A person, usually a heterosexual female, who pursues relationships or hookups with the founders of tech startups. Like a jersey chaser for nerds. This term was used in the "Bachmanity Insanity" episode of "Silicon Valley."
Clive: "Hey Otto, how's the organic sustainable single-origin artisanal small batch cold brew nitro coffee roasting gig going?"
Otto: "Not great, man. It turns out that our proprietary method of using only high altitude Jamaican Blue Mountain beans filtered through the digestive tract of a civet cat is pretty expensive. So we set our price at $10 a cup, which barely covers our costs, but it's been hard to compete with these low-end stores like Four Barrel and Ritual that sell coffee for only $7, and the peasants here in SF actually drink that swill instead of ours. We went out of business."
Clive: "Oh well, at least you have Matilda. She's your ride-or-die-bitch, right?"
Otto: "Um, not really. She ditched me for this douchebag who is Co-Founder and CEO of this stupid app called Pewply."
Clive: "You mean the app where you take a picture of your feces and it gives you dietary recommendations based on their machine learning big data algorithms? Dude, Pewply is awesome. It totally helped me better come to grips with my gluten allergy."
Otto: "Yeah I'm sensitive to gluten too. But I can't believe she left me for this chode just because of his piece of crap - no pun intended - startup!"
Clive: "Connect the dots, man. Before you, she hooked up with the founders of Markitable, Zenalytics, Flooberli, Sharepnp, and Majikly. She's a classic founder hounder!"
Verb. To relentlessly pursue a solution beyond the point where most humans would concede defeat. Often applied to challenges that others do not recognize as problems. Most frequently used when someone is annoyed that the founder will not leave them alone. To tweak and optimize with conviction and compulsion.
Historical: originally used by spouses of start-up founders to describe really annoying behavior traits, usually a compulsion to solve a problem despite social cues that perhaps it's time to give up.
Example: "Stop foundering me!"
Use case: Spouse walks into the kitchen to find their loved one in a pile of disassembled electronics. "I had to fix the light on the waffle maker." "I thought it still worked without the light." "Technically it does, but I didn't know when to take out my waffles." "I thought they were fine." "They were darker than I wanted." "Of course they were, so you had to founder the waffle maker?" "I've almost got it..."
Use case: "I heard about a waterfall that iced over, but I can't go by myself. Let's go ice climbing tomorrow!" "I always get cold belaying you." "Look, I got you a heavy down jacket." "You got me that last year, and I was still cold." "It's pink, and you never get to wear it." "No." "I'll fill a thermos with hot chocolate." "Stop foundering me." Impervious "Look, I got heat packs to put in your boots and gloves." "STOP FOUNDERING ME!"
-Typically, there is little organizational infrastructure in place, and what is there is not used correctly.
-There is no succession plan.
-Key staff are typically selected by the founder and are often colleagues of the founder.
-Staff may be chosen due to their personal loyalty rather than skills or experience.
-Professionally trained and talented recruits, often recruited to resolve difficulties in the organization, find that they are not able to contribute in an effective and professional way
-The founder begins to believe his/her own Press/PR
The foolishassumption that some founders of some companies and organizations have that leads them to believe that they have special privileges to make decisions that don't make good business sense.
I realize that having a palatialcrash pad in Hollywood is a waste of money but I am the founder of this company and I go there once a month so we are going to spend $10K a month to have it. What?! You think I have founderitis?