4 The founding team—who’s in and who’s not?
- What is the role of a startup founder?
- Who gets the founder badge, when should it be awarded?
- Crafting founder equity—what's the best way to structure it?
In the nine startups I either founded or ran, or both, I have had one, two, three, five, and six founders. How that is determined is not a science but a very important art that sets the stage for how the company culture will materialize.
I came in to my first startup, MasPar, as employee number twelve, but because of my research at Duke, they made me honorary founder number six, which had no substance to it, such as stock or title. I and four key leaders from Open Environment became the five founders of Webspective. At FactPoint, I and the Chief Marketing Officer were the two founders (also meaningless since this was a turnaround). At GeoTrust, the CEO and I (the COO), were a founding team of two. Later, almost the same group of four from Webspective recruited me to be a cofounder with them of Service Integrity. Aguru had a founding team of three. Mogility had a founding team of two. Ambric also had two formal founders, but they added me in later as a founder in name only of the software division. At Dover, I recruited a core team of a VP of Engineering, a CTO, Chief Scientist, and two senior engineers to join me, and the six of us became the founding team. My non-profit The Who Says I Can’t Foundation is the sole example of me being a solitary founder.