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.<p>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.
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.
Does it mean the person or the group of people who conceived the idea? <p>The initial team who implemented it and brought the idea to reality/first prototype? <p>First X 'employees'?