3 ms·

I have a question: Why would the founders take such high salaries? Seems to go against everything I would think was important for a company that is venture-bac

• sgk284 13y ago
  Their salaries are actually still fairly low. An engineer in SF can easily make more than $150k base per year. Venture backed companies should pay their employees well though. If you're worried about food / shelter or constantly wondering if a shift in jobs would give you a disproportionate gain in quality of life then you're not focused on the startup. The biggest advantage of raising a lot of money is so that you can pay a lot of money and not have your team worrying about "I'd have loved to do that trip to Paris, but can't afford it. If I quit for Google, then I'd be good to go. That said, I'm a believer that founders shouldn't be the highest paid employees.
• BadassFractal 13y ago
  Frequently, and I'm not saying it's Buffer's case, it's to offset the fact that founders have gone, possibly heavily, into debt over years of not paying themselves a salary.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• ronaldx 13y ago
  Why wouldn't founders take such salaries, which are not outrageous? Saying that founders shouldn't take a fair salary - comparable to what they might get elsewhere - puts them in a untenably risky position that would limit the pool of founders to the independently wealthy and the foolish. That limitation would not be to the benefit of the backers.
• dinkumthinkum 13y ago
  Compare what $158K is in terms of adjustment in other cities. It is not very much money for a skilled worker.
• thesausageking 13y ago
  Because they can. They've only raised a small angel round, so have no investors telling them what their salaries need to be.