Founder Compensation 4.0

Welcome to our fourth annual report on early-stage founder compensation. 

The tech space has evolved drastically since we first asked founders about their compensation in 2021, but over the last 12 months, that evolution has become a revolution. 

A new wave of AI-native startups has emerged, powered by unprecedented early-stage funding rounds. AI has bled into mainstream culture in a way unheard of for an emerging technology – "Vibe coding" was Collins Dictionary's Word of the Year 2025.

But has that ubiquity supercharged founder compensation as one might expect? Are AI-first founders able to pay themselves considerably more than those at what we call AI-enabled startups? It's those questions, and more, that this year's report answers. 

To that end, we have expanded our questions to capture the impact of AI better.

Additionally, for the first time, we have included US-based founders in New York and San Francisco, bridging data on Atlantic-crossing founders with that of their peers back on this side of the pond.

• Salaries are increasing steadily with stage: Median salaries peak at Series C at around €225,000, and average salaries peak at Series D+ at around €246,000.

• The gender pay gap has narrowed further: At Seed and Series A, female founders earn within a 3-5% range of male founders, but only 13% of respondents were female.

• US salaries are significantly higher: Founders in America earn roughly 1.5 times as much as in any European region.

• AI-native founders are not (yet) the highest earners: FinTech and CleanTech founders earn the most across industries – AI-native founders rank third.

Salary growth is slowing down: 2025 growth rates are flatter than in past years.

Last year, salaries increased after the 2023 startups, which had caused them to drop the year before. This year, salaries rose again across all stages except Pre-Seed, where YoY growth was negative (-12%), suggesting either a market correction or founders conserving cash at the earliest stage. Likewise, bonuses among Pre-Seed remain relatively rare. 

There was also a 23% decline in median founder salary from the bootstrapped stage to Pre-Seed, noting that while bootstrapped companies may not have had external institutional investment, this doesn't necessarily mean they are cash-poor; often, quite the opposite. Some will be highly profitable or self-funded, so it's not a given that they will eventually raise a Pre-Seed round and may even skip to Series A, which may explain why the salaries of bootstrapped founders have risen considerably from last year, with median salaries (€77,500) approaching those of Seed-stage founders (€89,000).  

The largest salary increases, understandably, come in Pre-Seed and Seed (48%) rounds, and in Seed and Series A (46%) rounds, with the first serious injection of capital typically arriving around this time. 2025 has already seen some of the biggest Seed and Series A rounds on record – including Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable's $200m Series A in July and Thinking Machines Lab, a US AI research firm, raising a $2bn Seed round the same month. 

Series A and B rounds were up 10% QoQ and YoY as of Q3 2025, , and so it's no surprise to see healthy median salary growth from last year. Series A and B founders now take home a median salary of €154,464 and €199,450, respectively. It's around this time that bonuses become both commonplace and sizable, reflecting a shift toward structured compensation as companies scale, peaking at Series C, when around 70% of founders received bonuses. 

In the world of multi-million-dollar seed rounds, it's important to note that both the amount of capital a company raises and the number of rounds it raises matter.

For founders everywhere, median salaries increase as companies raise more money. In Europe, average and median salaries increase as funding stages progress, with the largest jump occurring between €3-10 million and €10-20 million, where median salaries rise by nearly 30%. Once a company has raised over €10 million, however, the difference between European and US founder salaries changes drastically. Companies that have raised over €100 million pay their founders €225,000 in Europe vs. $350,000 in the US; a 55% premium.

When we split this year's report data by gender, there were signs of progress on the pay gap, but another disappointing year for female founder representation. 

Across funding stages, the differential between male and female founders has nearly closed at Seed and Series A, with women earning within 3-5% of their male counterparts. At Series C, female founders' median pay (around €220,000) is even slightly higher than that of their male peers.

However, as only 13% of our respondents were women, these numbers should be treated cautiously. Side-note: This is something we work on every year to improve, but it is also an indictment of a broader, persistent issue in the industry: too few female-founded startups securing investment. In 2024, 2.3% of all global VC funding went to female-only founding teams, and 14.1% went to mixed-gender founding teams.

• US founders earn the highest globally, with average and median salaries roughly 1.5× higher than in any European region.

• Surprisingly, Baltic and SE are higher than Benelux and close to France, DACH.

• France and DACH follow closely behind, with medians around €100-115K, continuing to outpace the UK (€100K) for a second consecutive year.

While AI-native startups are now regularly raising megarounds in the hundreds of millions (sometimes billions) of dollars, those zeroes are yet to materialise in the pay packets of AI-first founders. As most of those founders will admit, the public perception of AI funding rounds is skewed by headline-grabbing raises in the US, such as those from Thinking Machines and Scale AI. The majority of rounds are much smaller. Regardless, in Europe, founders of AI-first startups can still take home a median salary of €122,282. But they are pipped as overall median top earners by founders working in CleanTech (€142,464) and FinTech (€142,792).

