Unikorndesigns,

Your sponsor offered you three choices. It seems to me that they represent varying levels of his involvement. They are:

1. Work as an employee

In this case I assume you would work in an appropriate division of his business. It's not clear whether he would be creating this division for you or you would become part of an existing department.

The advantage to this would be your employer would give you work and handle administrative tasks. Social benefits (vacation, sick days & holiday pay, at least some insurance and possibly pension) would be taken care of. You could concentrate on work.

The disadvantage is that you wouldn't be your own boss.

2. Partnership Business

In this situation, I imagine you would have more autonomy than you might as an employee, but you would be self employed in a partnership. The trick to a good partnership is a solid legal agreement that outlines the responsibilities of each partner.

This would be a good choice if your sponsor has a lot of business experience or business contacts that you don't have. On the other hand, you and your partner would be legally responsible for each other in the business. And you may find that managing a partnership is as time consuming and as managing a business--this is a personality thing.

3. Sole Proprietorship

This is one of several forms a small business might take and if your sponsor suggested this I imagine that he would provide start up funding and expect some kind of accountability from you but you would be on your own in terms of finding clients and managing your business.

In this scenario, you would be a business owner, as you would be in a partnership, and typically you might call your self "sole prop.," "owner," "principal" or something else.

CEO and Managing Director, like President to some extent, imply a much larger organization than you suggest yours would be. Each of these titles usually indicates a position that reports to a Board of Directors. You need a Board of Directors if you are a corporation but you probably want to avoid this if you're a solo entrepreneur.

Seems to me your choice should depend not on the title you'd have, but on your confidence in your ability to run and manage a business, and your experience in the work you plan to do.