Just Launched: 10th Anniversary Compensation Survey

Our annual Entrepreneurship and Compensation surveys are under way right now. Do you want to participate and get free access to compensation data?

The surveys focus on private companies in the Information Technology and Life Sciences industries. We have conducted them annually since 2000, making this the tenth year of the survey. I collaborate on the surveys with three professional services firms: executive search firm J. Robert Scott, Ernst & Young LLP, and law firm WilmerHale.

To mark the tenth year, we are introducing several (very positive) changes. Two of the major ones are as follows:

  • Going global — Not only are we surveying private ventures based in the US/Canada, but we are also expanding to include ventures based in the UK, India, China, and Israel.
  • Sophisticated tools — We are introducing a fully revamped survey site that will give survey participants multiple tools with which to slice and analyze the position-by-position data and other items from the surveys.

As in past years, survey participants will receive free access to all of the detailed compensation tables, including salaries, bonuses, and equity holdings for C-level and VP-level executives.However, this year, access to the tables will be through the much more sophisticated analysis site (rather than through paper or PDF versions of a static Compensation Report, as had been done in the past).

To qualify for the free access, please complete the questionnaire by May 29, 2020. Click here to go to the survey site.

If you participated last year, we should be able to pre-fill some of the data that would not have changed, making it quicker for you to participate now. (If you did not participate in the past, participating now will make it quicker for you to do so next year!)

Potential slices at the company-status level will include:

  • # of financing rounds completed
  • Company revenues
  • Stage of product development
  • # of employees
  • Geographic region
  • Industry segment

You will also be able to break out the data by founder vs. non-founder (a.k.a. founder discounts”) and other relevant dimensions, to delve into board compensation, and to examine how things change as ventures evolve.

All survey submissions are kept completely confidential; submitted information is seen only by me and the core research team, the analysis site will only show slices 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 click over to the survey site, select your country and industry, and click on “Start Survey.”

If you’re an investor (VC, angel, etc.) and you get your portfolio companies to participate, both you and the participating companies will get free access to the site.

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!

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