2026 Founder + Executive Compensation by Stage.

Founder/CEO cash compensation by stage.

Annualized base salary. Equity covered separately below.

Pre-seed founders frequently take zero cash before institutional money. Post-raise jumps to the seed band fast.

CTO + technical co-founder cash compensation.

Technical co-founder splits typically run 5-10% below CEO until Series A, then converge.

VP + senior executive cash compensation.

First non-founder executive hires across the most common functions.

Equity ownership by stage.

Approximate retained equity after each round, assuming typical dilution patterns. Use ranges, not point estimates.

Option pool refreshes shrink founder equity faster than down-rounds in most cap tables. Watch for 10-15% pool top-ups per round.

VP + executive equity grants.

Initial equity grants at hire, expressed as a percentage of fully-diluted shares.

How the data was assembled.

Ranges shown are the 25th-75th percentile across the named sources where overlap allows, with the median pulled to the most-recent source's midpoint. Where one source's range falls outside the others by more than 15%, it's flagged in the notes column rather than blended.

Where this fits in a Decision Read.

Compensation benchmarks alone don't decide a hire. They set the price band. The decision is which role to hire next, in what shape, at what level. That's a signal-mapping problem (positioning + channel mix + product depth) and a category-pattern problem (what your competitors are doing).

An Deep Read maps that shape across the relevant competitor set in 10 days. Compensation data goes inside the brief alongside competitor org charts + open roles signal. See the Decision Read ladder or compare to strategy consultants.