I surveyed 500 startup founders about their salaries

113 点作者 gillianobrien超过 2 年前

24 条评论

dang超过 2 年前

This is not a valid Show HN. Please read the rules: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html</a>.We've taken Show HN out of the title now.

评论 #33237378 未加载

ghiculescu超过 2 年前

I think this study should ask founders their age. It has a huge impact, probably more than any factor they did ask.I started my first startup at 20. We were bootstrapped, so we started at $0 salaries, and didn’t pay ourselves more than 1k/month for a few years. We all lived together somewhere cheap to keep rent low.Now I have a family and stuff… it would be very hard to go back to living like that. So the range of salary options practically available to me is totally different, regardless of where (in the US) I live, how much I raise, etc.

评论 #33237297 未加载

评论 #33237043 未加载

tobyjsullivan超过 2 年前

There's an interesting blip at the end of the chart "Bootstrapped vs. VC-Backed Salaries Breakdown".<pre><code> Salary Range Bootstrapped VC-Backed -------------- ----------- -------------- 200k-249k 3% 6% 250k-299k 1% 3% 300k+ 6% 2% </code></pre> Overall, I see a pattern that could be explained by slightly different perspectives. A VC-backed founder likely sees themselves working for someone else - "My work will benefit the investors, so I will get paid for that work." Whereas the bootstrapper is very obviously working for themself - "I'll take what I've earned or need and no more".That's also where you get into that bump at the end. If my bootstrapped company is earning 10M/yr, you bet I'm taking 1M+ salary guilt-free.edit: accidentally swapped the headers on first post

评论 #33237110 未加载

评论 #33237131 未加载

评论 #33238503 未加载

dcow超过 2 年前

I think what people often blissfully miss about founder comp is that the business literally supports the founder's entire life. Everything is a business expense. Pay yourself 50k as a little bonus and run almost everything through the business, because if you don't survive, neither does the business. You think founders are paying out of pocket for their fancy SF and NYC apartments at 50k per year living humbly? Think again. IDK, I always thought this part of the narrative was rather misleading.EDIT: I'm not a tax person, obviously people aren't being illegal and dishonest. It's just smart to write off everything possible in a founder's life as a business expense. Maybe housing or this or that doesn't qualify where you live? Great that's what the minimal salary is for. Everything else goes on the company card.2nd EDIT: I don't really understand why everyone is so cagey whenever this topic comes up. This isn't news. The IRS isn't reading this saying "gosh darn they figured out a new loophole". The laws are clearly spelled out, it's up to you to apply them to your situation. Remember, tax evasion is illegal. But minimizing tax liability is 100% okay and literally the name of the game. Otherwise, we wouldn't have tax breaks in the first place.

评论 #33236871 未加载

评论 #33236864 未加载

评论 #33237021 未加载

评论 #33236762 未加载

评论 #33236908 未加载

评论 #33237224 未加载

评论 #33237161 未加载

评论 #33236796 未加载

评论 #33236786 未加载

评论 #33236894 未加载

评论 #33237701 未加载

评论 #33237018 未加载

评论 #33236949 未加载

darkwizard42超过 2 年前

Thought the site was designed very beautifully.I'm not 100% sure I have too much comment on the salaries, but kudos on putting together some engaging content!!

评论 #33236777 未加载

dQw4w9WgXcQ超过 2 年前

It seems like the real path to retirement is be that guy who gets a startup funded and promptly write yourself the $1M yearly check

评论 #33236910 未加载

huangc10超过 2 年前

I was at a YC startup in the mid 2010s for around 4 years. The most funding we got was a series B round but nothing more after.Near the end, I had a happy hour or dinner with one of the co-founders. He told me that if he had to choose again (giving up his engineering job vs. starting up the company), he doesn't know if he would choose the start-up route again.Just some food for thought. It's great playing the CEO or the founder and betting on yourself but at the end of the day, the financial trade-offs could be life changing (especially given the salary/stock options provided by top tech companies).

bogota超过 2 年前

Nice, someone with a company size of 26 to 50 got 50M of funding and is paying themselves out 1M a year working remote.That is the life. I want to know what industry that is in.

gen220超过 2 年前

Super cool survey! And interesting results.Does anyone know if it shares how the answers were solicited?Every survey of this size has substantial sampling bias (which doesn't invalidate the result, just helps us to more rationally interpret it).---[edit] there's some color at the bottom, though I'm still curious to know more.> The 2022 Founder Salary Survey was conducted over a five-week period starting in May 2022, during which we reached out to founders through our extended networks and elsewhere online.> We received a total of 516 responses.> Over 60% of our responses were from either remote Founders or Founders in the San Francisco Bay Area.Leaning on a network is a good way to scale up quickly, although it's probably the principle limiting factor on the scope of conclusions, drawn from this report."How much do Founders, who are 0-1 degrees of separation from a company that uses Pilot, pay themselves?" is still a pretty interesting thing to read.

