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Ask HN: How much salary to draw as a founder?
Wanted to ask the HN community how to think about founder salaries after raising money.
Let's say that a company has 2 founders. What's a reasonable salary after raising:
- $500k?
- $1m?
- $2m?
Or do most founders do the reverse, a "bottoms up" take on the minimum amount that they can pay themselves in order to sustain basic life expenses?
A related question is how to handle differences in founder situations (ie, one founder has enough of a savings that they don't need a salary, or one founder doesn't have work authorization in the US and can't take a salary). Do you give the non-salary founder more equity?
- whitepoplar 8y agoI would think $100-150k is reasonable. Why would you take much more than that if you actually believe your startup will be successful? If I were an investor, a founder taking the amounts you list would be a red flag and I would walk away immediately.
- anon82edf 8y agoThanks, and oops. Didn't realize I worded my question poorly. I meant "How much salary should you take if you've raised $500k?" "How much salary should you take if you've raised $1M?" "How much salary should you take if you've raised $2M?"
- whitepoplar 8y agoMy bad!