You may need a carve-out plan. Here’s how to put one in place.
We just published the results from the 2026 M&A with Change of Control & Severance Survey, and we have exclusive analysis for you in this month’s newsletter. Let’s set the scene: According to PitchBook’s Global M&A Report, healthcare was “the quarters clearest growth story.” Healthcare M&A value reached an estimated $165 billion, up 71.6% year over year, […]
Private Company 2027 Salary Increases 2027: How to Plan
Whether you’re a founder or CEO thinking on behalf of the company or an individual wondering about your own compensation, by this time of the year, salary increases have probably crossed your mind. And for good reason. There’s a lot of movement in the private capital market. The way companies are hiring is very different from […]
How does executive equity change from Seed → Series A → Series B?
While we like to stay away from the word *should*, the real question is – how does executive equity change as a company raises capital? This week, we’re continuing our deep dive to answer your frequently asked compensation questions. Using the comp planning tool from the Thelander Platform, (a hybrid of our dataset and consulting […]
Private Company (Startup) Compensation: Equity 101
Equity 101 for Private Companies: How to Structure Startup Compensation from Day One Adapted from a Thelander “Comp Talks” lunch-and-learn with Jodie Thelander (J. Thelander Consulting) and Ally Marada, Partner in the Compensation & Benefits practice at Cooley. Getting equity compensation right is one of the highest-leverage decisions a private company makes — and one […]
How Big Your Employee Option Pool Should Be at a Startup
This month, we are digging into one of the most important elements for a startup: the option pool. Whether you’re setting one up for the first time, preparing for your next round of fundraising or rethinking your equity strategy as you scale, getting the option pool right has the long-term implications for founders, employees, investors […]
How Much to Compensate Independent Board Members at Startups
One of the questions we get asked on a weekly basis is 1. Does Thelander have comp data for non-investor / independent board members? and 2. How much do they make? Since we ran an exclusive analysis for Halle Tecco’s latest post on “What Independent Board Members Do (And How They’re Compensated”, we wanted to share the […]
Startup Compensation Benchmarks: The 7 Hires You Need to Get Right
A few weeks ago, we read an a16z newsletter on the “7 hires a hardware startup needs to get right” that outlined the seven functions (besides engineering) that determines whether a “great product ever becomes a great business.” Which include: Manufacturing, Deployments, Supply Chain, Finance, Sales, Policy and Marketing. And while the piece described how to find […]
What Private Companies Pay Engineers: Engineering Pay in 4 Charts
In the first half of this year, we’ve covered AI/ML Pay Premiums & Salary Structures for Engineers, but this month we’re looking at how different types of engineers are paid at private companies… and how the compensation shifts as they move up the career ladder. We’re digging into six different job families – software, systems, electrical, mechanical, quality and […]
Biotech CEO Compensation: The Real Inflection Point
The real inflection point in biotech CEO compensation isn’t between early and late clinical trials. It’s the leap from pre-clinical to clinical. In this data drop, pulled directly from the Thelander Platform, we looked at how median total cash, founder and non-founder equity changes across biotech stages of development. Pre-Clinical → ClinicalMedian total cash: $329,067 […]
How Private Company Fundraising Has Changed in 5 Charts
Fundraising rounds at private companies are getting larger at every stage. In this month’s digest, we are digging into the correlation between the most recent series raised and the total amount of financing raised (as a dollar amount) to see how the market has shifted since 2024. That shift has meaningful implications for how companies […]