Why it exists
The most interesting thing about a company is rarely its logo — it’s its lineage. Who built it? Who did they build with? Where did they work before, and who else walked out of that building to start something new? The “PayPal Mafia” is famous precisely because that lineage is legible. founders.io makes every company’s lineage legible, and links them all together so you can wander.
How the data is built
The graph is seeded from well-documented public facts about companies and their founders, and it grows every day: an automated pipeline pulls new and updated founder/company records from Wikidata (CC0), matched and de-duplicated against what’s already here. People like you fill the gaps.
- We never invent facts. When a detail (like a founding year) isn’t well documented, we leave it blank rather than guess.
- Every record is correctable. Each founder and company page has a “report a correction” link.
- Provenance where we have it. Records link back to a primary source such as Wikipedia or the company’s site.
Open data
The whole graph is downloadable as CSV and JSON under a CC BY 4.0 license — attribute “founders.io” and it’s yours to build on. Browse the downloads →
Corrections & removal
founders.io only publishes public professional information (who founded and worked at which companies). If you’re featured and want something corrected or removed, use the correction form and we’ll review it.