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What does a marketing director do?

What is a competitive salary for Marketing Director at a funded Berlin startup?

  • I am considering the position of Marketing Director at a Berlin startup that has raised a seed round recently at about €500k (there was some smaller funding before). They have very high growth targets and would give me a lot of autonomy in the role of Marketing Director.  They're in a large market and have a compelling product, but they are not marketing it well.  They have only a handful of paying customers, and would like to increase this by a factor of 100 or more.  They are serious and like my background.  My questions are 1) in Berlin (where I haven't lived) what is a salary range for an Internet startup's Marketing Director with 4 years of experience in this role, who has the appropriate start-up experience.  Their team size is around 10.  2) Should I expect their offer to reflect their very low current revenues? My main issue is that whereas I know or can easily find a salary range for this position for the case where the company is post series a (e.g. 6m), this is not the case here.  So I'm wondering what I should expect.

  • Answer:

    I would expect a pay between 50-70% of your "industry" range, plus options. I would expect total compensation (salary plus fully-vested options at plausible exit valuation) to be around €150k per year for this role. So maybe 50-60k cash, pretty rapid increases in line with growth, and the rest from options.

Anonymous at Quora Visit the source

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Rule of thumb is to take 50% of US salary and then convert into €. Example: if a similar position in similar (stage, industry) startup in US would earn $100K, in Berlin it'll be $50K = €40K. This doesn't apply to software engineers. Important to consider that cost of living in Berlin is very low but quality of life high, so you'll probably end up having more buying power than with higher salary in US.

Lasse Clausen

I've held a position like this one and am now Managing Director of a startup in Berlin, so this answer reflects views from both perspectives. 1) Ask yourself how much value you can bring to the team. If the answer is "not really much", stop right here. 2) Ask yourself if you believe in the product, share the CEOs vision and like the team. If the answer to any of these is "no", stop. 3) Think about money. Marketing Director is a role that will fundamentally add to the startups success and valuation. Having answered questions 1) and 2) affirmatively should make you feel comfortable to invest time and money on your end and accept equity instead of cash as part of your compensation deal. I would say if you can add a lot of value and know what to do and how to do it (question 1) and if you share the CEOs vision and like the team (question 2) a good range is 40K - 60K cash plus 5-10% in equity.

Jannis Bandorski

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