There has always been an underlying (unsaid) belief that startup CEOs and founders should have to make personal sacrifices and pour their blood, sweat and tears into their business. Assess the state of your startup and its finances. Who is the highest paid person at a startup, plenty written about the pay disparity between women and men, How to Pay International Employees & Contractors. Some families live on that," says VC Sean Owen. Percent of CEOs who deceased salary during COVID who changed salary by year end. The VCs set my salary without discussing or consulting with me (I know, weird, but this was '03, a different time). You dont want to walk away from a tough negotiation having damaged your relationship with investors on your own compensation or shown irresponsibility when proposing packages for early employees. Getting someone to join your dream before it is much of anything is an art not a science.. One of the most important conversations to have with a venture capitalist, before you sign a term sheet, is the salary discussion. Personally, you dont want to bring that kind of stress home to your partner. Leading into 2021, the female leaders moved their salaries up over $30,000 - however, the gap between male and female CEOs salaries did not close vs 2019. Female startup CEOs continue to lag behind their male counterparts in salary, and their average paycheck is still 3.7% below the peak in 2019. Lets dive into why we think there are notable difference by industry. What are Your VCs Return Expectations Depending on the Stage of Investment? Come on! Granted, for the later stage companies its a different story while these CEOs tend to make more, there are fewer female CEOs in this group. For venture-backed companies, you can find this answer through an official 409A process or less formally (as. ) These factors include: the total funding raised, cash in the bank, industry, and the experience of the founder. We are currently ranked as the 13th best startup website in the world and are paving our way to the top. Resources and best practices to help investors manage and communicate with their portfolio companies. Kruze Consulting expanded its salary research in 2022 to include the average salaries paid to Chief Technology Officers (CTOs). On the other hand, Mukesh Ambani paid himself INR 4.36 crores in the financial year 2019-2020, that is, around $596,000. Also, when founders salaries are scooped out of the treasury, the startup is left with fewer resources to function on. In other words, although founders do not deserve salaries, whoever is on your startups payroll should be paid. The average CEO pay for seed funded startups is $119,000 - but it does vary by industry. One of the easiest ways to do that is pay yourself the right amount. There is also a shifting trend towards famous entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, and Jack Dorsey taking a $1 salary. For 2022, we analyzed CEO pay at over 250 seed and venture-funded startups, and we noticed an interesting trend taking shape. However, successful founders do tend to establish consistent tactics early on and lean on research to find their solution. As we found last year, the highest-paid CEOs fell predominantly into the healthcare and biotech categories. Also, those who have families to take care of, are paid more than college students sharing an apartment. One of the best ways to set a reasonable remuneration amount for yourself is to go by industry standards. With the financial stress that comes with running a startup, the last thing a startup CEO or founder should be worrying about is how theyre going to live day-to-day. Note that our dataset is only for funded companies, with the average company in this analysis having raised between $7 and $8 million in venture and seed financing. The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. 41% of the CEOs who had their salaries reduced later increased them by the end of the year, while 47% kept their salaries flat - and 13% decreased their compensation further. Because of this, startup founder salary is a highly debatable topic. Many CEOs scrambled during COVID to try to stretch their companys runway by slashing costs, including their own pay, said Scott Orn, COO of FP&A at Kruze Consulting. Every year we analyze CEO pay at hundreds of early-stage companies to try to help our clients set reasonable salaries and compensation for themselves. List down all your sources of income and expenditure; dont forget to consider loans and taxes. Youve got a package in mind that includes a salary you can afford and an equity stake that makes the offer competitive if your company grows as expected. How To Make An Infographic: Step-By-Step Guide, 10 Proven Ways To Make Money With Your Car, Presentation Tips: 11 Simple Yet Effective Strategies. Share your companys key data with our beautiful dashboards. Weve found that there are a variety of factors that can influence the salary of a startup CEO. Companies that raised between $2 million and $5 million saw almost an 