CleanTech startups tend to have a longer pathway to profitability and exit; two of the biggest CleanTech funding rounds of this year, Silicon Ranch ($500 million) and Mainspring Energy ($258 million), came from startups formed in the early 2010s, so founder salaries can often be higher to compensate for this. 

FinTech founder salaries have always featured high in our rankings, especially at earlier stages, due to the typically quicker path to monetization and lower capital requirements. That's continued this year, likely boosted by an increase in fintech funding (H1 2025 global venture funding was up 5.3% YoY) and recent high-profile IPOs, including Circle and Chime, which have opened up more exit routes. 

Despite the rebound in global venture volumes through 2025 (up 38% YoY in Q3, ), companies and their boards continue to prioritize efficient growth and early monetization over scale. As a result, its founders can directly influence sales pipelines and margins that can command a premium. Founders acting as Chief Revenue or Commercial Officers (CRO/CCO) are taking home median salaries of around €133,560. At the same time, CEOs earn a median salary of €118,720 with the traditional generalist role squeezed between operational and commercial specialisation. 

Again, this reflects the uneven nature of the current tech ecosystem. Later-stage US tech companies might be seeing — driven largely by mega AI and FinTech rounds — but seed and early-stage companies still faced cautious valuations and longer fundraising timelines. Founders who can skillfully navigate that landscape are being rewarded. Meanwhile, those who focus primarily on building, as Chief Product Officers, and last year's highest earners, are now earning the least – a median of around €85,000.

The biggest driver of dilution remains the number of co-founders. Understandably, the more co-founders there are, the less equity there is to go around. Founders should remember that equity is your ultimate payday when your shares become liquid. 

Timing matters more than geography. Whether you're founder #2, #3, or #4, this has an enormous impact. The difference between being brought on at incorporation (48-50% equity) vs. 6 months later (20-24%) can be millions in exit value.

As a founder, figuring out your pay is a balancing act. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1) Alignment

Purpose vs parity. The majority of founder wealth should derive from long-term equity value. Salary should signal alignment, not entitlement.

The goal: Cover living costs and avoid financial distraction, not to match corporate market rates. Founders set cultural tone; salaries should be "reasonable, not rich."

Tip: Ask yourself "At this stage, what level keeps [founder] focused and motivated, but doesn't distort incentives or culture?"

2) Sufficiency

Salaries should allow financial stability, not luxury. Anchor in data, adjust for your context.

Use market data as a reference, not a rule. Adjust for:

• Company stage & burn rate, cash runway

• Geography (e.g. London vs SF ≈ +40%)

• Founder equity size & liquidity situation

3) Transparency

Compensation decisions are board-approved, benchmarked, and documented. Reviewed annually, ideally by an independent chair or comp committee.

• Keep documentation clear: rationale, benchmarks, and approval minutes

• Avoid ad-hoc changes tied to funding rounds

4) Accountability

Cash and variable pay are linked to performance milestones and leadership contributions.

• If founders shift out of operational roles (e.g., Chair, iNED), re-benchmark accordingly

• If multiple founders: compensate based on scope and responsibility, not founding status

5) Consistency

Pay evolves predictably with company maturity and/or performance, not opportunistically with funding rounds.

There is no easy solution, no one-size-fits-all answer to founder compensation. Each year, each report takes us closer to science over art, a focus point around which more informed conversations and a community can coalesce.

We’ve topped up the data in this practical, community tool,   to help you better navigate compensation from Pre-Seed to Series B+.

Try it out, add your data, and help us all create the industry standard benchmark for early-stage compensation. 

We launched the survey on 01 October, 2025 and closed it on 31 October, 2025. We asked over 700 founders about their salaries and equity, where they're based, their role in the company, their gender, how much they've raised in each round, and from whom. As the report's focus is mainly on early-stage companies, we spoke to founders of bootstrapped startups (i.e., businesses started with little to no outside financing or capital) through to Series D. 

Following the completion of the survey, we: 

• Standardized currency to Euros.

• Combined 9 regions: Baltics, Benelux, CEE, DACH, France, Nordics, Southern EU, UK, and USA (NYC and SF).

• Figured out the median and average salaries and equity for each category[1].

[1] Footnote: In compensation reporting, it's essential to look at both average and median salaries because they each provide different insights into the distribution:

• Median: the middle value with 50% above and 50% below. It's less affected by extreme values, making it a more neutral measure of central tendency.

• Average: can be influenced by outliers, particularly high salaries at the upper end of the distribution, which can skew the overall picture.

Comparing the two reveals a more nuanced understanding of the distribution's shape and helps compensate for each distribution's limitations, enabling you to make more balanced decisions.