I'm in a bit of an argument about what my title should in a start-up I am involved in (that's why I had to ask this question anonymously). Here's the situation:
A biz dev guy with pretty good experience and an excellent graphics/UI designer came to me with an idea to develop something. I didn't love the idea but I liked the space and the team so we talked for a while about what we would actually build. What we are building is significantly different from the idea they came to me with and they had no previous development, just a great flash demo. They have spent some money on lawyer fees, branding, and a couple contractors but it probably only totals ~$10k and some of it is friends/family money as convertible debt. I do significant work on the actual product strategy and UX, not just development, as well as a good bit of market research. Basically anything that a founding member of a company would do just because he is passionate about the idea and wants the company to be super successful. When I first joined, they wanted to consider me a product consultant and I was cool with that because I have never worked with them. Now we're about a month away from launching our first version of the app and I'm looking back on how significant and co-founder like things I have done. I asked them to consider me a co-founder and they declined with this email:
"we agreed that we really want to stick to a literal definition of a co-founder, which we would define as being one of the people who conceived of the initial idea for the business, made the initial investments of time and money, and recruited the team to execute the idea." Of course there was a follow up conversation and more to come but that was the initial email I received. On top of that they mentioned they didn't know me well enough but we have been working together for about 8 months. While we don't know each other extremely well because we are all remote, they are taking a risk on me just like I am taking a risk on them by working for only equity, so that point seems invalid.
My question to YC is - Does it sound like I am a co-founder? If so, how much should I care about getting this title?
In general titles don't matter too much to me but it really bothers me that it's such a big deal to them to give me this title when I feel I have clearly earned it. I have spoke with successful entrepreneurs and they agree that I should be co-founder, but they are also my friends so I want a less biased opinion.
