FWIW about half the coworkers I most respected at Google came to it by way of being CEO of their own small (oftentimes 1-3 person) company, and another 25% left to go be CEO of their own small company.
What you're saying is that you don't want to hire former entrepreneurs. That's fine, but you're also inflating it to imply that your preferences are universal, which is as much of an outright lie as someone working on independent projects calling themselves CEO.
He didn't say he didn't want to hire former entrepreneurs - you are saying that. He said don't be misleading about your previous position. If you say you are a CEO of a company I expect at least > 1, otherwise are you a chief of yourself? It's incredibly misleading.
Also there's a huge difference between being a CEO of a one person company (don't have to deal with another human being) and a > 1 person team. As the team size increases, the title becomes increasingly more meaningful. You are free to draw the line wherever you want, but allowing it to rest on a 1 person team is pretty close to lying.
But there's a black-and-white difference between actually founding a company and operating in the role of a CEO and slapping a "CEO" label on "I messed around with code for a while".
One entails actually making a go at running a business, with all the activities that entails. The other is more of an individual contributor thing which can result in useful experience for that role, but is nothing like being a CEO. To mislabel the latter activity is just lying.
> slapping a "CEO" label on "I messed around with code for a while"
I've worked for several companies that were basically just a "CEO" and (sometimes other people) messing around. For whatever reason, investors seem happy to give them millions of dollars to do so.
What you're saying is that you don't want to hire former entrepreneurs. That's fine, but you're also inflating it to imply that your preferences are universal, which is as much of an outright lie as someone working on independent projects calling themselves CEO.