Ok:
This seems useful, but I don't fully understand it. Are you saying that the VCs will force you to take a high salary, so that they can take a bigger chunk of your company?
This seems useful, but I don't fully understand it. Are you saying that the VCs will force you to take a high salary, so that they can take a bigger chunk of your company?
And there are other factors. If your compensation becomes a benchmark for the rest of the team, now your company is in real trouble. You can't expect to hire key team members at less than the norm. It just won't happen. VCs know that.
Also, a VC's main job is to put out as much of their committed capital as possible into good deals. Allocating a large part of a preferred equity tranche to fund the maintenance and creation of a solid team is the right thing to do.
And comparing with large companies is not apples to apples. That's a different world; here's an extreme example of that world: http://valleywag.com/tech/greed/the-grotesque-1-salary-251104.php