I recently joined and saw I Courtland on my follow list, and also another handful of folks. I wonder why?
Yes, @csallen created IH and now works at @stripe on IH full-time (as of a few years ago I believe).
IH starts you off following a few people so you have some content to see ("new posts by people you follow!" every now and again) and possibly to teach you that following people is a feature of IH (which I didn't know about until creating an account).
If you don't want to follow any of them you can easily remove them, no harm no foul IMO.