Article · ~10 minute read

Startup CEO Salary Report

Kruze Consulting Free Beginner

When neither founder has money, the honest question is not 'what is fair' but 'what can the company afford without starving you.' This report is built from real accounting data across hundreds of funded startups, broken down by stage, so it gives you a grounded reference instead of a gut guess. The figures are US benchmarks (scale them down hard for an Indian bootstrapped context), but the underlying logic (pay yourself enough to not make desperate decisions, not so much that you shorten runway) travels anywhere.

• Founder pay should track your cash position and stage, not your title: pre-funding it is often close to zero, and it steps up only as you raise real money.
• Paying yourself far too little is a real risk too, not virtue, since a founder under personal financial stress makes worse decisions and can burn out.
• Use the stage-by-stage medians as a sanity check, then adjust down for your cost of living and runway rather than copying a US number.