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 […]
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 […]
Operations Managers Pay is Up 31% – Here’s Why
As venture rounds get bigger and the sub-$5M round disappears (PitchBook), it’s changed the way that companies recruit and retain talent – and the YoY compensation data is changing as a result. Take Operations Managers at companies that have raised less than $15 Million. Median total cash compensation has increased from $87,500 in 2022 to […]
Why Mixing Private & Public Compensation Data Doesn’t Cut It
One time is random. Twice is a pattern. I got off the phone with a biotech VC today who was genuinely trying to understand why Thelander doesn’t mix public and private company compensation data together for the private company dataset. This question has come up enough that we’re putting our answer on the record. 1. […]
Private company M&A activity is up. Is your company prepared? Find out in 2 charts.
Global M&A hit a historic milestone in Q1 2026. According to PitchBook, “total deal value reaching an estimated $1.6 trillion—a new quarterly record—up 50.6% YoY despite a backdrop of trade policy uncertainty, geopolitical tension, and AI-driven disruption risk.” North America led the way, and “liquidity remains abundant with buyers and sellers finding terms.” With M&A […]
The State of Compensation for US Private Biotech Companies
According to PitchBook, “Biopharma companies’ willingness to go public appears to be making a tentative reversal after a long drought…The real drive behind this resurgence, according to investors, is the M&A market.” We looked at our YoY biotech compensation data and used a preview of data from our upcoming US Private Biotech Compensation Report to see […]