9 ms·
Poll: As a founder, what is your salary?
- OoTheNigerian 13y agoperhaps it will be good to state profit/revenue rate and/or if it is funded and what stage. This is not really clear cut to use and make your own decision.
- Tyrant505 13y agoAlready, decidingly zero. Hires always tend to depreciate the work and risk a founder has goes through years up to investment and thereafter.
- dmtroyer 13y agosomeone should start a poll with the question "As a founder, what is your total yearly compensation?"
- Tyrant505 13y agoAlso needs to state what stage they are in..
- michaelmior 13y agoAgreed. I think this poll is useless without that dimension.
- petercooper 13y agoI think that would make more sense. The majority of mine is in dividends, for example. I'm not convinced by stock as measurable compensation for pre-IPO companies though since they may never be liquid.
- FrankenPC 13y agoAnd how many other companies they are a founder of. Some people are chronic founders. They may be juggling multiple companies hoping one sticks to the wall.
- beat 13y agoZero, but zero revenue. It will need to hit $100k once revenue can support it, for the sake of marital bliss. Worse, until there's revenue, I'm dayjobbing to make ends meet. I can live on savings for a while, but not pre-revenue.
- Tyrant505 13y ago^ bootstrapper love.
- beat 13y agoThe more I look at how startup funding works, the more I want to bootstrap and never take a damned cent from anyone who isn't a customer!
- walden42 13y agoCare to elaborate why?
- Tyrant505 13y agoMore than likely that is because you have a real business idea rather than Snapchat. I'll work on snapchat after I have heavy pockets and time to blow.
- beat 13y agoYeah. In the world where people are LARPing the Betas tv show, creating a product that provides immediate value to paying customers by solving a complex yet common problem is kind of wtf.
- rexreed 13y agoWhatever I can afford to pay myself based on the previous month's net income. The more net income, the more I pay myself.
- ryguytilidie 13y agoI was thinking about this recently and I had a bit of a question. People used to always ask "wow why do founders get so much equity and dish so little out to employees?" and the answer would always be "because the founders takes all the risk". In the last few companies I work for, none were profitable, all had founders making 150k+, and all took at least 1m from our rounds out for themselves. It made me wonder where this supposed risk comes from and why VCs don't seem to mind founders paying themselves so much?
- rthomas6 13y agoSuddenly it makes more sense why people seem to want funding so badly: because then they don't have to be profitable to make money.
- soup10 13y ago> have to be profitable to make money. Haha, welcome
- wil421 13y agoThis is exactly what I was wondering about. Take snapchat for example, how are they getting revenue from funding or off their users somehow? Are the VCs funding hoping that a company gets picked up by Google, FB, Twitter etc...?
- dkroy 13y agoIf that were true then they probably wouldn't have turned down Facebook's $3 Billion.
- blah32497 13y agoThey're gambling on getting an even larger userbase and having Facebook offer $5B
- patmcguire 13y agoThe liquidation preferences matter a lot. The company can sell for a tenth of what the valuation is now, maybe even less, and the investors would still break even. There aren't a lot of new consumer companies with zillions of users to invest in so they might as well, because the downside isn't that bad and the upside is... who knows?
- arikrak 13y ago-$100/month
- buro9 13y agoI don't mind sharing the details of mine. Year one salary was £4,800 per year. Year two salary is £12k. London, UK based start-up, very little revenue (working with a few test customers, opening the doors very soon as we're quite far down the road on seeing the output of our tests). I suspect the wage will stay at the £12k level until our active users pass 50k and the revenue passes break-even. At which point we want to raise money to fund growth, but the salaries will likely rise to help us focus on that growth (rather than how the hell we cover the credit card bill). We are seed-funded and haven't yet gone for the A round.
- ronaldx 13y agoWhat you are doing is great and I hope you'll find success with it.
- TheAnimus 13y agoDid you seed with EIES if you don't mind my asking? (Always feels improper to ask such things)
- buro9 13y agoWe funded the seed using SEIS and did so via Seedrs.
- seldo 13y agoHow do you live in London on £12k?
