I’m currently working on my MVP with my other co-founders and the assumption is that I would quite my job once we receive our seed round. I’m not sure what the salary amount would be in respective of our burn and even reaching a series A.
My current role is senior eng making low 6 figures given the state of the market.
Our assumption is our seed would be around 3~5 mill and I would be taking the CTO role.
I’m trying to figure out what would be the appropriate salary and the opportunity cost of quitting my full time job?
Burn rate for the business? Revenues? How much equity are they giving you?
Expecting to raise 3-5 million for a seed round feels awfully high. As do some of the salary figures offered here. 150k salary pre-revenue?? Maybe I’m just out of touch but that sounds crazy high.
I am CTO at a pre-revenue startup. Fintech SaaS. We bootstrapped with $100k so I haven’t taken a penny for 6+ months. We have MVP built. Now hoping to raise $1 million to scale. I expect I’ll draw something like $60-$75k per year until we’re profitable. And I have kids. Was making ~$200k as a salaried tech employee before this.
I’ve had a similar experience. Currently, I believe as long as my salary can meet my existing living needs, it’s sufficient.
I would suggest you adjust expected seed round to around 1M as a long shot assumption. Lots of 250-500k seed rounds out there right now because market is inexorably tight.
For salary, I would try not to take a penny or to take as little as humanly possible. You need marketing, sales and engineering. Your goal is to grow the business with that money, not necessarily reward yourself as if you’ve “made it”.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t be paid, but you should use those funds as judiciously as possible, and reach profitability as soon as possible.