8% increase in Chief Executive Officer salaries. The analysis comes from an anonymized dataset comprising more than 250 venture-funded startups and representing more than $2.5 billion in funding. Earlier this year, this issue presented itself when a client was the lead investor in a Series A round of about $2MM at a $4MM pre-money. This level of pay makes sense, given the low amount of funding and modest traction that most of these types of companies have at the seed stage. And, of course, you have well-known founders like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg who took little or no pay and focused on company equity for their compensation.. Wait, you may be saying, thats still a $5,000 difference. Yes, but theres a solid explanation. But bringing in non-founders takes actual dollars and requires confronting these tough questions: how much money do we have? Some families live on that," says VC Sean Owen. Markets that are receiving more funding and exiting at higher clips generally warrant a higher salary. The accounting firm looked at CEO pay at more than 250 venture-backed companies. Industries and different verticals can lead to varying salaries. Many of those options will offer greater short-term rewards, while you are likely to offer below market value in cash compensation. Interested in other data on startup spending? Money can be the root of problems in many relationships. When comparing male and female CEOs, female leaders took a 30% reduction in salary at the peak of the pandemic ($101,000 compared to $138,000 in 2019) while their male counterparts saw an increase ($146,000 compared to $143,000 in 2019). However, at all other levels pay is more or less flat to up quite a bit., Related Reading: The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages, Once you understand the benchmarks and industry trends, it is time to determine what your annual salary should be as a CEO. Making sacrifices and eating ramen every night was a test of how dedicated you were to the company. Salaries ranged from the 25th percentile of $43,000 to the 75th percentile of $156,000, with the 90th percentile at $274,500. Foundry Group venture capitalist Seth Levin voiced the rule: Companies that have raised $1 million or less should pay the CEO between $75,000 and $125,000 a year. 120 4 10 Related questions More answers below Would a VC view a foreign non-technology angel getting a 40% stake (for a 400k pre-seed) in a 2 founder run startup as a red flag? Market value for equity is dynamic though and the necessary points to attract an individual employee can vary. The greater the. WebIn my first start-up, we raised $9m in our seed round -- a large seed round, but the times were different. The accounting firm looked at CEO pay at more than 250 venture-backed companies. Whenever founders raise a round of finance, the question becomes what the hell should I be paying myself. Its one of those rare things you cant really go to your board or advisors with. It includes understanding the competitive compensation you can afford, the value of your business, and the sum total of benefits available to you and your employees. WebAccording to ZipRecruiter, for example, the average salary for the position of startup CEO is just over $110,000 per year. Is it wise to pay yourself when your startup demands this many resources? But [beyond that], it goes to whether the mission of the company is to build something new or just collect paychecks. Understand that being a founder doesnt entitle you to a higher salary than everyone; growing your business by being a better employee does. Visit our Uber vs. Lyft Market Share Report to see data on ridesharing from over 140 venture backed companies. At the seed stage you should have a reasonable salary based on your location. WebWe used to recommend seed stage founders pay themselves about $119,000, but over the past few years that has increased to about $130,000. However, it doesnt want you to take a modest salary and extract the leftover amount as dividends as the latter are taxed lower. Several years ago, many eComm companies were just getting started when they were seed funded. My team and I handle payroll, taxes and the accounting for seed and venture-funded startups, and we analyzed CEO pay at over 125 startups; most of them in Silicon Valley. Design by Lucila Romero. 