noobermin超过 2 年前

As a non-start-up person who'd really not likely ever do it but looks at graphs all day as a job, it does seem like the long tail makes sense, although it's hard to tell if 500 (plus a survey) is a representative sample. It seems like the usual thing for power distributions, you'll have a long tail with flying high salaries which is what most people think of when they think of founders (the architype of a walking hype and reality-disortion field emitting white man wearing a poloshirt), but you'll have a nice chunk near the bottom of the distribution which is "everyone else" who likely won't make a big exit. Don't the vast majority of start-ups fail? That description is the quintessential description of "success" for any variable with a power-law distribution.

j0hnyl超过 2 年前

Looks like nearly half of the founders surveyed are running companies with 5 or less employees. I wonder if this skews the average way down for the whole sample set. For example, if you look at the salaries reported by founders of companies with teams >25 the average salary is much higher.

pc86超过 2 年前

Highest salary in the $1M-2.9M funding bucket is $750k. Surely that company must be pretty profitable, I can't imagine allocating that high a percentage of your funding to the CEO salary if you're not? It's also in the 6-10 FTE bucket.

bailster超过 2 年前

Would love to see difference between “already comfortable” founders vs the rest. Comfortable ones more likely to minimize personal taxes and roll the dice on equity.Also, any breakout for startup subtypes? (SAAS, fintech, web3, health tech, AI/ML etc.)

yrgulation超过 2 年前

Now do dividends and other perks.

评论 #33236852 未加载

评论 #33237099 未加载

didgetmaster超过 2 年前

As a startup founder myself, I wish I had the luxury of paying myself a modest salary, but until the revenues support it that is how it goes. Even if I had a bunch of VC money, I would definitely feel guilty about paying myself a ton of money. I would still have a huge chunk of founder's stock, so I would pay myself well below market rates.If I were an outside investor in my startup, I would demand this. If a founder was living high off my dime I would be very worried that they would cut and run the moment the gravy train dried up. Startups run better when all the players have significant 'skin in the game'.

CommanderHux超过 2 年前

Am I missing something or does there seem to be data mismatch?Breakdown of Salaries by Geography -> NYC Area -> Highest Salary 300KBreakdown of Salaries by Funding Level* -> $5M-$9.9M -> Highest Salary 400K for NYC

abeppu超过 2 年前

I think maybe this data needed to be cleaned a bit more before being analyzed. For example, in the "Breakdown of Salaries by Funding Level", in the 0 - 99.9k bracket, the "average" salary is 115k and the highest is 360k. I must be missing something basic; is the salary value computed from a monthly value, and the company will either raise more or close down within a period less than a year (having paid out less than the stated salary figure)? If so, it seems a bit disingenuous.

kleiba超过 2 年前

Salaries by Geography - it's a shame that this is US-centric, I would be very curious about the median/average salaries of European founders.

评论 #33237032 未加载

vecter超过 2 年前

In what world does it make sense for a founder to pay themselves $1m/year in salary? One situation I could imagine is if they have a money-printing machine and outright own the business, then that would make sense. It's hard to imagine any other scenarios where that would be reasonable.

pageandrew超过 2 年前

Do founders set their own salaries? Do they need to be approved by a board/VCs? Do investors have heuristics to help decide if a given founder's salary is appropriate, and not exploitative to boost a founder's lifestyle before a business is truly viable?

评论 #33237098 未加载

aerosmile超过 2 年前

There are other sources of this exact same info, and this source is far more on the lean side then anything I’ve ever seen. It’s not something I can share because the subscription is not mine, but I am sure others can back me up on this.

lfranchi超过 2 年前

Hi HN! I'm Leo, Pilot's Head of Engineering, and we're hiring across the board for engineers, product designers, product managers, and more.If you want to come work for a growing startup that's selling a service that every business needs (a good thing in a macroeconomic downturn!), with a wonderful, diverse team that cares about their users and each other -- I'd love to chat. Feel free to reach out :)(Hiring in SF and US-remote. Full jobs page here: <a href="https://pilot.com/jobs" rel="nofollow">https://pilot.com/jobs</a>, or feel free to email me at firstname @pilot.com. Our stack is fully typed Python 3.10 on the backend, Vue/TS on the frontend, and AWS)

lifeisstillgood超过 2 年前

I would love to see a longitudinal study on this - is this similar to 10/20 years ago? Has the VC world really changed? Can it get better?

libpcap超过 2 年前

Would be good to show the median.

评论 #33237488 未加载