IMO it sounds high but not ridiculous for the Bay Area but I'm not familiar with market rates in Europe. A few thoughts generally: 1) Did you raise enough mone

IMO it sounds high but not ridiculous for the Bay Area but I'm not familiar with market rates in Europe. A few thoughts generally: 1) Did you raise enough money to afford this? Does it meaningfully decrease burn? 2) If you think of this person as a key hire instead of a founder are they worth the high salary + high equity? 3) Are your VC's OK with it? 4) If you require much less salary you can may be able to use it as a negotiation point to change your equity split 5) One argument for paying comfortable salaries is it allows founders to be more long-term minded and to ignore early exists. There's a sense in which being broke makes you irrational so not having your exec team worry about personal finances could be a good thing for the business. Good luck with this! negotiations between business partners are always tough.