Why not owner@example.com?

Others:
bigboss@example.com
theboss@example.com
headdude@example.com

wherethebuckstops@example.com

<boring old poop mode>

that will clearly show I am the owner, but I find CEO a little pretentious

That's OK, because "owner" and "CEO" are different things anyway. You might be one or the other, probably not both. The term CEO generally implies that there's a board of directors making long-term decisions, and some completely separate guy running the company.
</bopm>

"owner@" is probably not a good idea. To me it sounds like the owner of the domain, not of the company itself. People might think their e-mail is going to the hosting provider. In fact it sounds like a boilerplate address, like abuse@ or postmaster@

I like the "buck-stops-here" line of thought. But at the same time you want the address to be something short enough that people will remember it. Or set up auto-forwarding for all likely variants. Just like ::cough-cough:: domain names.

i see "founder" used often these days.

it has additional ironic meanings...

Thanks for all the advise guys.

However, it needs to be something official, this address is for FDA and purchasing agents for multinationals like the Casino group, Tesco and so on.

This has nothing to do with the online world...but actually it does, after the Penguin update I'm out of the SEO business and working on my food manufacturing business in Thailand ;)

Cheers!

oimachi@foo.bar, or whatever your name is?

oimachi is the name of city I used to live in Japan in the early 2000's, nothing to do with my business ;)

yes, I think my name would work, but who knows? They might think I'm just an employee...

If the info is confidential and business related, I kind of need them to know that I'm the owner...

As vincevincevince said:

whatever your name is

Surely you wouldn't be passing confidential info in your first email contact.

Once you've established a working relationship in some other manner they'll know you are the person in charge.

Do you have a title? If nothing else, you must make up something to put on your tax forms each year. (Uhm. "other@example.com" doesn't quite work does it.)

President? Proprietor? Manager? Director? Chief?

You said multinationals. So make sure you use something that conveys "the head honcho" in all dialects of English.*


* In real life, I have an ineradicable mental block on the name of our supreme high librarian. So I refer to him that way, and the librarians know who I mean.

principal@

As others have suggested -- your name. You can always add your title in the email signature. firstname.lastname@example.com

Oimachi2 - it is a business honour to give someone the direct (individual) email address of the CEO (yourname@foo.bar), rather than a generic address which probably stops at the secretary...