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Finance
Founder Salary Calculator
Pay yourself fairly without torching your runway.
Stage
Location
Total raised to date (USD)
Dependents
Monthly revenue (USD)
Monthly burn (USD)
Benchmark salary
$130,000
Recommended salary
$48,000
Per month
$4,000
Below benchmark — your cash position is the bottleneck. Plan to raise it after the next milestone.
Recommended salary ≈ 7% of annual burn.
About this tool
Enter your stage, location, total raised, revenue and burn. We blend public benchmarks (Kruze, Pilot, Index Ventures) with what your business can actually sustain to recommend a founder salary — plus a plain-English verdict.
What it does
- •Stage-based benchmarks (bootstrapped → Series A)
- •Location-adjusted multipliers
- •Sustainability cap based on cash + revenue
- •Plain-English verdict and monthly breakdown
Use cases
- ★Setting your first founder salary
- ★Annual comp review with your co-founders
- ★Defending salary to your board
FAQ
Where do the benchmarks come from?
Public reports from Kruze Consulting, Pilot, Index Ventures and Carta. Seed-stage US founders typically pay themselves $100–150K; Series A pushes that into $150–200K.
Should bootstrapped founders pay themselves less?
Only until the business can sustain it. The calculator caps salary at 25% of annualised gross profit for bootstrapped paths.