8 If you own .7% of the company at this time, then your shares are worth around $37,000. When two sides in a negotiation cant come to a deal, its often because the two sides dont have a clear enough view of what each others alternatives are if they cant agree, Tim Jackson writes. Feedough is the one-stop resource for everything related to startups. The seed-stage-focused firm, which also has a presence in St. Louis, has funded Amazon-as-a-service" startup Amify. This makes it important to account for the duration that you work when calculating your salary. Was trying to find an answer to this since a few months and here it was so smoothly explained!!! Therefore, you need to set a lower salary baseline. Startups in the study represent several industries, including Biotech, eCommerce, EdTech, FinTech, HealthTech, Hardware, SaaS and more. As great as it feels to receive money out of your own business, it is usually impractical and will just lead to a portion being lost in taxes. On the other hand, you need to keep cash in the bank and appease your investors and board members that youre extending responsible offers. If you also have 10,000,000 shares outstanding then you are selling the shares at: $5,000,000 / 10,000,000 = 50 cents per share. So, your salary as a founder depends on the state of your startups cash flows and not on its profitability. Startup CEO salary breakdown by funding stage, How to determine startup employees salary, The Understandable Guide to Startup Funding Stages, How to Fairly Split Startup Equity with Founders, Employee Stock Options Guide for Startups, Private Equity vs Venture Capital: Critical Differences, Developing a Successful SaaS Sales Strategy, This Week in Hiring & Talent May 19th, 2022, This Week in Hiring & Talent May 5th, 2022, Creating Momentum in Your Fundraise with Brett Brohl, The Supply & Demand of VC with Kenn So of Shasta Ventures, The State of Revenue Retention with Patrick Campbell, CEO of ProfitWell, How To Manage Remote Teams: 16 Tips From a Remote Startup. Good work , Explained simply so that it can be understood well. In 2020, we saw salaries decline at the height of the covid pandemic. To understand what happens when new equity is issued, a simple example helps. Theyre responsible for fundraising, reporting to the board and other stakeholders, providing direction to the company, and making operational decisions. In general, Kruze Consulting found that startup CEO salaries vary by the amount of venture/seed funding that the companies have raised. By the way, to see some survey data on what other people think the founder/CEO salary should be, check out the OnStartups poll on founder salary. Startup founders are not entitled to a salary; however, CEOs are. We feel there are three primary drivers for this behavior, said Healy Jones, VP of Financial Planning & Analysis for Kruze. . Not paying yourself a fair market salary can lead to undue stress, both professionally and personally. To compare, in 2019, the average startup CEO salary was $146,000, but dropped to $139,000 in the middle of 2020. Tax is one of the most crucial factors to consider when drawing founder salary, especially in mature companies. Try Visible free for 14 days. Tell us what you think about our article on startup founder salary in the comments section. For 2021, the average startup CEO salary is now up to $146,000, an increase of $4,000 from 2019 (almost a 3% increase) or 5% up from the COVID crisis of 2020. Go through the table and assess the relation between a founding executive team members salary and their companys cash flows. However, our research is meant to aid your own, and we are not acting as licensed professionals. As most CEOs and founders know, launching a startup means working long hours, dedicating time and thought to the business success. However, the average hides some interesting nuances which may be driven, in part, by changes in the fundraising environment in late 2021/early 2022. Seed, Series A, Series B, etc. Although a huge inflow of cash means that the founding employees can take more money home, other discussed factors also come into play. Startup Lessons From The MIT and Harvard Strategy War Game, Recently, I led a team from MIT in the second annual strategy war game with Harvard Business School organized by Fuld and Company. This is entirely up to the startup or founder. Firstly, and most obviously, companies with more funding are better able to pay their CEOs. You may hire an accountant for assistance. Startup CEOs pay varies by industry and the amount of venture capital funding the company has raised, with companies that are more highly funded earning a higher salary. Series A CEO Pay Again our Some families live on that," says VC Sean Owen. San Francisco/New Delhi: The average startup CEO salary increased by 2.7 per cent in 2022 to reach $150,000 per annum globally from last year, while the median increased to $140,000, according to a new report. In my experience in New York, for seed round startups, founder salaries tend to be in the range of $75,000 $125,000, with the occasional outlier in both directions. However, as the year ended and many technology companies recovered - and as venture funding continued at unprecedented levels - boards and executives felt comfortable increasing executive compensation to pre-crisis levels., Compared to Their Male Counterparts, Female CEOs Took a Pay Cut During the Pandemic. Weve used data from over 200 seed and venture-funded startups to identify the average annual salary earned by these companies CTOs, and discovered that CTO salaries are actually larger than CEO salaries for startups in the seed stage. Oftentimes a startup cant offer the salary an established Fortune 500 company