$132K – $149K, here’s what seed-stage founders pay early employees, based on data
Once a startup has raised its seed round, the perennial question becomes how much should the founders pay themselves and their first few employees?
Kruze Consulting, a CPA firm that specializes in venture-backed startups, recently analyzed average salary ranges for over 450 seed-stage startups and shared that data with TechCrunch.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, technical engineering/product positions tend to be paid more than the CEO. One surprise is that a person with a title of COO/operations also tends to be paid even higher, on average. That’s eyebrow-raising because an operations/COO title could signal to your seed VCs a third co-founder without a well-defined role — there are not a lot of operations to run in a tiny company. Even having that role can be a red flag on spending/budget to early-stage VCs.
Those are not particularly high salaries, especially in the land of startups, the Bay Area. For instance, Kruze also found that very senior engineers enter seed startups with salaries ranging from $180,000 to $235,000 in the Bay Area and $160,000 to $210,000 in other areas. An entry-level engineer, on the other hand, even in San Francisco, can’t command as much: $75,000 to $105,000 on average.
