The Great Founder Erasure: How Tech Journalism Keeps Inventing Lone Geniuses

There is a particular species of modern myth-making that thrives in Silicon Valley, a kind of techno-spiritual folklore woven from hoodies, venture capital, and the irresistible editorial urge to attribute vast, complex achievements to a solitary man who, ideally, looks photogenic on the cover of Wired. This is the “Lone Genius Founder” narrative, a tale so deeply embedded in tech reporting that you could be forgiven for thinking that half the world’s most successful companies were conjured into existence by a single overcaffeinated wunderkind with a laptop, a vision, and perhaps a suspiciously silent supporting cast standing just out of frame.

In reality, companies are founded by teams. Whole human beings. Often several of them. This fact, however, is remarkably easy to lose if you consume your tech history in the form of headlines, executive profiles, or sycophantic conference keynotes, all of which have a curious way of simplifying entrepreneurial history until only one name remains. Journalists aren’t solely to blame, PR departments also enjoy spotlighting a single personality, but the press has done an exceptional job over the past 40 years of polishing these narratives until the supporting characters fade into irrelevance.

It is time, perhaps, to reacquaint ourselves with the truth.

The NVIDIA Story: When Three Becomes One

Consider NVIDIA, a company now so central to the global AI boom that analysts routinely behave as though Jensen Huang is half-man, half-GPU. Huang is charismatic, architecturally sharp, and excellent at presenting a unified vision for how silicon can conquer the future. He is, without question, the public face of NVIDIA, a man frequently photographed wearing leather jackets indoors, which is the traditional uniform of the tech visionary.

But NVIDIA was founded by three people: Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. All three were instrumental. Priem designed the architecture behind the company’s early chips. Malachowsky contributed to engineering and the nascent business strategy. Huang provided leadership, fundraising, and the sort of relentless execution that later became legendary.

This, evidently, is too complicated.

Read mainstream profiles, and NVIDIA was founded by “Jensen Huang,” full stop. The other two have been banished to that quiet realm reserved for people who helped build empires but weren’t available for TED Talks. Huang does not hide their existence; journalists simply don’t bother mentioning them, presumably because adding two extra names might disturb the narrative that a single man invented modern AI in his garage. After all, why ruin a nice clean story?

The truth, however, stubbornly remains: the world’s most important chipmaker is a collaborative creation. But you wouldn’t learn that from the headlines.

Tesla: The Founders Who Aren’t Allowed Onstage

No discussion of founder erasure is complete without revisiting Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer that has successfully convinced millions of people that history began only when Elon Musk walked into the room. Tesla is widely reported to have been founded by Musk, and absolutely no one else; the fact that two engineers named Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated the company, devised its original business plan, and designed the early technical architecture is regarded as a trivial footnote, presumably filed under “inconvenient details.”

Eberhard and Tarpenning began Tesla in 2003. Musk joined in 2004 as an investor and later, crucially, transformed the company through aggressive leadership and an appetite for risk that bordered on recreational. Musk became CEO, oversaw product development, led fundraising, and practically dragged the company through multiple near-death experiences. Tesla today is unimaginable without him.

But found Tesla? No. That honour belongs to the two engineers whom the modern narrative has quietly evicted from the tale, leaving Musk as the lone knight at the centre of the electric revolution. Musk later gained the legal right to call himself a co-founder, but the public rarely hears the “co-” portion. Instead, we are treated to an endless stream of articles portraying him as the singular father of electric mobility, a messianic figure sent to deliver us from diesel.

One might forgive the public for believing this, after all, when a narrative is repeated loudly enough, veracity becomes optional. But journalists, who are ostensibly in the business of facts, have decided that explaining who founded Tesla is far too heavy a burden for the modern attention span. Thus, Eberhard and Tarpenning vanish into the darkness, replaced by the more camera-friendly silhouette of Musk.

Meta/Facebook: The Dorm Room Democracy That Apparently Wasn’t

Then we come to the social network that devoured the world: Facebook, born in the hallowed and somewhat sticky dorm rooms of Harvard University. Ask the average person who founded Facebook, and the answer will be swift: Mark Zuckerberg. Full stop.

Admittedly, Zuckerberg was central to the creation of Facebook, both technically and strategically. His contributions were enormous. But even the most basic recounting of events reveals that he did not, in fact, conjure the platform out of nothingness. Eduardo Saverin provided early funding and business structuring. Andrew McCollum contributed to programming and design. Dustin Moskovitz helped build and scale the product. Chris Hughes handled outreach and communication.

Together, they turned a college website into a global infrastructure of surveillance, influence, and ill-advised family photo sharing.