- buro9 13y agoCheaply. I get that question a lot, but it's possible so long as you're not spending on... well, anything. I've spent a lot of the last 2 years adjusting to not needing to buy things and disposing of luxuries (I wouldn't have called them luxuries at the time, but it's surprising how much isn't needed). What I do buy I find ways to acquire things very cheaply. There are food blogs like this: http://www.theskintfoodie.com/ http://www.theskintfoodie.com/ (Tip: Waste nothing, buy precisely what you need and plan how to use every bit) You can get clothing from places like this: http://www.barone.co.uk/ http://www.barone.co.uk/ (Tip: There's a huge supply chain from which you can purchase long before things hit shops) I've turned off broadcast TV, cancelled the TV licence, and just watch on catch-up via iPlayer, etc. Cycling cuts travel costs, though I keep a PAYG Oyster for when I'm with others and will make a journey with them. And so on.
- ScottWhigham 13y agoThis assumes that, as a founder, I have a "salary". Most of the solo and LLC founder members here will not have a traditional salary - the business' profits are your personal "gains".
- casualobs 13y agoWon't this form a normal distribution? There's no way of vetting if the people who voted actually are founders and if they make that much, right?
- primitivesuave 13y agoI run a bootstrapped education business, and was told by other bootstrappers that one should convert personal expenses into business expenses, like car payments (make your car a company car) and food (it's for the office, but sometimes certain employees take it home with them, wink wink). Then, pay yourself as little as possible to cover those impulsive purchases that we are all prone to, and focus on building the value of your company. I later learned from a wise HN'er that you can also claim rent on your apartment as a business expense. Although I'd love to support social welfare and bureaucratic spending with my income taxes, I'd rather maximize how many jobs I can create for hardworking people with my business.
- stevehawk 13y agoJust to cover a few basic principles here - 1 - you should weigh the tax implications of a personal car vs business leased vs business owned car 2 - if you manage to convert all of your personal expenses to business expenses and lower your salary to lower your personal taxes (which may not matter depending on the corporate entity you created in the first place) then you need to realize when you go for a credit check all anyone will care about is your salary, not your business income. So let's say I'm self employed as an hourly contractor and bill @ $150/hr, but I pay myself a 'lowly' $30/hr to dodge taxes. The mortgage company only cares about that $30/hr and may not loan me anything. (also, if you start a business you need to be solid for two years before anyone will loan you anything for the most part, just fyi) 3 - you can claim a portion of rent/mortgage/etc as a business expense if you have a legitimate home office or conduct business of some sort in it.
- randomdata 13y ago> The mortgage company only cares about that $30/hr That's not true in my experience. When I was looking for a mortgage a few years back, the lender was practically throwing money at me once I presented my business financials. Perhaps it depends on who you are dealing with?
- stevehawk 13y ago
- rplnt 13y agoThe choice of answers is very US-based. I'm not a founder, but I can see myself living on $10k quite easily if necessary. Before taxes.
- nailer 13y agoDitto. I'm in Central London, USD wouldn't go very far here.
- eieio 13y agoAt this point a salary of 0 is easily in first place for the poll with around ~45% of the votes(116 votes out of 267). I understand that many folks like to randomly vote on polls on HN: I remember several people explaining that they cast an incorrect vote on the last "how old are you" poll. The fact that we have 267 votes in the first 45 minutes of this poll makes me more suspicious of the votes: I have a hard time believing that 5 founders per minute have read this poll and voted on it. So I'm curious. Founders, how many of you truly take no salary? If you take no salary or close to no salary, how do you compensate? Is it via savings, tricky shenanigans where the business pays for things for you, or something else entirely?
- baddox 13y agoMightn't it simply be a lot of pre-funding and pre-revenue founders that are earning no salary?
- eieio 13y agoFor an avid reader of HN, I'm definitely very uninformed when it comes to the startup scene. It's entirely possible that I'm dead wrong about the poll and ~40-50% of founders don't take a salary. I guess my post spends a bit too much time speculating about whether the votes are fake and too little time asking the question that I care about: I'm honestly very curious what folks who are making very little money and living in (presumably) very expensive places do to get by.
- beat 13y agoDay jobs? That's what a lot of bootstrappers do until the revenue stream can support them. Makes it a lot harder to get rolling though. A lot harder.
- dangero 13y agoFrom the other comments in this thread I think part of the problem is defining a startup. Some people are mentioning bootstrap startups that they do after work and that's why they take no salary.
