Very good point as I personally hate, hate, hate the term CEO in business smaller than 20 employees. Founder is also a bit pretentious, owner sounds like "I own this, you can use it, but I own it!" In the U.K. we use Managing Director, which is very uptight. I don't know. It's almost never beneficial (above a certain package price) to be overly open about something being a side-project, or small operation (one man especially)—but I also believe it's very wrong (and usually very telling) to act like there's six offices around the world.

Tough line, I have a proper company, and under this entity, all side projects are run, so that keeps it mostly okay to say CEO. I happily open up a bit if people get curious though, usually in the many emails people send over the months.