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Comment by jessevondoom | Hacker News Reader

This just kills me. I run a nonprofit building open tech for the music industry. While we're not without reach or connections, but it's still challenging as hell. No investors, a long road to true 501(c)3 status, and the reality is that finding millions from a wealthy benefactor doesn't happen for most.

I guess my point is that most startup nonprofits don't get the benefit of healthy salaries or even seed money. It's a labor of love — not unlike any entrepreneurial venture, but without the potential payout at the end of the road. I think new and innovative nonprofits have a real place in our economy, but hearing about $400k salaries for unproven CEOs at a first-year nonprofit doesn't win new people over to the side of innovative philanthropy.

If they blow it and don't make it past this first year (and it sounds like there's a good chance of that happening) then it could be a real black mark on new model nonprofits...

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You have to understand that it is mostly one guy and one extended family that self-funded Bay Citizen. Those hefty salaries just signal that their approach is to give some of the core group they've hired some breathing room to experiment and incubate. It's just not a good comparison to a grass roots NPO.

That might be true, but $400k is a whole lot more than breathing room.

But regardless...my point is that this doesn't help instill public trust at all — especially in a massively down economy. My worry is of the double-edged sword: if they fail with a big cash influx it's easy to point to them and say that new thinking in/around nonprofits interfacing in mainstream industry is a failure.

They were given enough capital to last beyond one year...I just hope the gamble pays off so we don't see experimentation in the space end with them.

$400K in the Bay Area for a CEO is average-low. It's not a paltry sum, but it's certainly not anything a truly Tier-1 CEO would work for unless they either had some upside (equity) or had ulterior motives (Labor of Love).

Are you suggesting that $400K is reasonable, and that it is because this person has the title of "CEO" and is located in the Bay Area?

We are talking about someone who:

1) is leading a startup journalism non-profit.

2) has no prior experience as a CEO

3) has never worked in the journalism industry

If this were a tech startup, the salary range for this CEO would be $0 to $100K. To be fair, since as a non-profit there is no equity upside, one could argue for a hefty year end performance-based bonus. But a guaranteed $400K salary is beyond absurd.

Correct, I am saying that $400K is reasonable for a CEO of a venture of this sort only if they do not have extensive experience and/or if they were doing this as a labor of love (Not-for-Profit). If they had significant experience, or knowledge of this industry, they should be making much more.

Someone decided that his background would make him an effective CEO - and once they did, the salary should be commensurate with the responsibilities.

If this were a tech startup, the salary range for a CEO in the valley (for a Series A/B Round startup) would be $250K-$300K with an upside ranging in the 10s of millions.

A guaranteed $400K salary is really not a very decent salary for a CEO. I'll see if I can find some stats to back up my claim.

[EDIT: http://www.siliconvalley.com/salary-survey/ci_12523817?nclic...]

In 2009: The median pay package the valley's boards of directors awarded their chief executives dropped 5.6 percent, to $2.2 million.

You are using CEO salaries of publicly traded companies as comps for the "CEO" of a startup journalism nonprofit (with NO employees to manage, as of the CEO's first day on the job). You don't see anything wrong with that?

If you think tech CEOs in the bay area make under 100k you are either not from here or they've all been lying to you to pay you beans.

Yup, all those YC CEO's are sure rolling in the dough.

Understood. But we're not talking about a Tier-1 CEO, and we're not talking about an established company.

Rather this is someone with no journalism experience at a nonprofit startup. If we were talking about a first-year startup in a failing industry with $5mil in total funding there wouldn't even be a suggestion of a CEO salary close to that.

But my larger point is that this is an organization that needs public support to succeed. Burning through all of your funding in the first year while paying top-level executive salaries in a down economy doesn't build public confidence.

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