All the VC funded startups I've seen compensation for up close are in the 90-120k for what I'd consider junior to middle level non-founder engineers (half that for founders), and maybe 130-160 for individual contributors of great but not legendary caliber (i.e. not hiring Guido to do python dev for 160k, but someone who is quite good, and who could easily be a top tier consultant in that field).
These salaries (for VC funded companies after a big A, B, etc,) are about 2x of what I'd consider reasonable (which is a view based on salaries 2001-2005), but being on the employer side, if you have the money, not being willing to pay market is a dumb reason to not get the best talent. Paying market itself isn't a differentiator, but it's reasonable for an employee to be unwilling to take a substantially below market total comp package. If you don't have the cash, obviously you need to build in other parts of comp to make up for it (flexibility, being in lower cost areas, higher equity, ...), but it seems like angels and VCs value equity a lot more than employees do, and value cash a lot less, so raising more money to pay the bigger salaries isn't wrong.
These salaries (for VC funded companies after a big A, B, etc,) are about 2x of what I'd consider reasonable (which is a view based on salaries 2001-2005), but being on the employer side, if you have the money, not being willing to pay market is a dumb reason to not get the best talent. Paying market itself isn't a differentiator, but it's reasonable for an employee to be unwilling to take a substantially below market total comp package. If you don't have the cash, obviously you need to build in other parts of comp to make up for it (flexibility, being in lower cost areas, higher equity, ...), but it seems like angels and VCs value equity a lot more than employees do, and value cash a lot less, so raising more money to pay the bigger salaries isn't wrong.