Founder & Executive Compensation

What does the survey ask?

9 questions, about ten minutes. 8 of them appear in the results; open-text answers are never published. Each number comes with a written definition of what to count.

1. 1.
   What is the CEO's gross annual base salary?CEO annual base salary · EUR / year · definition
2. 2.
   What is the highest gross annual base salary paid to someone who is not a founder?Highest non-founder base salary · EUR / year · definition
3. 3.
   How many people sit on your leadership team?Leadership team size · count · definition
4. 4.
   What percentage of fully diluted share capital does the CEO hold?CEO fully diluted shareholding · % · definition
5. 5.
   What percentage of fully diluted share capital sits in the employee equity pool?Employee equity pool · % · definition
6. 6.
   Beyond base salary, which of these form part of the CEO's compensation?Options: Performance-linked bonus · Dividend or profit distribution · Pension or retirement contribution · Equity granted after the founding round
7. 7.
   Who currently holds or receives employee equity in your company?Options: Every employee · The leadership team · Selected key individuals outside leadership · No employee equity scheme in place
8. 8.
   Which inputs are used when setting leadership salaries?Options: External salary benchmark data · Investor or board input · The individual's previous compensation · Runway or affordability constraints
9. 9.
   Which compensation or equity figure would you most like to see benchmarked next?

Who is it for?

Founders, CEOs and finance leads at European software and AI companies of any size. One person answers for the company, with a work email address. You don't need to be a We Love SaaS member.

What do you get?

A report showing, for every question, the midpoint, the range the middle half of companies sit in, and where your own company stands. You can narrow it to companies like yours by country, size and funding. See a sample report.

How does it run?

In rounds. Each round opens for a fixed period with a fixed set of questions, closes, and is then published. Results are only shown for groups of at least 8 companies. Read the methodology.

Rounds