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Comment by taylorwc | Hacker News Reader

> Thanks to Paul Buchheit, Erica Carpenter, Brian Chesky, Adam D’Angelo, Drew Houston, Justin Kan, Matt Krisiloff, Aaron Levie, Gabriel Leydon, Jessica Livingston, Dustin Moskovitz, David Rusenko and Colleen Taylor for contributing thoughts to this.

^ this group + @sama... wow. Terrific advice from an amazing list of credible people.

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To be honest, I don't think I know a single one of them. Who are they and how can I learn more about what they do and how they formulate such great content?

I think if you Google many of those names, the first thing that will come up is a Wikipedia article about them.

  * Sam Altman – Y Combinator President
  * Paul Buchheit - YC Partner, Gmail founder
  * Erica Carpenter - Y Combinator
  * Brian Chesky - AirBnb
  * Adam D’Angelo – Quora, ex-CTO of FB
  * Drew Houston – Dropbox founder
  * Justin Kan – YC Partner, Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam
  * Matt Krisiloff – Y Combinator
  * Aaron Levie – Box founder
  * Gabriel Leydon – Machine Zone founder
  * Jessica Livingston – YC Founder
  * Dustin Moskovitz – Facebook cofounder
  * David Rusenko – Weebly founder
  * Colleen Taylor – Y Combinator

"Gmail founder" sounds a little funny to me.

If I am employed as a developer in a company on a new product, am I then a founder of that product? It just seems like the word founder just keeps being used more liberally as time goes on.

I think it's appropriate in this case. Paul started Gmail inside of Google as a side project. At first most people were not a supporter, including Marissa Mayer and other peers. He was scratching an itch though and eventually got Larry and Sergey on board which helped the cause and eventually grew into what it is today.

So with that, there are a lot of similarities into what we'd call a founder today. While financially there wasn't a big risk, it was still a product he was passionate about and created from nothing.

Not really, he did it inside a big company with a nice cushy salary and lots of hardware supporting him. Absolutely ZERO risk.

That's not a founder.

It's a great product, he did a brilliant thing, but he's not the gmail 'founder'.

...and he probably wasn't all that "passionate about" it either.

Exactly. 'Creator' or 'original developer' would be far more accurate language and prestigious enough on it's own.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericacarpenter

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Chesky

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_D'Angelo

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drew_Houston

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Kan

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/matthew-krisiloff/41/668/476