How DEPLOY tracks people and leadership state

What we track

The people graph holds three record types.

People. Founders, executives, board members, and other public- figure individuals who appear in the verified record across our covered companies. Each person record carries name, known-as variants, current_role when verified, and the role history that produces it.

Roles. A role is a person plus a company plus a title plus a time window. We track the start date, the end date when one exists, the role title at primary-source spelling, and the role_basis. Roles are the durable unit of the people graph.

Role events. A role event is a transition (appointed, promoted, stepped down, fired, retired) at a specific date with a primary-source anchor. Events change current_role. We do not edit current_role directly; we record the event and let current_role derive from the role history.

Roles as time-versioned events

A role is verified at a specific date. Doug Unis was Monogram's CMO and founder at the time of the ZB acquisition close. Doug Unis was not Monogram's CEO at the time of the ZB acquisition close. The pre-acquisition CEO was Benjamin Sexson. Both facts carry primary-source anchors at their respective dates.

We track current_role at the latest verified date. Aggregator coverage frequently asserts a generic founder-equals-CEO framing that does not survive primary-source verification. We do not collapse founders into CEOs by default.

role_basis names the source-quality classification for the role record. SEC-filed (Form 4, 8-K appointment disclosure, proxy statement) anchors at primary-government-record tier. Corporate registry filings (Companies House, Delaware, state-level Secretary of State business records) anchor at primary-government-record tier. Court records (litigation surfaces, depositions, party identification) anchor at primary-government-record tier. Operator-disclosed (the company's own press release, blog post, executive page on the corporate site) anchors at maker-disclosed tier. LinkedIn profile self-reporting is not a primary source on its own; we treat LinkedIn as a corroborating surface.

Founder, co-founder, mentor-investor

A founder is a person who established the company. A co-founder is one of several people who established the company together. We treat the two as the same role with different participant counts at the founding event.

A mentor-investor is not a founder. A mentor-investor is a person who advised the founders, provided early capital, or held a board seat without contributing to the company's founding act. Aggregator coverage frequently elevates a mentor-investor to co-founder in retrospective framing. We do not.

The verification anchor for founder status is the founding- event record. Incorporation documents, the original executive team announcement, the company's own founding-story surface, and SEC S-1 founder identification when the company subsequently filed. A person who appears in the SEC S-1 as a founder is verified. A person who appears in trade press as a co-founder without a primary-source anchor is claimed.

The same discipline applies in reverse. A person whose founding involvement is documented in early corporate filings stays a founder on the record even if a subsequent re-framing under new corporate ownership omits the role. The original anchor preserves the verified state.

Worked examples

Doug Unis at Monogram is the canonical worked example for the role-versus-CEO distinction. Pre-acquisition CEO was Benjamin Sexson; Doug Unis was CMO and founder. ZB closed the Monogram acquisition October 7, 2025 at approximately $168M EV plus CVR. Per primary-source verification, the role record reflects Doug Unis as CMO plus founder; the aggregator-asserted CEO framing was corrected and the correction is logged at /corrections.

Ted Stinson at Covariant is the worked example for the continuing-and-diminished corporate-state role. Covariant founders plus approximately 25% of staff transitioned to Amazon AGI in August 2024. Covariant continues as a legal entity; Ted Stinson is CEO at the post-transition state. Multi-source verification confirms Stinson's CEO role: Covariant's own surface plus reputable-press confirmation plus the legal-entity continuity record.

The verify-before-fix discipline applies. When a tip surfaces a role-change claim that conflicts with the existing registry record, we verify before we fix. The AutoX founder Xiao role-claim example anchors the discipline: a single trade-press article asserted a change in founder framing that did not corroborate against corporate registry filings or SEC equivalents at the time. We did not update the record on the trade-press surface alone. The role event is recorded when the primary-source anchor resolves; trade-press tips are tracked but do not fire updates on their own.

Source discipline

SEC filings anchor role records for executives at publicly traded companies and registered private offerings. Form 4 insider transaction reports, 8-K appointment disclosures, proxy statements, and S-1 registration filings carry executive identification at primary-government-record tier.

Corporate registry filings anchor role records for private companies. Companies House (UK), Delaware Division of Corporations, California Secretary of State business records, and equivalent jurisdiction registries surface officer and director identification under filing requirements.

Court records anchor role records when a person is named in litigation. Plaintiff and defendant identification surfaces party roles; deposition transcripts and corporate-witness designations surface employment relationships.

Operator-disclosed surfaces (the company's own corporate team page, press releases announcing appointments, blog posts naming an individual in a stated role) anchor role records at maker-disclosed tier. We treat operator-disclosed as verified when the company's own surface persists the claim. We do not treat a single press-release announcement as verification of a role years later if the corporate team page no longer surfaces the person.

LinkedIn profile self-reporting is not a primary source on its own. A LinkedIn profile that corroborates a role documented at SEC or corporate-registry depth strengthens the record. A LinkedIn profile that contradicts SEC or corporate-registry depth does not override it; the SEC or registry source carries the verified state.

Cap-flag application

A reported role change without primary-source confirmation is cap-flagged at reported-not-verified. The reported role is surfaced as claim with the source attribution; the current_role does not change until the primary source resolves.

A person who departed a company without a documented end date is cap-flagged at departed-without-disclosure. We do not silently retire the role record. The end date is cap-flagged; the role remains visible with the cap-flag explicit.

A role that exists at primary-source verification depth but carries a job title that the primary source does not confirm at the exact wording is cap-flagged at title-paraphrased. The verified title spelling stays at the primary-source surface; aggregator-rephrased title language is not treated as the verified title.

A founder-versus-co-founder count that does not resolve at a founding-event primary source is cap-flagged. We do not assert a co-founder count without an anchored primary source listing the founding team.

The framework applies to us

If we ship a role record with the wrong title, we correct it. If we anchor a founder claim to the wrong primary source, we correct it. If a role change happened months ago and we did not surface it at the time, we add the role event with the verified date and log the catch.

The Monogram Doug Unis CMO-not-CEO correction is the canonical recursive worked example. The aggregator-asserted CEO framing flowed into the original registry record; the primary-source-anchored verification corrected to CMO plus founder; the correction is logged at /corrections and the role event preserves the prior state in source history.

The same recursive discipline operates on people who depart our coverage. A person whose role is no longer current is recorded with an end date when the end is verified; the historical role stays in the record. We do not delete role history when the role ends.

Where to go next

The methodology canon: /methodology/what-verified-means for the core verified-vs-claimed framework, /methodology/patent for party identification in patent and litigation records, /methodology/deployment-lifecycle for the parallel framework on deployment lifecycle state.

The applied work: registry.deploy.report/people for the people records with verified roles, role history, and current_role per person.