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Comment by whack | Hacker News Reader

Isn't a six figure salary for the CEO pretty normal? The article later said that his salary was 125k, which is how much a 22 year old college graduate makes at Google. The on-tap kombucha and arcade games are probably a rounding error in their budget. The article is trying unfairly to paint them as a bunch of reckless hedonists.

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Not sure it's useful to reason about CEO pay independently of company performance. Google's revenue and profit per-employee are quite high. If your startup is just bleeding money on hopes and promises, it's probably harder to justify a salary that high. The cut below 6 figures happened in the context of layoffs...

CEOs of very early companies that don't have an established business model and are dependent on investors to stay afloat should expect most of their compensation in equity, not salary.

Startups by definition bleed money. They measure it with this fancy term called burn rate

Equity doesn't pay the rent. $122k in Silicon Valley doesn't go far.

Single guy would still be ok with that.

Exactly, a young CEO without a lot of savings probably meets that criteria.

A founding CEO with a family might have other sources of income to rely on, and be able to get away with less.

Anyone can declare themselves to be a one-person company that they're the CEO of. Does that mean they're automatically entitled to make rent?

We're discussing companies with investors.

Investors generally balk at founders taking much salary if the company is not profitable. They need a place to live and eat but beyond that investors want their money helping the company, not funneling into a founder’s pocket. High cash comp should be coming from operating revenue/profits not an investor’s pocket.

In a very competitive environment such as SV you probably can't be too stingy on salaries either. Good employees are quite high on the list of things that will make or break your company.

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