CompStudy 2009: Two Free Webcasts This Week, plus Overview of 2009 Survey

This year’s CompStudy survey – our tenth-anniversary survey – ended up being our biggest ever (by far), with more than 700 private ventures responding to our detailed Entrepreneurship and Compensation survey. (Thank you again to all participants!) From our humble beginnings in 2000, when we attracted 211 Technology ventures, we have grown to having 489 Technology and 214 Life Sciences ventures in the 2009 edition.

Free Webcasts This Week

Each year, we use webcasts to unveil the survey results. Once again, we will have separate webcasts for each of the Technology and Life Sciences surveys. Here is the official announcement, with details and links for registering for them.

Executive Compensation: Insights From the Global 2009 CompStudy Survey

Technology company focus
Date: Thursday, 3 December 2020
Time: 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. EST New York
Registration: To register for this event go to Technology company focus

Life sciences company focus
Date: Thursday, 3 December 2020
Time: 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. EST New York
Registration: To register for this event go to Life sciences company focus

Join us on 3 December as a distinguished panel of representatives from Ernst & Young LLP, J. Robert Scott, the Harvard Business School and leading venture capital firms reviews the results of the global 2009 CompStudy survey and discusses the key take-aways for technology and life sciences companies.

Profiles of 2009 Respondents

This year, participants in each survey included the following:

Technology survey

• Geography: 33% were from California, 24% New England, 14% South, 14% West, 10% Mid-Atlantic
• Business segments: 49% were software, 14% hardware / semiconductors, 13% content / information, 10% clean-tech
• Company size: 51% had 1-20 employees, 14% had 76+ employees
• Company funding: 12% were pre-funding, 25% had raised 1 round, 22% had raised 2 rounds, 12% had raised 5 or more rounds
• Company revenues: 31% were pre-revenue, 41% had revenues of $5M or less, 8% had revenues of $20M or more

Life Sciences survey

• Geography: 30% were from California, 25% New England, 16% Mid-Atlantic, 12% South, 10% Midwest
• Business segments: 42% devices, 40% therapeutics, 12% tools / instrumentation
• Company size: 66% had 1-20 employees, 5% had 76+ employees
• Company funding: 9% were pre-funding, 20% had raised 1 round, 23% had raised 2 rounds, 15% had raised 5 or more rounds

High-Level Compensation Summaries

In the coming weeks, I plan to post various slices of the data, including compensation analyses, fund-raising charts, and profiles of founding teams (e.g., do they look different between East Coast and West Coast? Between IT and Life Sciences ventures? How old are Tech and Life Sciences founders?).

For now, here are two high-level compensation charts we’ll be showing (in addition to a lot of others) during the webcasts on Thursday. The first is position-by-position 2008 vs. 2009 compensation numbers for selected non-founding senior executives in private Technology ventures, in thousands of dollars. Across all senior-executive positions we track, base salary increased an average of 0.8%, the lowest in the ten years of the survey.

The second is position-by-position 2008 vs. 2009 compensation numbers for selected non-founding senior executives in private Life Sciences ventures. In these ventures, across all senior-executive positions, base salary increased an average of 3.2%.

As in past surveys, the data showed strong founder discounts (see blog post, summary in Working Knowledge, and journal article), gender gaps in some areas, and some strong golden handcuffs for senior executives (past data, analyses, and interpretations).

If you would like to see some analyses that I haven’t done yet, please post your thoughts and requests!