As you can imagine, in a matter of minutes the service, SZ Compensation, was going completely nuts.
It's not hard to see why — who doesn't like a little "I'll show you mine if you show me yours?" especially in an industry as secretive about pay as finance. In 30 minutes, SumZero members (who are all vetted buy-side professionals at
"We knew going in that there aren't many subject matters in the hedge fund industry that generate more natural curiosity than personal income and yet are more relevant to our members from a professional development stand-point," said SumZero Senior Vice President, Nicholas Kapur. "If we're truly committed to helping our members grow as professionals over the long term, we absolutely had to address compensation.... Of course, it's a bit taboo as a subject matter goes, so it needs to be handled appropriately. But the bottom line is that the information is important, there's high natural interest, and it has high application value."
SumZero
There are services that do this already, but they charge thousands of dollars for this kind of information. On SumZero it's all free, and that means it's disruptive.
Now — a quick rundown of what we've learned from the submissions so far.
In three hours there were 145 submissions from Hedge Funds, 45 from Mutual Funds, and 30 from Private Equity Funds.
All Group Total Comp Stats:
Minimum compensation: $75,000
Maximum compensation: $2.15mm
Median compensation: $264,000
SumZero
You hear that everyone? Now go forth and find out what you're all worth.