Startup Tech Compensation Trends: IT Manager Pay Has Nearly Doubled. Software Engineer Pay Hasn’t.
Last week, Katherine Bindley from The Wall Street Journal published an article on “The Tech Jobs That Are Safe From AI.” She reported that senior IT and computer science job postings are up YoY – while entry level postings are down – which motivated us to look whether the same was true for compensation at […]
Pay Transparency Is Exposing a Bigger Problem: Private Companies Can’t Explain Why They Pay What They Pay
In a Fortune article published this week on the pay gap and pay transparency, the takeaway wasn’t that companies aren’t sharing pay — it’s that they can’t explain it. Private companies with fewer than 200 employees need a salary structure with total cash and equity ranges. And sure, having a job architecture and salary structure […]
One in three investment firms gift vertical slices of carry into trusts. Is yours one of them?
Carried interest is one of the most powerful levers in venture capital and private equity compensation. In our recent webinar with GetDynasty.com, we discussed putting part of your carried interest (and committed capital) into vertical trusts. Here’s what the data says, and what you need to know before you act. When it comes to gifting […]
The AI Equity Premium: What the Data Shows Across Private Tech and Life Science Companies
In Carta‘s State of Startup Compensation Report, they said that “the dominance of AI is shaping how founders build and compensate their teams.” AI equity compensation is rising — but is it rising equally across every industry? In Michael Bodley‘s article digging into the report, he noted that initial equity grants for individual contributors on […]
The Investor Option Pool: Why Valuation Matters More Than Share Size
In our last piece, we looked at how the founder share of a company’s option pool shrinks as valuations rise — and what that actually means in dollar terms. This week, we’re looking at the investor option pool: what that growth actually means, and why the dynamics of the investor pool are fundamentally different from […]
The Option Pool Paradox: Why Higher Valuations Don’t Always Pay Off
We’re taking last week’s analysis one step further: what do those different option pool sizes actually mean in dollar terms? The short answer is that a higher valuation doesn’t automatically translate into a better outcome for founders. A smaller slice of a bigger pie can — and sometimes does — mean less money in your […]
Startup Option Pool by Valuation: How Pools Shift as Companies Grow
With the slew of new data that came out of the PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor r this week, startup option pool by valuation has been on our mind. So, we dug into the Thelander Option Pool Report (available on the Thelander Platform) to see how rising valuations changed the makeup of the option pool between founders, […]
Venture Capital Compensation Trends: Roles Funds Are Betting On
When we asked Perplexity what was going on in Venture Capital this week, it said that venture was in its “value creation” era — and when we looked at the year-over-year venture capital compensation trends on the Thelander platform, we understood why. We pulled the roles with the biggest jumps in median total cash since […]
Private Company Non-Investor Board Member Compensation Data
Independent board members bring industry expertise and valuable networks to the table — and attracting the right ones means knowing what the market pays. So, how does private company non-investor board member compensation actually work? Is it a mix of cash and equity? According to Thelander, yes. And does it change as companies grow? Again, […]
Startup Compensation Strategy: A 4-Step Roadmap From Ad Hoc Offers to Defined Bands
Every founder eventually asks the same question about their startup compensation strategy: “Do I need a real compensation strategy or can I wing it?” Here’s a 4-step roadmap for when and how to move from ad hoc offers to defined bands and levels. 1. What is a “real” compensation infrastructure? A compensation infrastructure means building […]