- rcjordan 13y agoScottWhigham is correct, in my case it was 'gain' not salary. But the income averaged around 40-50k USD for years. I bootstrapped it with personal funds and keystrokes. (Sites started around 1994. Sold out 2011.).
- tptacek 13y agoThis isn't going to mean much: founder of what? A company that is only going to be lucrative if it has a major liquidity event in the future? Does the company have traction yet? How many employees at the company?
- larrys 13y agoYou were down voted but my first thought was exactly the same. What is the relevance without the specifics behind who or in what particular situation. My other thoughts were: Where are you living? (Both geography and say "with parents") How old are you? How do you pay your bills (with "salary" = 0) and so forth. What are your savings? What is your safety net? Many things play into whether someone can even begin to afford to get little or $0 salary. Do you have kids? Are you married?
- toblender 13y agoWhat really amazed me, was that CEO of our 10 Million a year income company was getting a salary of 0 dollars. He grew the thing form 0 dollars a year income to it's currently earning power too. They repaid him from firing him from the job, although he is still on the board. When I had coffee with him he seemed completely ok with it though... what a champ.
- ry0ohki 13y agoThe founders of Google also work for a dollar... and liquidate millions of dollars in stock options every week. So salary isn't everything.
- leoplct 13y ago$ 400,000/year
- sixQuarks 13y agoWhat company do you run?
- elwell 13y agoLinkedIn says freelance
- jnardiello 13y agobitch please.
- sixQuarks 13y agoHe must have done contract work for the healthcare.gov site
- retr0h 13y agoin pesos?
- endlessvoid94 13y agoSize and stage of the company is important and not accounted for here at all.
- mightybyte 13y agoOne important thing to consider is the tax benefits available to founders that are not available to employees. If the founder has a home office, then at least part of their living expenses can be paid by the company as office expenses. This makes the founder's effective income much higher than the raw numbers would indicate.
- mikeg8 13y ago~$1,000 per month for each of three founders to cover our costs of living in Santiago, Chile.
- skadamat 13y agoThere needs to be more transparency / data around this to really reach any legitimate conclusions. Salaries alone are only marginally useful, it's also important to know what stage the company is in (earlier the stage, less the salary, yes or no? Would love to test that b/c that's our intuition). Its also important to know what industry. How much fundraising vs # of employees, how does that ratio effect the CEO salary. Also, equity %. Do founders who make more get less equity than sweat equity CEO's who take no salary? So many questions!
- kapkapkap 13y agoIs this for founders whose statup is their full time gig? Or for founders who also are still maintaining a full time job? A salary of $0 is quite easy if your still making $150k from another job. If the startup is your only source of income...not so much
- wtvanhest 13y agoIt matters a lot whether they founded a rapid growth startup or a lifestyle business. The two should be completely separate polls.
- elwell 13y agoShould have option for <$0
- pouzy 13y ago0 I even created a non profit to make sure that I can reinject everything in the business itself, without having to pay a lot of taxes.
- ceedan 13y agoSalary w/o cost of living data is just a number.
- rob-alarcon 13y ago<0
- davidu 13y agoThe survey results indicate you are missing some higher-salaried choices. (200, 250, 300, 350+) would be my advice.
- jakejake 13y agoIt would probably be interesting to know what type of companies these are. I see the majority has voted $0 salary. Are these companies that have employees, office space, payroll, etc? Or are these projects that one or two friends are working on together to try to get off the ground? I am not trying to discredit either situation, it's just that I see one situation as a company where nobody is making any money. The other situation would have staff who are getting a steady paycheck, but the CEO has chosen not to pay his/her self.
- matthuggins 13y agoI think this poll would have made more sense as a set of ranges instead. If I'm making $10k a year, would I answer $0 or ~$25,000/yr? The poll should have looked more like: -> $0/yr -> $1 - $25,000/yr -> $25,001 - $50,000/yr -> etc.
- tosser8398b9 13y agobootstrapped. "it's a long road, there's no turning back" Year 1: 0 + working old job (150K annual) for 6 months Year 2: 0 + 38K consulting Year 3: $19,000 Year 4: $38,000 .. Year 9: $97,500 Year 10: $137,000 Year 11: $182,000 Year 12: $465,000 Year 13: $415,000
- dennisgorelik 13y agoThat's such an interesting data! But why did you skipped years 5, 6, 7, and 8? I'm in a year 7 and by interpolation it looks like I'm following your path.
