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There's a couple of things in this article that I don't think are true. I don't think Ben Golub was a co-founder of Docker. Maybe he counts as a co-founder of D

There's a couple of things in this article that I don't think are true. I don't think Ben Golub was a co-founder of Docker. Maybe he counts as a co-founder of Docker but not of Dotcloud? That seems a bit weird though. I also am pretty sure Docker's headquarters are in San Francisco, not Palo Alto.

pbiggar 9y ago
Cofounder is a title, like any other. It doesn't just refer to "I was there at the start of the corporate entity". If they're calling Ben a cofounder, then they certainly mean it. You're right that he wasn't there at the start of Dotcloud, but that doesn't mean that he didn't have (or didn't earn) the title of cofounder of Docker. Ben's linkedin has "co-founder" of on it, so it certainly wasn't the article making a mistake.
- eldavido 9y ago
  Cofounder is sort of nebulous, it doesn't carry any official legal authority and isn't an "officer" of the corporation in most senses, though it has a lot of cachet in SV. I view it as a relatively cheap bargaining chip that can burnish a person's reputation, but has little descriptive value in terms of what someone actually did to move the business forward.
  - pbiggar 9y ago
    I disagree. You're not exactly handing the title out willy-nilly. If they're calling Ben a cofounder, I'll be that has significant meaning to them.
    - eldavido 9y ago
      Sure, but it's a lot different from being a CEO, shareholder, member of the board, or high-level corporate officer. "Founder" is something you can bestow retroactively, not so much with "CEO". And I'm seeing all sorts of companies hand out titles like "Founding Engineer", "Founding Developer", etc. with the same chump-change 100k/0.1% option packages as before.
- jdoliner 9y ago
  So then Ben might say something like: "I co-founded Docker. I was hired 2 years after it was founded." And that wound give you pause? It seems to me we're divorcing the word "founder" from the concept it derives from, which is the act of founding. I suspect that, should this become common practice, it will quickly devalue the title of co-founder. The only reason it has the allure that it does is because, in most people's minds, it's not a title like any other since. For most people, the only way to be a founder is to found. All this being said, I do agree that this wasn't the article's mistake. I suspect if you asked the author if he's under the impression that Ben was present when Docker was founded though he'd say yes, so in some sense he's been misled. That's what most people take from the term founder I believe.
Patrick_Devine 9y ago
You're correct with both assertions. As someone who lives in Palo Alto and works for Docker, I can only wish that it were headquartered there.

pbiggar 9y ago

Cofounder is a title, like any other. It doesn't just refer to "I was there at the start of the corporate entity". If they're calling Ben a cofounder, then they certainly mean it. You're right that he wasn't there at the start of Dotcloud, but that doesn't mean that he didn't have (or didn't earn) the title of cofounder of Docker. Ben's linkedin has "co-founder" of on it, so it certainly wasn't the article making a mistake.

eldavido 9y ago
Cofounder is sort of nebulous, it doesn't carry any official legal authority and isn't an "officer" of the corporation in most senses, though it has a lot of cachet in SV. I view it as a relatively cheap bargaining chip that can burnish a person's reputation, but has little descriptive value in terms of what someone actually did to move the business forward.
- pbiggar 9y ago
  I disagree. You're not exactly handing the title out willy-nilly. If they're calling Ben a cofounder, I'll be that has significant meaning to them.
  - eldavido 9y ago
    Sure, but it's a lot different from being a CEO, shareholder, member of the board, or high-level corporate officer. "Founder" is something you can bestow retroactively, not so much with "CEO". And I'm seeing all sorts of companies hand out titles like "Founding Engineer", "Founding Developer", etc. with the same chump-change 100k/0.1% option packages as before.
jdoliner 9y ago
So then Ben might say something like: "I co-founded Docker. I was hired 2 years after it was founded." And that wound give you pause? It seems to me we're divorcing the word "founder" from the concept it derives from, which is the act of founding. I suspect that, should this become common practice, it will quickly devalue the title of co-founder. The only reason it has the allure that it does is because, in most people's minds, it's not a title like any other since. For most people, the only way to be a founder is to found. All this being said, I do agree that this wasn't the article's mistake. I suspect if you asked the author if he's under the impression that Ben was present when Docker was founded though he'd say yes, so in some sense he's been misled. That's what most people take from the term founder I believe.

Patrick_Devine 9y ago

You're correct with both assertions. As someone who lives in Palo Alto and works for Docker, I can only wish that it were headquartered there.