First Startup Attempt, Infuriating Experience With Cofounder. [i Will Not Promote]

A friend of mine and I saw some early potential in an idea I had, and decided to turn it into a business. It is a unique idea in the financial data sector, and really heavy on ML. I do all the technical work, all the programming, designing, and once the project is commercially available, will be doing all the marketing and sales/advertising.

My cofounder is the infuriating part. He constantly makes up excuses as to why he can't contribute code, he's busy, he's got classes, etc etc. If it was anyone else, I'd just kick them out. But this guy is really helpful in the designing of all the internal architecture, he has some really good ideas and has helped me avoid quite a few pitfalls. I'm tearing my hair out because he acts like he wants to be an equal cofounder, but only contributes like an advisor. And he's quite good at it, he's super engaged with that aspect of it, he helps brainstorm and will counter bad ideas I have. But when it comes time to write code, he's nowhere to be found, even though he is a far better programmer than I.

What I've decided to do lately is just give him exactly as much as he wants. I don't go to him anymore for anything unless its purely design features. He will reach out saying something like "Gonna try to work on X tonight" and I just ignore it cause I know it's not going to happen. Infuriating, but I got to work with what I have. Lesson learned that you can't force someone to take on more responsibility then they want to, which I guess is my own fault.

I will not promote