may be able to offer but they can offer equity and intangibles that an employee cant find elsewhere. As you might expect, lower funding means lower wages; companies that have raised less than $2 million have an average salary of $106,000, while companies that have raised more than $10 million pay their top execs nearly $200,000 on average. One of the places to start when evaluating your CEO salary is by evaluating the benchmarks and peers in your industry. A founder with no mortgage, kids, etc will have different cash needs than a founder that has a minimum cash hurdle to clear (in the absence of being very wealthy), The amount raised in a seed round has an obvious impact. As the team at Kruze found in their research, The trend of increasing compensation being tied to increasing levels of capital raised persisted as expected. An interesting perspective. Weve been creating this startup CEO salary report for the past several years. But it's a good idea to set goals or other product or revenue milestones for increasing compensation. In my first start-up, we raised $9m in our seed round -- a large seed round, but the times were different. This has long been an acceptable salary range depending on the cost of living adjustments and the value of the business, and as long as the fledgling business isnt truly desperate for cash. For example, if you have a 1% equity stake in a startup valued at $100M, which eventually IPOs at $1B, your stake will be worth 1% * $1B * dilution rate dilution rate varies, but a rule of thumb is to assume 10-25% per funding round. When the company exited after three Still, when it comes to startup CEO pay, our data reveals some good news. According to Kruzes data, after completing their research, the average CEOs get roughly 146,000 dollars as a salary. When a seed round raises $5 million instead of $500,000, the temptation to excessively hire and spend increases significantly. Now that you know how important it is to draw a salary, you have to figure out the amount as well. When two sides in a negotiation cant come to a deal, its often because the two sides dont have a clear enough view of what each others alternatives are if they cant agree,. This benchmarking will help you figure out your opportunity cost, that is, the amount of salary money you have forgone to start your own company. Based on what I see in the market, I'd say the range for founder CEO salaries after a seed round is between $60k and $150k, with the average/median in the range of $90k - $110k. We looked at our payroll data for over 125 seed and venture-backed startups to come up with the answer. The distinction between the two may impact early employee decisions on how they personally value their stock. When the company exited after three venture rounds, my salary was at $250k. Even Amazons founder, Jeff Bezos earned around $81,840 as a salary in 2020. What's the average salary for CEOs from funded startups? The following steps will give you a broad idea of how to go about it. Every stakeholder of the startup often needs direct contact with the CEO, and startup CEOs cant delegate everything. Our analysis backs this up, but its important to mention that there is no single factor that influences this decision. In 2020, approximately 36% of companies reduced their chief executive compensation during COVID. Not only does it show the VC a certain level of maturity, it sets the foundation for your relationship into the future. Read our tips now. Finally, startup culture can generate pressure to not take salaries. Yes! We are strong advocates for CEOs and founders paying themselves a fair market salary. Just like it is mandatory to pay regular employees, it is mandatory to pay founding employees as well. This continues a corporate trend that began in 2019. "In my experience, that fact pattern (a pair of founders, $500K seed round) would typically see Startups in the study represent several industries, including Biotech, eCommerce, EdTech, FinTech, HealthTech, Hardware, SaaS and more. Co-founder/CEO at EchoSign (acq'd by Adobe), Upvoted by Oliver Emberton , Founder of Silktide and According to estimates by 80,000 Hours, for example, startup founders in Y Combinator pay themselves around $50,000 in salary. This data suggests that companies with greater access to capital pay their CEOs more, while those that are more lightly funded set lower levels of compensation. The following is a guest post by Chris Sheehan. Early employees usually come in shortly after a seed round, and seed round valuations average about $5.3m. Are you big enough to start on the expansion journey? Early-stage companies, as well as all other companies, should evaluate their policies to determine how the gender pay gap increased in the last three years, and see what steps they can take to better support female leaders.. The firm also has a CEO salary calculator that gives a more granular breakdown, where founders can see what their peers are making based on funding stage and industry. Keep in mind that these rewards are