- immad 13y agoWould be more interesting to also know a) the funding that people received vs salary. b) the revenue people have vs salary. Salary by itself doesn't really tell much.
- timc3 13y agoThe problem with just stating income is that it doesn't take into account living costs for where you are. For instance the cost of living in Sweden is very high, i.e. 500g loaf white bread is circa USD$2.69 and if you are on a budget you don't actually get to live cheaply as you can't get to the really cheap stores or take advantage of bulk buying. Plus you are not taking into account the age/maturity of the company.
- lquist 13y agoBootstrapped pass-through entity. Year 1 Salary: $100k Year 2 Salary: $600k-$1M (6 months in to Year 2. Estimated salary)
- sgarg26 13y agoHow did founder salary change with regards to level of funding, break even, and profitability?
- pmorici 13y agoThis poll isn't very useful. Given that you can't even get a cheap apartment for much less than $2,000 per month in SF I don't see how anyone could live on less than 36k per year in the bay area before taxes. There has to be more to these numbers perhaps they have a large stash of personal savings they are living off or a significant other with a good paying job.
- milesskorpen 13y agoIf you have roommates, getting an apartment <$2k is pretty trivial in SF. And it would be easier if you lived slightly outside of the city.
- jcdavis 13y agoI'm not a founder, but I spent something around 30k last year while living in SF. I have a roommate, don't eat out very often and take advantage of work food options, take transit/walk almost everywhere, and don't purchase much stuff. Unsure of the tax burden at those rates, but I think you'd have over 30k.
- erikpukinskis 13y agoOn average, about -$600/month.
- tomkinson 13y agoSalary? ahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaha. Funny stuff.
- abalone 13y agoHere's a question: For those of you who are bootstrapping making <$25K or so and live in the U.S., what are you doing for health insurance now? I just found out that in California at least, you will be shunted to Medi-Cal, i.e. the program for people living in poverty. (At least up until now it was.) You do not have the option of getting a subsidy for private insurance if you qualify for Medi-Cal. It is not either/or. You need to exceed a minimum income threshold for that -- and they no longer look at assets/savings to calculate that, only your income. So, if you want a doctor that only takes private insurance, you'd have to purchase it without a subsidy. And of course, the unsubsidized market price has shot way up now. (For my plan, it doubled.) So... what are ya'll doing? Medi-Cal? Full-price private insurance? Uninsured and taking the penalty? Haven't thought about it yet?
- zaroth 13y agoIf your small business pays average salary less than $50k the IRS will give a 50% tax credit on employer's share of premiums of a plan purchased on the exchange.
- kevin0722 13y agoCigna health insurance for a family of 4 - $610/month - $9800 deductible/year - preventative care no cost - serve as safety net in case something gone very wrong
- ericnakagawa 13y agoGood story from today on founder salaries: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/01/14/salary-founder-favorite-startup-get-probably-high-one/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/01/14/salary-founder-favo... I made $7k in 2012 while running simplehoney. (me and my cofounder paid ourselves minimum wage so we could keep 3 people on payroll and get a group rate for health insurance)
- paulirish 13y agoVisualization of the poll results: http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7059569 http://hnlike.com/hncharts/chart/?id=7059569 (and to compare, the TNW article's chart: http://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/Founder-salary-overview.png http://cdn0.tnwcdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/... )
- chirau 13y ago120,000/year + a percentage of revenue. I give my engineers 130k + a slightly smaller split.
- plaxis 13y agoHere visualized in bar graphs as a %. Interesting. http://i.imgur.com/yEW0ivT.png http://i.imgur.com/yEW0ivT.png
- Ryel 13y agoNot enough.
- sfermigier 13y agoI pay myself in Euros.
- gsibble 13y agoSince my persona on this account is public, I won't go into details, but I do view it as any other job....my investors want me to focus on building a company. That means competitive pay compared to what else I could be doing, which means a substantial salary.
- jc123 13y agoPeter Thiel mentioned something like the salary of the CEO for a startup had high inverse correlation with the startup turning out to succeed.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- yaph 13y agoMade a chart of the results http://i.imgur.com/pIDP9kA.png http://i.imgur.com/pIDP9kA.png