DISQUS

ssaikia · 8 months ago

COMPENSATION DATA FOR 2008 STARTUPS (US)

Thank you for this data. Equally valuable are the interviews. Entrepreneurs (like me) need to know the market-rates for management (and non-management). Including non-US data such as China and India in the 2009 report will be even more valuable.

Hari · 7 months ago

I am not sure if this is the right website to seek guidance but I will try anyway.
I expect an offer for SVP of R&D reporting to CEO from a small start up with a recent successful series A financing. The expectation is value creation thru IP and product development for successful exit (acquistion or IPO) with in 3 years. I have a very good job (VP of Product Development) in a large internatioinal company. What are my options for negotiating a comprehensive compensation package?
If you do not provide such guidance, can you point me in the right direction?
Hari

fnazeeri · 7 months ago

Hi Hari. I assume you checked out the CompStudy reports in this blog post to get comparable data. The title SVP R&D isn't listed specifically, but you should be able to find a close proxy. If the company is in the life sciences industry then you can use "Chief Scientific Officer" and if it's in the technology space you probably want to look at something between CTO and Head of Engineering. What you want to do is find an appropriate range for each of base salary, cash bonus and equity, the three main drivers of startup compensation based on location and size of the company. CompStudy gives this info by geography, headcount, round of financing, revenue and more. Since you're coming from a large company where the equity component is small or non-existent, you can expect that the offer will have a lower overall cash compensation but more in equity (the famous cash-equity trade off). Ultimately that's the area you'll mostly likely be able to negotiate (i.e. more equity in exchange for the cut in cash compensation). Also, don't forget to look at the other items in the offer that constitute compensation including health insurance, severance, etc. Lastly, remember that statistics are good at predicting outcomes over time but are not helpful on one particular event (with a hundred coin tosses you know it should come out 50/50 heads/tails but on one particular toss you're just guessing). Good luck!