Monero's roots trace back to the CryptoNote whitepaper, published in December 2012 by the still-unidentified, pseudonymous Nicolas van Saberhagen (some theories speculate he may even be Satoshi Nakamoto, though this is unproven). The first CryptoNote-based coin, Bytecoin, launched in July 2012, but due to a controversial, widely seen as unfair distribution, a developer known as “thankful_for_today” forked the codebase on April 18, 2014, launching Bitmonero (“Monero” derives from the Esperanto word for “coin”).
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Monero's launch was fair and pre-announced: no premine, no instamine, and no share of the block reward went to a development fund.
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thankful_for_today later proposed changes the community disagreed with — this disagreement led to the formation of the Monero Core Team, which the majority of the community followed, and which has overseen development ever since.
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Monero has never had a single founder or CEO — it was created by seven developers, five of whom remain anonymous to this day; the best-known early public figure was Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni, who has since stepped back from day-to-day development.
Important distinction from Zcash: for Monero, privacy is NOT optional — it*'*s default and cannot be turned off for any transaction — this is the key technological and regulatory differentiator between the two privacy assets.