I missed the HN discussion of the previous article about founder salaries that lead to this [1] but reading it now it's blowing my mind how sheltered from reality the community here is. One HNer & startup founder says 80k doesn't go very far in NYC, when the median income in NYC is around $50,000 so a lot of people/families have to get by on less than 80k. I live in Brooklyn and understand there is a lot in New York you cannot afford at 80k, but to suggest that it "doesn't go a long way" is to completely misunderstand how fortunate you are.<p>1. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7058840" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7058840</a>
I don't believe the focus should be "how much" rather "is it enough to survive". Are founders paying themselves enough to meet their basic needs of survival (food, shelter, family etc) ref Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We all have different circumstances and thus needs change too. Ref I am not talking about wants, just needs :-)<p>Like in business it is a fine art of balancing it all out. Pay yourself too little and our human basic needs to survive kick in (reptilian brain) and instead of using your cognitive mind to focus on the business you focus on the lack of money. So not paying yourself enough is very damaging for everyone involved with the business too.
I would love to see some statistics on location and personal debt (aka student loans) in relation to these numbers.<p>I'd suspect that first time entrepreneurs that live in SF who also pay themselves < 100k are free of personal debt. The only other option is that they're just not paying their bills and live with 5 other roommates.<p>Can any first time entrepreneurs that make less than 100k chime in here?
Except for the mention of ‘serial founders’, there's no attempt to correct for levels of relevant experience. Is the ratio of founder/employee salaries the same across different degrees of experience?
These charts are completely unreadable. Can anyone here actually read this chart without whipping out a color picker?<p><a href="http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Founder-Experience.png" rel="nofollow">http://cdn1.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/...</a>
To me, a founder's age and experience has less bearing on salary than circumstances of the business itself. I'd be interested to see:<p><pre><code> * Salaries of funded vs. unfunded founders
* Salaries compared across age of the startup
* Salaries compared across year-over-year growth rate</code></pre>
I would like to see the "Founder salary and team size" graph per founder age.<p>Since team size seems to also be a strong indicator such a graph might show which of age and team size is the stronger correlator.
It's also quite possible that younger founders have companies that produce less revenue. Which would just be restating the first chart (higher revenue companies lead to higher founder salaries).