>Nobody makes a salary of 100k per month. That is $1.2 million per year. The CEO of IBM, a company that had revenues of $80 billion in 2015, made salary of $1.6 million in 2015.

Actually lots of people do. In TV, for example, even for a small European countries, such as that I know of, you can make like $500K per year if you're one of the 20-30 "stars" of the various network channels (head presenter, show host etc).

In the US: "In the depths of the recession in 2009, there were still 236,883 individuals who earned more than $1,000,000 in the United States. We know from other research that, by rough estimates, 90 out of 100 men and women reaching this income level are self-made with little to no inheritance. Almost all have college degrees. Men dominate the field, and almost all own or started their own business or work as an executive for a large business".

I wouldn't call 230,000 people "nobody".

In the US news business, $100k/month is strictly the domain of TV on-screen personality presenters; i.e., not the reporters, but network affiliate anchors who are referred to in-house as 'the talent'. Absurd sums of money when you look at the rest of the newsroom staff salaries, but this is all about ratings, sweeps and very local/regional popularity.

> Nobody makes a salary of 100k per month.

The founder of the last startup I worked at made 100k per month and wasn't even the CEO, and that was pre-product and pre-revenue. He just raised a bunch of money on a pitch deck.

I'm definitely not saying that's common, but it's not unheard of either. Inside Silicon Valley there's a tightly prescribed set of norms that tend to be followed, but outside of there money tends to change hands a lot more quickly and fluidly. That's the benefit of being in a place like NYC, because people tend to be motivated more by self-interest rather than by trying to look cool or fit in, so it's a lot easier to pitch folks on stuff if you find a novel but rational opportunity.

I find it very hard to believe that was a a base salary. (Of course, I could be wrong.)

Of course it's possible to make a lot more than that! Just not as a salary. It would be interesting to know the details of their package. Also, how come you happened to know?

I know because it was publicly traded. (They raised a bunch of money and then bought a shell company.)

That wasn't the exact base salary, but that was basically total compensation not including stock. (So including a few hundred thousand dollars per year in an expense account and an additional couple hundred thousand for serving on the board.)