Cofounder

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. An individual who collaborates with one or more persons to establish an organization, company, or institution jointly from its inception
2. A person who participates alongside others in the initial creation and development of an enterprise or project by sharing responsibility and efforts
3. Someone involved in the original formation of a business or initiative by partnering with others to launch and build the entity together

Etymology: "Cofounder" is simply "co-" joined to "founder," the English word for someone who establishes an institution or business. The prefix "co-" comes from Latin "con-" (with, together), a form that shortened to "co-" before vowels and certain consonants, and the English "founder" traces back to the same Latin family as the verb "to found," meaning to establish or lay the base of something. Put together, a cofounder is a person who helps set up an enterprise alongside someone else. The "founder" in question is the establisher sense, not the metalworker who casts molten metal or the verb meaning to sink, which are separate English senses of the same spelling. That is why the compound reads so naturally in business contexts: a company's origins are imagined as a foundation laid by several hands at once.

Synonyms: founder, partner, originator, creator, initiator