founder

noun

1. One who founds or establishes (a company, project, organisation, state, etc.).

   “The founder of Facebook is Mark Zuckerberg.”

   “As to eleemoſynary corporations, by the dotation the founder and his heirs are of common right the legal viſitors, to ſee that that property is rightly employed, which would otherwiſe have deſcended to the viſitor himſelf: […]”

   “Young people love to idolize their predecessors. [Steve] Jobs was Silicon Valley's idol of choice for decades, but to the next generation of startup founders, his legacy feels about as old as Web 1.0.”

   “Chris Printup, a founder of the streetwear brand Born X Raised, which became a fixture on the Los Angeles fashion scene, died on Wednesday morning at a hospital in Albuquerque. He was 42.”

2. A common ancestor of some population (especially one with a certain genetic mutation).

   “a founder population”

   “the founder effect”

   “The sickle cell mutation today can be found in five different haplotypes, leading to the conclusion that the mutation appeared independently five times in five different founders.”

   “Among the Ashkenazi Jews in the positive group, 81 percent had one of the three founder mutations, suggesting that 23andMe's test could be helpful for them.”

   “The gene mutation is likely to have come from a founder individual who lived at least 250 years ago, the paper published in the European Journal of Human Genetics said.”

3. The iron worker in charge of the blast furnace and the smelting operation.

   “The term 'founder' was applied in the British iron industry long afterwards to the ironworker in charge of the blast furnace and the smelting operation.”

4. One who casts metals in various forms; a caster.

   “a founder of cannon, bells, hardware, or printing types”

5. A severe laminitis of a horse, caused by untreated internal inflammation in the hooves.
6. (US, in-plural, often)A Founding Father.

   “As the Founders saw it, the great driver of freedom was knowledge.”

verb

1. (intransitive)To flood with water and sink.

   “We were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship but we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea.”

   “This ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a bell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog—in such tones he commenced reading the following hymn;(...)”

   “Amongst the battleships, things are rather different. Barham led a valiant charge, but suffered for it; she will founder under tow in the Thames estuary shallows, eventually being refloated and refitted after the war.”

2. (especially, intransitive)To fall; to stumble and go lame.
3. (intransitive)To fail; to miscarry.

   “All his tricks founder.”

   “The other ambitions, and much of Prescott's plan, foundered just south of Hatfield that October, when a GNER express derailed on a shattered rail […], plunging the railway into a crisis that led to private track owner Railtrack being put into administration.”

4. (archaic, transitive)To cause to flood and sink, as a ship.

   “We found a strong Tide setting out of the Streights to the Northward, and like to founder our Ship.”

   “I was amazed when we came among the breakers (which to me seemed large enough to founder our ship), to see with what wondrous dexterity they carried us through them, and ran their canoes on the top of one of those rolling waves […]”

   “1932, Hart Crane, "From haunts of Proserpine" (Review of Green River: A Poem for Rafinesque, James Whaler But still more disastrous was the storm which foundered his ship in Long Island Sound, swallowing within call of shore his fifty boxes of scientific equipment, his books, manuscripts and funds, the results of years of devoted labor.”

5. (transitive)To disable or lame (a horse) by causing internal inflammation and soreness in the feet or limbs.