Yet journalistic shorthand inevitably compresses the founding story into “Zuckerberg built Facebook in his dorm room,” which is roughly as accurate as saying J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter on a napkin once and the rest of the book simply manifested. Hollywood didn’t help either; The Social Network turned Zuckerberg into a tragic antihero-genius, thereby cementing him as the singular “founder” in the cultural imagination.

To be clear, Zuckerberg’s leadership shaped Facebook more than any other individual. But to describe him as the sole origin point requires an act of historical compression that would make a black hole wince.

Apple: The Original Sin of Silicon Valley Myth-Making

Every good myth has an origin, and Silicon Valley’s comes wrapped in the familiar black turtleneck of Steve Jobs, the patron saint of technology, design, and occasionally shouting at people in elevators. Jobs’ influence on Apple was monumental: he turned a hobbyist computer company into a global cultural and design force. He drove product vision, marketing innovation, and a philosophy of obsessive refinement that became Apple’s signature.

But Apple was not founded by Steve Jobs alone. It was founded by Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne.

Wozniak engineered the early Apple I and Apple II computers, which were the actual products that launched the company and paid its bills. Jobs recognised the commercial potential and pushed for design and consumer focus. Wayne, though he famously sold his stake early, was instrumental in setting up the original company structure.

Yet ask the general public, or read most executive profiles, and Apple emerged from Jobs’ forehead like an iPhone-wielding Athena. The myth was convenient. Jobs was charismatic, quotable, compelling in photographs, and unusually adept at mixing abrasive stubbornness with showmanship. Wozniak, though brilliant, was less interested in becoming a demi-god. Thus the media had its hero, and the legend swallowed the rest.

This is the Original Sin of Silicon Valley: the rewriting of a collaborative origin into a solitary miracle. It echoes across the decades, shaping how journalists report every company that followed.

Why Journalists Keep Doing This

Journalists, contrary to cinematic portrayals, are rarely moustache-twirling villains plotting historical revisionism in smoky rooms. Most simply operate under severe constraints. A modern tech writer has perhaps 600 words to summarise a complex company and is often writing on deadline. When the choice is between listing multiple founders or simply naming the CEO who actually returns emails, convenience wins.

There is also the irresistible narrative lure of the heroic founder. Humans enjoy stories with a single protagonist. Complexity is messy; ambiguity is irritating; and collaboration is considered, frankly, a bit dull. A lone visionary, by contrast, looks excellent in a headline. This tendency predates the modern tech industry, we routinely attribute major scientific breakthroughs to one person despite the dozens or hundreds involved, but Silicon Valley has elevated this habit to an art form.

Then there is the influence of corporate PR, which often presents a single executive as the definitive face of the company. This is not a conspiracy so much as branding. A company that speaks through one clear authority figure is easier for the press to quote and easier for the public to recognise. When a firm achieves success, the designated figurehead becomes the avatar of victory, while the other co-founders fade into the fog of corporate amnesia.

Over time, the myth solidifies. Articles cite previous articles; profiles plagiarise older profiles; and Wikipedia becomes the arbiter of truth. Before long, you have entire generations who sincerely believe that Apple was founded by one man, Tesla by one investor, Facebook by one student, and NVIDIA by one leather jacket.

Why This Erasure Matters More Than You Think

Some may argue that this is all harmless, that whether a company had one founder or six is of little consequence to the functioning of the world. But this perspective ignores the subtle ways in which myth-making shapes our understanding of innovation and leadership.

When we erase co-founders, we distort the way society thinks invention happens. We encourage the belief that great companies spring from the minds of singular superhumans rather than from teams of talented engineers, designers, and entrepreneurs. This myth is attractive, but it is also corrosive. It undervalues collaboration. It obscures the contributions of quieter personalities. It misleads aspiring entrepreneurs into believing that success is a solitary pursuit, achieved through individual genius rather than collective effort.

It also affects legacy. Founders who contributed immensely to world-changing technologies often vanish from the historical record because they were not the ones who stood on stage wearing a black turtleneck or a polo shirt. Their work becomes invisible, their names unremembered, even as the products they helped build shape the modern world.

And perhaps most depressingly, this erasure also affects accountability. When one person is credited with everything, they are also permitted to claim heroic status for achievements that were collective, and to dodge responsibility for failures that were not.

A Modest Proposal for Future Journalism

None of this requires journalists to produce doctoral theses every time they write about a tech executive. It simply requires accuracy. Mention the founders, all of them, when introducing a company. Distinguish between founding and joining later. Resist the temptation to reduce complicated history to a single charismatic figure.

It would also help to cultivate a healthy scepticism when presented with a polished narrative that sounds suspiciously like a bedtime story for venture capitalists. Tech is complicated. History is messy. Human achievement is collaborative. The truth is often more interesting than the myth, and far more honest.

If journalism is, at its best, a first draft of history, then it owes the public more than convenient fiction. The world already has enough myths. What it needs is a little more truth.