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.
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.)
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.
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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[ 0.23 ms ] story [ 43.9 ms ] threadThe initial team who implemented it and brought the idea to reality/first prototype?
First X 'employees'?
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.
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.)