1. A person who encourages or incites.
2. A founder or organizer of a corporation or business venture; one who takes the entrepreneurial initiative in founding or organizing a business or enterprise. — Formerly also termed projector. [Cases: Corporations 30. C.J.S. Corporations § 67.]
“The complete judicial acceptance of the term ‘promoter’ is a matter of comparatively recent date. In some of the early cases, persons engaged in the formation of a corporation are spoken of as ‘projectors.’ Other cases of about the same period, though recognizing the obligations flowing therefrom, do not give any name to the relation in which such persons stand to the contemplated company. The word promoter, while undoubtedly employed in common parlance before that time, does not seem to have been used in any reported decision until after it had been used, and for the purposes of the act defined, in the Joint Stock Companies Act of 1844…. [A] person may be said to be a promoter of a corporation if before its organization, he directly or indirectly solicits subscriptions to its stock, or assumes to act in its behalf in the purchase of property, or in the securing of its charter, or otherwise assists in its organization.” Manfred W. Ehrich, The Law of Promoters§ 1, at 2–3; § 13, at 15 (1916).
“A promoter is a person who takes the initiative in developing and organizing a new business venture. A promoter may act either alone or with co-promoters. The term ‘promoter’ is not one of opprobrium; indeed, the promoter is often an aggressive, imaginative entrepreneur who fulfills the essential economic function of taking an idea and creating a profitable business to capitalize on the idea.” Robert W. Hamilton, The Law of Corporations in a Nutshell 64 (3d ed. 1991).
