Waseem Daher, Co-founder and CEO of Pilot, brings insights from the trenches of early-stage startups. He discusses the delicate balance founders face when setting their salaries amidst investor pressures. The conversation dives into the impact of economic changes on founder compensation, especially across different regions and sectors, including the AI landscape. Waseem also tackles essential metrics like burn rate and runway, while emphasizing the emotional challenges of financial austerity and the importance of clear storytelling to attract venture capital.
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volunteer_activism ADVICE
Founder Salary Balance
Pay yourself enough to avoid financial worries.
Focus on your company's success, not personal expenses.
insights INSIGHT
Zero Salary Trend
More founders are not paying themselves any salary, especially in bootstrapped companies.
VC-backed founders tend to value their time and draw a salary.
insights INSIGHT
Salary and Location
Founder salaries generally correlate with the cost of living in their city.
Higher cost of living areas tend to have higher founder salaries.
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In this episode of The Data Minute, Peter Walker (Head of Insights at Carta) and Waseem Daher (Co-founder and CEO, Pilot) discuss all things financial for early-stage startups. They go deep on founders' salaries, those important calculations every startup should know, like burn rate and runway, as well as building a startup in different interest rate environments.
Throughout this episode, you'll hear references to Pilot's incredible founder salary report, which you should check out here: https://pilot.com/report/founder-salary-2024
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Chapters: 00:00 Welcome 1:43 Intro to Pilot 2:56 Founder salary report overview 6:15 Founder salaries by location and team 7:44 The AI founder market 10:12 Common questions on founder salaries and financials 11:58 Managing burn rate 12:51 Runway timelines 16:36 Difference in the pre and post-zero interest rate era 18:54 Discussing layoffs 21:02 The emphasis on different metrics 22:14 What does “line of sight" mean? 24:25 Advice for founders 27:05 The capital light VC 29:11 Closing thoughts
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