

Ask HN: What is a good lead founder's salary? - stevejobs

If one obtains a seed round of funding, how much should go to pay the founder's salary versus other needs?
======
dillydally
As little as possible. You want every bit of free cash to be going back into
the company.

The difference between a $75k and a $150k salary is an extra employee.

Peter Thiel has gone so far as to say that the best predictor of startup
success is a low CEO salary.

~~~
staunch
Peter Thiel link [http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-
predictor-...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-of-
startup-success-is-low-ceo-pay/)

------
sabj
Har har, nice try Steve.

In seriousness, I find this a curious thought experiment too. Obviously,
minimum salary at first makes perfect sense. But let's say that there is a
successful business with good cash flow -- what then? One doesn't want to
appear gauche, but it's good to allow the founder to lead a more full life a
little bit, same idea as allowing for liquidity events in subsequent rounds of
financing, right?

------
harscoat
before you really get financial traction (from paying users) it should be low
(imho around the 50k) as you set the expectations for the rest of the team.
One way to still get some cash upfront after the seedround closing is to have
in your seed agreement that the company's debt twds you (the amount you
invested either in cash or salary not paid) be repaid in a slump sum. You
could do the same after the seed: salary should be 80k but you just get 50 and
the rest will be repaid as debt owed when Series A comes in.

~~~
helveticaman
Does this work? Don't VCs make you relinquish on that debt?

~~~
harscoat
It should work, you can enforce this. You can see that some VCs even encourage
founders to offload some of their stocks because it "destresses" the founder
(a little bit of money in the bank= more zen) from worrying about money too
much to refocus on the business instead.

------
keefe
pay minimum living expenses with a little cushion to be safe?

~~~
alanh
Obviously the founder should be rewarded much more than this when the company
is seeing real revenue. At what point(s) would you say the salary should be
significantly more than this?

~~~
keefe
That's a pretty good question. The best I can come up with is once there is
sufficient runway in the bank to feel safe.