essential to incentivise you and keep you focused. According to a Morningstar analysis of C-suite pay, from 2015 to 2019 the gender pay gap for CEOs had been narrowing. You may start taking a salary when your business raises enough capital. Also, see if you can cut down on unnecessary expenditures. Hardware companies tend to require larger than average amounts of venture capital funding to get to a meaningful size. We hope this report simplifies your startup CEO pay decision! This means that the CEO likely deserves a higher salary as they continue to bring in the new revenue and grow their bottom line. As noted in Business Insider here, Seth Levines observation on CEO salary in 2012 still holds true compared to the 2019 Kruze salary report data above: early on companies that have raised $500,000 or less cap out at $75,000, companies that have raised $1 million or less pay between $75,000-$125,000, companies that have raised between $1-$2.5 million pay closer to $125,000. Same with fintech at $129,000. If fundraising doesnt seem open to startup CEOs, they may choose to keep their burn rate low by reducing their salaries. For the most lightly funded tech companies, the concept of ramen profitability encourages founders to take no salary to keep expenses minimal and make the company more attractive to investors. For venture-backed companies, you can find this answer through an official 409A process or less formally (as Fred Wilson proposed in 2010) by using the valuation of your last financing round or the most recent offer you received to purchase your business. As companies mature, its typical that a compensation committee is formed by non-management board members. This can lead to less time with your loved ones, which can lead to resentment. Other founding roles, such as the chief operating officer (COO) and chief technical officer (CTO), may also receive a startup salary. Breaking the numbers down by industry, on average: Hardware company CEOs are near the bottom of the pack, with an average salary of $112,000 per year. The following chart shows what happened to the CEOs who reduced their pay during COVID by the end of the year. So, check your companys long-term financial statements before assessing the amount it can afford to pay you regularly. That said, its unlikely in most cases for non-founders to receive more than 5% of the business (bringing on a CTO can be the one common example of exceeding this mark). One of the most common questions CEOs ask us at Kruze Consulting is: How much should my salary be? Since the Kruze team helps run startups books and payroll, its natural that wed get this question. Our data shows that the average annual salary for a CEO of a seed or venture backed company is $130,000. When someone works for less salary than they deserve (meaning: what they could make elsewhere), I think of that as a cash investment theyre making in your company, Jason Cohen writes. Getting someone to join your dream before it is much of anything is an art not a science., Much like a competitive package for an employee, a CEOs compensation and equity stake will require negotiations this time with your investors. My prior salary as a VP before the company had been $150,000, and they raised it to $180,000, with a performance-tied bonus. For your first key hires, three, five, maybe as much as ten, you will probably not be able to use any kind of formula,, writes. The reality is most venture-backed startup CEOs typically make somewhere between $75,000-250,000. Expect us to publish future studies on other startup executive pay. The average startup founder salary in the seed round is $100,000. Some observations: So what is the range of CEO salaries in the seed stage? The businesses that are funded between $1M to $2.5M pay their founders above $125K. So what is the range of CEO salaries in the seed stage? Based on what I see in the market, I'd say the range for founder CEO salaries after a seed round is between $60k and $150k, with the average/median in the range of $90k - $110k. I've seen average salaries range between $60,000 to $100,000 for CEO startups depending on the size of the round and scope of the deal/company. When we compared the salaries of male Chief Executives versus females, we found that the numbers were roughly the same $138,000 per year for women versus $143,000 for men. It can be difficult to place a number here as the value of the company is solely on paper. Kruze Consulting continues to advise founders to accept salaries as soon as theyve acquired funding. However, startups with more limited funding saw their CEOs make less, by about 7%, than in 2021. Its unclear exactly how you should amortize this value, but this method again gives you a value in the low 5 figures. Suppose you have just raised capital and are using it for the development of business. In general, Kruze Consulting expanded its salary research in 2022 to include the average for. Pay Again our some families live on that, '' says VC Sean.... 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