I'm not entirely clear on what's proper nomenclature... is there a difference?
Say there are two individuals starting a company, is it proper to call them both "founder" or is "co-founder" the correct label?
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Co-founder is the correct answer for your question. But even if you call them founders, it wouldn't be a big deal. |
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There are differences between co-founders and founders. The founder would be the person who created the company. A co-founder would be someone who helps in creating the company/business or more. |
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I founded a company with a partner, and this recently came up in a discussion. I think each person should in their own right be a founder, and it's clean to be called Founder / EVP Products, or Founder/CEO. It doesn't imply you are the only founder in my mind, but if the question arises, then you say you founded a company with another person or a team. What happens if one party then leaves at some later point? Then you have to change everything form Co-Founder to Founder anyway otherwise it brings up a lot of unwanted questions about what happened to the other founder. My opinion..each person can use Founder in their title who was an actual Founder. Early employees really don't usually get founders shares of equity so that is how I distinguish the difference. |
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I've also seen examples where "Founder" is used to denote the person who worked on the idea prior to bringing in the other "co-Founders." This was the inspiration for my title ("Founder and President"), although my partners certainly have the right to use the titles "co-Founder" or even "Founder." |
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I've recently seen a disturbing trend where people seem to be using both of these terms at one company, granting "founder" status to a few and lower "co-founder" status to others. As far as I can tell this originated at Facebook where Mark Zuckerberg wanted to distinguish himself from all others that claimed/litigated status as founders. I also have seen/heard of this when someone is granted founder status later in the formation of a company and hence only considered a co-founder vs. a founder. In general, to me - if there's multiple founders, all are co-founders, if there is only one then one is a founder. Certainly one can refer to all co-founders as founders, but I find the dual-class structure distasteful and disingenuous. |
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"co-founder" implies more than 1 founder. But, "founder" may be used in the single or multiple senses. |
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