I think the tuple <startups, programmers> may be the cutting edge of a profound social trend: the end of the employer/employee relationship. It's interesting to see posts like the OP struggle with how the traditional categories ("founder" and "employee") are no longer adequate to describe what is rapidly evolving, with neologisms like "late cofounder" popping up as attempts to address it.
The catalyst is that the perceived value of good programmers is finally coming into alignment with their real value. There was a longstanding market inefficiency as people tried to apply industrial/managerial thinking to software, which doesn't work. That phase appears to be coming to an end. The collapse of the barrier to starting one's own company has helped bring this about. So has the growth of hacker culture, which holds programming in high esteem and has healthier creative values than the corporate world. Talented people no longer take for granted that their lot in life is to do boring work for employers who don't respect them. Of course, many still do - the majority, in fact - but what matters is the trend.
If this is right, then we can expect many aspects of the old model (I nominate job interviews) to become anachronistic and die off. Since these are mostly painfully awkward and dumb, bring it on.
Follow-up: my (early!) cofounder pointed out to me that "late cofounder" is an oxymoron. To "found" implies being present at the beginning, or more precisely at the bottom (as in "foundation"). The new is oxymoronic in terms of the old.
The catalyst is that the perceived value of good programmers is finally coming into alignment with their real value. There was a longstanding market inefficiency as people tried to apply industrial/managerial thinking to software, which doesn't work. That phase appears to be coming to an end. The collapse of the barrier to starting one's own company has helped bring this about. So has the growth of hacker culture, which holds programming in high esteem and has healthier creative values than the corporate world. Talented people no longer take for granted that their lot in life is to do boring work for employers who don't respect them. Of course, many still do - the majority, in fact - but what matters is the trend.
If this is right, then we can expect many aspects of the old model (I nominate job interviews) to become anachronistic and die off. Since these are mostly painfully awkward and dumb, bring it on.