CRISIS KIT PRO™
Crisis playbook — free

A co-founder dispute is going public.

This one feels existential because it might be. The rule above all rules: there is no public version of this story where you win by talking more.

First: the next 15 minutes

Aligned silence: agree with your co-founder (or decide alone) that nothing goes public from either side while counsel works. Screenshot everything. Brief your team: no comment, anywhere.

Say nothing publicly yet. Nothing you publish in the next 15 minutes fixes this — but one wrong sentence lasts forever. Then:

Score the severity — free, 2 minutes
What NOT to do
  • Respond to their posts point by point — every reply extends the news cycle
  • Involve employees, investors, or customers as allies — it drags bystanders into the blast radius
  • Post anything before counsel reviews it — equity, contracts, and defamation are all live wires here
Your likely lane

Counsel-first, almost always. Publicly: a single minimal acknowledgment at most, only if silence itself is becoming the story. Everything real happens privately, through lawyers and mediators.

Not sure which lane? Run the 60-second lane picker →

This page is the first aid kit. The full system is the hospital.
The Crisis Kit Pro™ gives you the fill-in-the-bracket templates for this exact scenario, the six-factor severity calculator, the approval workflow, and the hour-by-hour plan — $149 USD one-time payment.
Get Crisis Kit Pro — $149 USD pilot

Other scenarios:

A negative review is going viralA journalist wants comment by morningAn ex-employee is making allegationsProduct outage or failureYou made a public mistakeAnnouncing layoffs because of AI

Educational guidance, not legal advice. If safety, money, data, or legal rights are at stake, involve qualified counsel before any public statement.