Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" for web CEO's

Re:Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" f... by fnazeeri on Monday December 29, 2008 @01:10PM (#413231)

According to this (http://www.altgate.com/blog/2008/10/2008-startup-compensatio...) 10-year old survey executive compensation of 600+ venture-backed startups, a founding CEO of a software company with <$5MM in revenue is in the $160-230K range (25th %ile and 75th %ile respectively). As an aside, equity is in the 8-30% range (same percentiles).

This isn't terribly helpful to you question since it's for venture-backed companies, but it's at least an upper threshold.

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Re:Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" f... by clintavo on Monday December 29, 2008 @03:33PM (#413399)

Thanks, fnazeeri, this study actually is helpful and does provide some useful data, I think it will be very helpful to have a professionally done compensation study if necessary to show the tax man.

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Re:Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" f... by tptacek on Monday December 29, 2008 @04:26PM (#413480)

There are two extreme data points you're getting here:

(1) The absolute lowest number people think you could get away with.

(2) The ridiculous numbers awarded to vanity CEOs of VC-funded companies.

You probably want to be somewhere in the middle. There's no rule about what a "CEO" makes; you're compensated based on the value you create in the company. If you do the same work as a lead developer, pay yourself like a bare-bones startup would pay a lead developer.

Web companies pay CEOs 200k because they're suckers.

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Re:Ask HN: Sources to determine "reasonable compensation?" f... by fnazeeri on Monday December 29, 2008 @04:05PM (#413445)

Contact me through my blog http://www.altgate.com/ and I can share more detail (or you can track down Noam as I mentioned in the post).

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