve his ability to remain independent in order to have leverage with investors.
No sane startup would ever get rid of a technical cofounder who knows the stack and can be motivated by his ownership stake to keep the servers running in a worst case scenario. So it really sounds like the CEO is incompetent and doesn't realize he needs to preserve his ability to remain independent in order to have leverage with investors.