[onan_barbarian]

Looking through to the original post, I've got to agree with Satish on this one. I've met plenty of 'early employees' with WAY more skin in the startup game than a lot of 'founders' I've met.

Here in Australia, particularly, you can't swing a cat without hitting a half-dozen rich kids or mid-life Accenture employees looking to jazz up their comfortable lives who have founded tiny, pointless companies that will wander around for a while then comfortably expire.

This makes them a 'founder', and thus somehow in a different category to employee #5 or #3 or whatever of Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Big. Fucking. Deal.