Founders are the people who establish the Oginization/company—that is, they take on the risk and reward of creating something from nothing. Remember, an idea by itself is not a company, though most companies start as an idea. Some companies start out as one person’s idea and stay that way. More commonly one or two people might have an idea but then recruit a group to help execute the idea (because ideas are worthless without execution).

The people who recruit that group and get execution going are founders. They split the original ownership in some way, and then work to bring in the resources they need to build an enterprise.