Leaked Andreessen Horowitz data reveals how much Silicon Valley startup execs really get paid, from CEOs to Sales VPs
- Business Insider has obtained confidential startup salary information collected by Andreessen Horowitz, a top Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
- The data sheds light on exactly how much people are getting paid in leadership roles in American's fiercely competitive technology startup industry.
- It includes base salaries, bonuses, and equity offers for more than 30 different roles, from CEO to SVP of Sales, and at different stages of company funding, from Series A to Series D+.
- You can explore the data in the interactive charts below.
If you're joining a late-stage tech startup as a new vice president of sales, how much equity should you ask for?
What's a generous salary offer for a new chief technology officer at a young enterprise business?
How much is your boss really making?
In Silicon Valley's ultra-competitive job market, compensation information is a closely guarded secret. Workers take to platforms like company review site Glassdoor and anonymous social network Blind to figure out their market value, even as startups (and the venture capital firms that back and guide them) gather and hoard compensation data in efforts to remain competitive.
Business Insider has obtained the results of extensive salary compensation surveys conducted by buzzy technology venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which provides a revealing window into exactly how much top executives at up-and-coming startups are getting paid.
Andreessen Horowitz - often referred to as a16z - annually surveys more than two dozen executive search firms about more than 4,000 job offers that are made to executives across roughly 30 different roles. The positions range from chief executive officer (CEO) to senior vice president of technology to general counsel, at both consumer and enterprise startups across America, and at multiple stages of funding, reflecting the size of the companies in question. (When startups take outside funding from investors, it's typically referred to in "Series." Excluding early seed funding or angel-investment, Series A is the first major round of outside of funding, Series B is the second, and so on.)
As such, the a16z data is illuminating, providing clarity into the median compensation (in both cash and equity) of tech executives. The median salary offer for a Series C consumer CEO is $325,000, and they should expect a 50% bonus and a 6% equity grant. A senior director of engineering at a Series A startup might take home $200,000 in cash, and just 0.58% equity in their business. A vice-president of sales at a late-stage, Series D (or later) enterprise company is raking in $242,500 in base salary, but their total cash take-home is around $450,000. And so on.
Business Insider is republishing much of the data to provide insight - and inject a little transparency - into the hiring process in Silicon Valley and the American technology industry.
A spokesperson for a16z declined to comment.
As startups grow, salaries soar - but equity offers dwindle
First, here's the data for median total cash compensation and equity grants, and how it changes as a company grows and takes on more funding. Use the toggles on the interactive chart to switch between funding Series and salaries/equity. The data for both enterprise and consumer startups is presented where available (for some roles they are combined into one).
Tech startup salaries and equity offers by position
More than just a snapshot of the wallets of Silicon Valley's c-suite, the data gives an insightful look at the priorities of tech startups as they fight to grow in a fiercely competitive market.
For example, in later stage businesses, the amount of cash offered to enterprise CEOs is only marginally more than CTOs, with SVPs of Sales also extremely highly paid. As startups grow, the salaries on offer for new executives balloon - but the amount of equity on offer tends to shrink. And sales people live and die by their bonuses, some of which are around 100% of salary, while technical salaries are much more dependable.
The variance in base salaries, explored
Not all salaries are created equal, of course.
Even at similarly sized companies, there may be significant variance in the base salary, bonus, and equity offered to different candidates, based both on experience and a startup's resources.
In this second, infographic, you can explore the median base salaries for different roles and funding stages, as well as the 25th and 75th percentile data. It also displays 25th and 75th percentile data for equity offers.
Base salaries and equity offers
Equity offers are at least as important as cash salaries for promising startups, and the promise of a major IPO payday down the road can be a big part of what draws talent away from big firms towards new business.
In smaller businesses, too, there can actually be incentive not to draw an overly large salary, if doing so nets a short-term payday but hinders the company's ability to hire and operate in the longer-term.
And then there's other factors to take into consideration, like culture, work-life balance, the nature of the work - and of course the potential of the business itself. A 7% stake in a startup is garbage if that business is destined to fail in nine months.
The data is illuminating - but it has limits
It's also important to note where the data is limited.
This data was published in 2017, and refers to offers made up to 2016 - so offers made for similar roles today are likely to be higher, due to both inflation and increased demand for talent in the technology industry.
There are more responses for some roles than others, meaning less popular ones - like a VP of International at a Series A company - may be less representative samples. Similarly, some roles - like a CISO (chief information security officer) - are atypical for early-stage startups, meaning those that have them are likely unusual and specialized.
Similarly, the data doesn't break down the particulars of a role. A marketer in charge of brand marketing and one in charge of digital marketing will have very different responsibilities, and likely different compensation packages, despite identical job titles.
This data also does not reflect startup founders' potential salaries and shares of equity. It refers only to the offers made to outside hires, and especially at early stages, roles like CEO and CTO are often occupied by (co)founders, who typically own significantly larger shares of the company they created. It also doesn't provide insight into compensation at startups that have not taken outside funding.
And the data does not break out on what terms hires are offered equity - e.g. whether it is theirs immediately as an outright grant, subject to conditions, or will vest over a period of years.
'Knowledge is power'
There's a long-running taboo around discussing salaries - one that has traditionally given companies the upper hand in negotiations and made it hard for workers to ascertain exactly how much they're worth.
"While more and more employers across industries are embracing salary transparency, pay remains a difficult and sometimes anxiety-inducing subject for many job seekers to discuss with a potential employer," Glassdoor spokesperson Sarah Stoddard said in an email.
"This might sound like a cliché, but knowledge is power and that absolutely rings true when it comes to ensuring you earn fair compensation for the work you do ... you should always understand the current market value of your skills and the contributions you make to the company you work for."
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