How much is a solicitor's average salary?

If I have a start up company and receive a capital injection from a VC with an amount of >$1M. How much will be my average salary as a co-founder/employee? Will it be lower than I'd receive in a normal company?

• Answer:

  Founders always take an initial pay cut in favor of equity upside, opportunity, self-determination, etc. If you had enough money to pay yourself full salary you should invest that in the business. A company has to balance the need to recruit and retain talent (even founders) and make sure they can meet basic needs against its budget, burn rate, competitive environment, and attractiveness to investors. For a long time, the typical outcome for late seed / early venture stage company with $1-2M of newly raised capital located in one of the expensive tech centers like SF, LA, New York, or Boston is to pay up to several founders about 40-60% of their market salary, i.e. perhaps $60K to $100K per year. Add in benefits, G&A expenses, a couple paid employees, and miscellaneous things like legal, marketing, some contractors, and you have the 12-24 month funding run rate that a company should be hoping for. If you have more founders, a more competitive environment, reluctant investors, lots of outside expenses, and so on, best address these disadvantages before taking it out of salaries but as a last resort you pay people less. If the company is profitable, efficient, etc., perhaps it can afford to pay a little more.