Our annual Entrepreneurship and Compensation surveys are under way right now. The surveys focus on private companies in the Information Technology and Life Sciences industries. (We have conducted the survey annually since 2000 for IT companies, and since 2003 for Life Sciences companies.)
Survey participants receive a free, detailed “Compensation Report” that provides position-by-position summaries of salaries, bonuses, and equity holdings for C-level and VP-level executives. (I collaborate on the surveys with three professional services firms — executive search firm J. Robert Scott, law firm WilmerHale, and Ernst & Young LLP — that produce the Compensation Reports.)
At the company-status level, the Report breaks out the compensation and equity data by:
- # of financing rounds completed
- Company revenues
- Stage of product development
- # of employees
- Geographic region
- Industry segment
It also breaks out the data by founder vs. non-founder (a.k.a. founder discounts) and other relevant dimensions. This year, we plan to dive into board compensation more deeply, and to also provide a richer picture of organizational changes at different stages of financing.
All survey submissions are kept completely confidential; submitted data is seen only by me and the core research team, the Compensation Report only includes summary data for which we have multiple data points, and we do not even list the names of participating companies.
So if you’re a senior executive in a private IT or Life Sciences company and are interested in participating, please hop over to the survey site, select which of the two surveys applies to you, and “Begin Survey.” (From there, if you haven’t participated in the survey before, click on the New User button. If you have participated before, you can enter your old Login ID and have a lot of the data pre-filled for you, so that it will be a lot quicker for you to complete the survey.) Also, if you’re an investor (VC, angel, etc.) and you get your portfolio companies to participate, both you and the participating companies will get a free copy of the full Report.
As I described in my inaugural blog post, the core of my research data — e.g., all of the charts I post here, and the econometric tables in the journal papers that underlie my blog-posts — comes from these surveys. So participating in the survey will help you get scarce private-company compensation numbers, provide data for future blog posts about issues you’re facing, and help me continue doing the research that serves as the foundation for this blog!
Love your blog, Noam. I always get so much out of it; now I have my own question — on the topic of hiring a new Non-Founder CEO and what equity % to give him.My co-founder and I are technologists and our early stage business has done well. All along, we’ve known that we would reach the point where we would bring on an experienced CEO. We’ve reached the point; we’ve found the guy; all three of us totally click; and my buddy and I want to hire the guy.I’m having trouble identifying what the “standard” comp package would be to bring in an experienced start-up veteran like this. I’ve seen the 2007 http://www.compstudy.com report. These are *excellent*, but the abridged version doesn’t specifically address recruiting a new (non-founder) CEO into an early stage company, and more specifically how much equity he should receive. Some data points:Our business is 2.5 years old, we raised $2M in angel financing at the beginning, and we did $1.5M revenue in 2007. The new CEO would be charged with raising $3M in a Series B (but with VCs not angels). The candidate has helped build/sell three early stage ventures in the last 10 years.The business is doing well, but managing the company/opportunity has outgrown our ability and interest. We just want to go back to coding!We are most interested in identifying the range of equity to grant him; less so the salary. We’re prepared to give up some equity to get our preferred candidate, but I want to be able to point to a third party data source to back up my offer.Is this slice buried in the CompStudy numbers, and/or is there a way to find this number? Also, what are your thoughts? (Again, we like this dude and want to do the deal.)
Thanks for the post, Mark — sounds like you’re going through an exciting stage!The data you want are indeed provided in the full Compensation Report. As mentioned above, the full Report gives salary, bonus, and equity stats (25th percentile, mean and median, 75th percentile) for each position, split out by most (if not all) of the dimensions you want: founder vs. non-founder status, # of financing rounds raised, # of employees, geographic region, business segment, etc.There are 2 ways to get the full Report. The first is to participate in the survey that provided the data for the Report. (The full Report is free to survey participants.) The second is to commit to participate in the next survey, which will be kicking off in the Spring. Given your need for data now, I assume that the latter is the better option for you. If so, drop Mike DiPierro (Mike.Dipierro-at-fmr-dot-com) a line about it.Best of luck with the hiring and next stages!