I would disagree, and I believe that others would as well. A 'millionaire' in my mind is someone with liquid assets of at least one million dollars.

The company isn't worth more than $1 million until someone else exchanges shares or money for it for over a million dollars. VC funding does not make someone a millionaire, except in rare cases where founders are allowed to sell shares to 'take money off the table'. VC money is the hope that the company will be worth $X in the future.

That's pretty much the age old debate about wealth. But the actual definition of millionaire is "someone whose assets are worth more than $1 million".

A VC investment is literally the exchanging shares for money. No it doesn't make someone liquid. Yes it does set something sorta like a market value, though it's usually really high. In more meaningful terms, that company now has $8 million in cash. There's almost no scenario where it's worth less than $8 million now, because companies at that stage usually have very little debt.

There are many scenarios where the founder is less than $8 million though, even on paper. The article doesn't give details about what % of the company Lee still owns or what their balance sheet or margins look like.

Based on that article, we don't actually know if Lee has assets worth $1 million. This is all before even bringing up how liquid he is.

I agree with all of your points. However, the 'company' having $8 million in the bank does not mean that the 'founder' has or will ever have $1 million.

The expectation of funding is that it is spent growing the company (employees, inventory, etc), not immediately paid out to the founders.

Value comes before an exchange. How can you buy something without an established value? So, yes something can, in fact MUST be worth something before an exchange happens. In this case the company itself has raised $8 million in capital with a worth of $33 million.

Now we don't know the exact nature of the share distribution, but since this is such a lean company I'm willing to wager that the found is still in the vast majority.

That's why taking vc money is not alway the best option. In many cases it forces you into decisions that may not be best in the long or short term.

Having seen too many companies raise millions in venture funding and burn through it to generate millions in revenue (at a loss) with the founders ultimately walking away with nothing, I think that's absurd.

You don't think wealth can be gained and lost? It's weird to quibble over the definition of millionaire when what you really think is absurd is highly volatile assets.

It's really not the same thing until the money can be legally transferred to him.

Well, he has to own above a certain percentage (about 3.04%) of the company, which to be fair he almost certainly does ;)