Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 89 posts

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#21

Post by philip1209 »

petercooper wrote: post #9

I suspect many founders of profitable non VC funded startups have small salaries and instead "pay" themselves through dividends as it can have tax advantages which might color the value of such graphs. That said, I believe such companies aren't always considered "startups" around these parts for some reason but that can be hazy when it comes to other people's surveys.

Don't forget expenses - if your life is your business, then you go as far as expensing part of your rent, lease, and more in some cases.

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#22

Post by michaelochurch »

ivanplenty wrote: post #15
michaelochurch wrote: post #11

The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. Sure, but this an obvious "correlation is not causation" situation and the reason for this is unpleasant. If you're from a middle-class background, you have to take full salary because that's the only money you have to live on. If you're from an upper-class background, taking full salary hurts your relationship with investors, and will possibly hurt your bar…

This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you. (My email is my HN handle at gmail) You may or may not be right about this or the rest of VC-istan. But I LOVE the fervor and color of your posts. I love hearing a contrarian view. And I would love to buy you a cup of coffee or beer to say thanks for making my time of HN so much more interesting.…

This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you.

Actually, it's at +9 [ETA: changed during writing of reply] right now. [+12 as of 11.56 PST]

The reason my posts tend to end up at the bottom is not (in general) downvoting or low karma scores. Of course, I've had some posts get downvoted, and a smaller number that deserved it. (Who hasn't?)

The ranking system was revamped around summer 2013 to include personal penalties that seem to have hit a large number of the top-100 posters (including respected ones, and less controversial ones than me). It's called "rankban". I also experience "slowban", which is 20x worse latency when logged in than in incognito mode.

Rankban is supposed to make us go away, I presume, but it actually had the opposite effect on me. I post more on HN post-rankban. It suggests that my anti-VCistan writing is in danger (as perceived by PG) of actually being effective. I'd probably be restricting myself to technical articles only (I don't care that much about VCs) were it not for rankban.

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#23

Post by usaar333 »

szirka wrote: post #20

Generally, a start up founder should be more interested in growing the company's (his) equity as opposed to taking a paycheck. The paycheck should be for living expenses, IMHO.

Agreed, but what is fair for living expenses?

Per the article:

> In Silicon Valley, 75% of founders pay themselves less than $75,000 per year and 66% pay themselves less than $50,000 per year, according to the data.

These numbers are lower than what I would consider reasonable for a founder [1]. You certainly can live in the Bay Area on these salaries, but it means spending more time thinking about how and where, possibly having a longer commute, and possibly dealing with poor roommates. All which waste time, time which would be better spent on the start-up.

[1] For an SF-based single founder, I'd consider $80k reasonable. Higher if (s)he has college debt to pay off.

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#24

Post by scarmig »

michaelochurch wrote: post #22
ivanplenty wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you. (My email is my HN handle at gmail) You may or may not be right about this or the rest of VC-istan. But I LOVE the fervor and color of your posts. I love hearing a contrarian view. And I would love to buy you a cup of coffee or beer to say thanks for making my time of HN so much more interesting.…

This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you. Actually, it's at +9 [ETA: changed during writing of reply] right now. [+12 as of 11.56 PST] The reason my posts tend to end up at the bottom is not (in general) downvoting or low karma scores. Of course, I've had some posts get downvoted, and a smaller number that deserved it. (Who hasn't?) The r…

I wonder if upvoting rankbanned people itself incurs a penalty...

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#26

Post by ry0ohki »

dangero wrote: post #8

I've always heard that a founder's salary should be the amount that allows the founder to focus on the business. The concept of a super low salary seems to be focused on the 20 something single crowd. I have a family to support, so I can't take a super small salary and eat Top Ramen. This may be a subtle way that older founders are discriminated against. The story I've heard from founders who have families is that th…

In theory older people have had a better chance to build up savings or have a working spouse/partner to help out.

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#28

Post by jakejake »

petercooper wrote: post #9

I suspect many founders of profitable non VC funded startups have small salaries and instead "pay" themselves through dividends as it can have tax advantages which might color the value of such graphs. That said, I believe such companies aren't always considered "startups" around these parts for some reason but that can be hazy when it comes to other people's surveys.

Yes this article is somewhat misleading in my opinion. I would imagine that a lot of CEOs only pay themselves a fraction of their income through typical payroll. Steve Jobs famously paid himself $1 salary. Although in his case he apparently didn't take other forms of compensation since apparently he didn't need the income. But many other CEOs are known to take low salaries and then get millions in bonuses or stocks.

Re: What salary does the founder of your favorite startup get?

#30

Post by smtddr »

ivanplenty wrote: post #15
michaelochurch wrote: post #11

The lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed. Sure, but this an obvious "correlation is not causation" situation and the reason for this is unpleasant. If you're from a middle-class background, you have to take full salary because that's the only money you have to live on. If you're from an upper-class background, taking full salary hurts your relationship with investors, and will possibly hurt your bar…

This post will be downvoted to hell, but I have been wanting to say this for a while and can't find a way to contact you. (My email is my HN handle at gmail) You may or may not be right about this or the rest of VC-istan. But I LOVE the fervor and color of your posts. I love hearing a contrarian view. And I would love to buy you a cup of coffee or beer to say thanks for making my time of HN so much more interesting.…

I kinda get the same feeling about michaelochurch myself. I think I agree with only half of his comments, but I respect his writing style.
Post reply on HN