Australian Startup Salary Guide: Key Insights for Startups

In case you missed it amongst the chaos of late - a really interesting survey of Australian Startup salaries - the Think & Grow - Australian Startup Salary Guide 2019-2020, a research report prepared by Think & Grow and AWS, 

You can download a copy of the report here

Insights from the 2020 Startup Salary Guide

While the data looks a little thin in places to give reliable stats (even though they took data on over 1000 remuneration packages from 63 venture capital-backed companies) it is a useful and rare source of benchmarking.

Founder dilution in startups with investment

Most interesting are the CEO dilution metrics which show CEOs own on average:

• 44% of equity where < $500k raised

• 47% between $500K and $1M raised

• 26% between $1M and $3M

• 23% between $3M and $5M

• 25% $5M to $10M; and

• 6% from $10M+ raised.

Salaries for startup COOs

Of 21 reported Chief Operating Officer/Head of Ops/Head of Strategy, the mean salary was $148,250 with 42% having ESOP.

Salaries for startup CFOs

While of 19 CFO/VP/Head of Finance mean salary was $166,370, 52% having ESOP.

Access to ESOP plans for startup employees

Broader access to ESOP plans looks low, and patchy with only 40% of Sales, 38% of Engineering hires reportedly having 'access'.

This It seems like a remarkably low number given the general availability of tax-efficient ESOPs nowadays.

We'd be keen to know what you take from it?!? Leave a comment below👇

The report was supported by the likes of Blackbird, Transition Level Investments, Reinventure, Artesian Capital, Black Sheep Capital, Startup Aus, Carthona Capital, Airtree, Full Circle Venture Capital and NAB Ventures.

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