
What Is Your Definition of Startup Founder(s)? - startupper

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brlewis
Among the people who are around to make the first prototype, founders are the
ones who, if everybody else had walked away, would still have made the venture
happen.

Someone can be a significant contributor but still not be a founder. My wife
and I agreed not to list her as a founder on my YC app even though her
contribution has been significant. If I walked away from ourdoings.com, she
probably wouldn't find another coder to make it happen. If she stopped
contributing I would still make it happen.

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vlad
Why not? I don't think Paul was asking for a mathematical breakdown of who has
contributed to your idea so far. (You: 60%, Her: 28%, Neighbor: 10%, Former
Roomate: 1%, inspirational Paul Graham article, 0.5%, etc.)

You could have said that she's a founder as well. I think that could have even
increased your chances of being accepted. And if you say she contributed
enough for it to count, and you know that both of you would quit your jobs to
work on the idea if you received a lot of funding, how does that not make her
a founder? You as a family would also keep more of a company as two founders
than as one, if you had to give stock to your first or second employees who
join later on (I could be wrong.)

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brlewis
She's a full-time mom, and I don't want her to quit that job. Yes, it could
have increased our chances of being accepted, but we thought it was important
to be perfectly honest in terms of commitment level. I wanted to involve YC
only if we and they were a match. They may not know how to help us anyway.

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ecuzzillo
Context: Aaron called himself a founder of reddit, and then there was a brawl
about it on the Reddit thread about his PR fiasco of an interview. Personally,
I think no one would have objected to him calling himself a founder if it had
been evident that he had done actual work in proportion to the volume and
pomposity with which he talks.

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startupper
Does it mean the person or the group of people who conceived the idea?

The initial team who implemented it and brought the idea to reality/first
prototype?

First X 'employees'?

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leisuresuit
I'd say it's everyone who was involved in it before the 1st employee was
hired.

