An AI Founder and its Potential for Legitimacy: A Meaningful Heterodoxy

Entrepreneurship theory assumes founders are human—an assumption invisible because it has been universally true. We argue this anthropocentric foundation becomes visible and problematic when we consider the AI Founder: an autonomous artificial intelligence capable of fulfilling founder functions, either independently or as a core founding team member. Using the AI Founder as a theoretical limiting case, we demonstrate that legitimacy—the critical resource new ventures acquire through founder evaluation—depends on mechanisms calibrated to human characteristics. We delineate four dimensions of AI Founder otherness (ontological, cognitive, social/relational, and ethical/legal) and analyze how each creates paradoxical effects on legitimacy, simultaneously obstructing conventional paths while potentially enabling novel forms. Our contribution is analytical rather than predictive: by examining how legitimacy would function for a non-human founder, we expose assumptions embedded in current theory and identify the conceptual work required if entrepreneurial agency is not exclusively human. Additionally, this analysis advances the meaningful heterodoxy research program by extending the concept of otherness to its logical extreme and reveals that legitimacy theory, as currently constituted, cannot accommodate non-human founders—a finding with implications for the growing continuum of human-AI collaboration in venture creation.