Pilot.com

Zero-pay founders are headed toward extinction. This you? 🦖 Pilot.com’s new Founder Salary Report shows that just 5.4% of founders now pay themselves nothing—down from nearly 10% last year. This is a Good Thing™ . As founders, we’re told that sacrifice proves commitment. But playing the long game means being strategic about comp—not skipping a paycheck. This report is packed with data on how founder compensation is evolving across industries. Worth a read whether you’re raising, scaling, or just wondering whether you're paying yourself too little to stay the course, or too much, slicing off precious runway from your startup. 🧠 My takeaway? Founder comp shouldn't be a test of grit. It’s a strategic decision—and recent shifts signal how our industry is responding to new economic and technological realities. 👇 Download the free report here: https://lnkd.in/ggHWGr9R #PilotHQ #FounderSalaryReport #FSR2025 #sponsored

Zero Pay Founder’s era is over! Want to hear something crazy? The average founder salary is now $98K. And 1 in 20 founders are literally paying themselves $0. Let that sink in. The Pilot.com Founder Salary Report is wild. Bootstrapping saw an increase in 77%. AI startups are up 287% from prior year. And most founders? Fewer founders are paying themselves nothing. That number is down to 5.4% from 9%. This suggests more sustainable compensation practices among founders. We always talk about raising money, scaling, hiring. But we don’t talk enough about figuring out how much we should get paid. How much are you paying yourself? Too much, too little, or just right? Let’s have this conversation. Check out Pilot.com's Founder Salary Report that breaks it all down: https://lnkd.in/etyH7KsZ  #foundersalaryreport #FSR2025 #pilothq

I've been burnt out too many times, so now I have zero tolerance for hustle worship. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm a founder, I work in tech, "the grind" is basically our unofficial religion. But if that's the case, I'm a proud heretic. The research on how exhaustion and burnout affects knowledge work is very clear - since the 1950s, studies on work hours and productivity have found that across industries, working longer hours makes workers less productive. Pushing people past their limits makes them worse at their jobs. This is even more pronounced in rapidly changing, highly-skilled and creative knowledge work, which agencies like ours specialize in. Look, if you're a founder / agency executive and constantly scheduling work to keep yourself and everyone in your agency as occupied as possible - you're screwing your business over. Your people won't be able to respond to changes, complications, and crises. When you're already barely keeping up and struggling to find time to do everything, you're more likely to dismiss new information even when it might have a big impact on the exact things you're working on. For example, if a client's industry has some massive trend blow up that we could blend into some marketing campaign we're working on... we won't be able to do that when we're all burnt out and behind on deadlines. Fear is the enemy of creativity, and none of us want to let others down or do a bad job. We don't want to fail, or to fail our clients or team. And if we're running low on steam - we're setting ourselves up for failure the second something doesn't go 100% according to plan. Don't run at your bandwidth. Don't encourage your team to push themselves to run at their maximum bandwidth. Make time to breathe, make time to think, make time to try things and mess up. Because in reality, people will always need more time than you think. So plan for it. Budget for it. Don't fight reality, embrace it. Your agency will do so much better as a result. Want to read more about how this works? Check out the full article: https://lnkd.in/eD9wSmd7 -- Thank you to Chris M. Gillespie and Tamilore Sonaike from Fenwick for including me in this excellent piece on Pilot.com's site. Always happy to rant about these things 😆

Startup founder salaries have dropped offe by 43%! What does this imply about the founders who are building? That’s right—according to the new 2025 Founder Salary Report from Pilot.com, the median founder salary plummeted from $132,000 to just $75,000 in one year. On the surface, that might sound alarming. But when you dig in, it actually tells a much more inspiring story about today’s founders. This dramatic drop isn’t about giving up—it’s about stepping up, out of necessity. Founders are navigating one of the toughest fundraising environments in over a decade. VC dollars are harder to come by, the time between rounds has stretched, and capital efficiency has become the name of the game. But instead of slowing down, many founders are shifting gears and rewriting the rules. What we’re seeing is a real reset. Bootstrapping is on the rise—up 77% from last year—and more founders are making strategic decisions to extend runway and prioritize sustainability. Founders are building leaner teams, embracing AI to get farther with fewer resources, and in many cases, investing their own capital and taking lower salaries to keep things moving forward. This report doesn’t signal the end of the startup dream—it highlights its evolution. And while the overall trend shows a cut in compensation, AI founders are bucking that curve. With median salaries at $90K and growing interest from investors, it’s clear that AI-driven companies are still commanding attention and resources. In fact, AI startups represented 40% of respondents in this year’s report, up from just 14% last year. To me, this all reflects the grit and adaptability that define great founders. Lack of capital has not stopped the most determined founders—it’s just changed their playbook. They’re hustling smarter, leveraging new tools, and proving that scrappy, mission-driven leadership is alive and well. So if you’re a founder wondering whether you’re alone in cutting back and bootstrapping, you’re not. You’re part of a new wave that’s redefining what it means to build something meaningful in this era. Props to the team at Pilot for shining a light on this shift with real data. Full report here: https://lnkd.in/eVTJCUsC Let’s keep building! #Startup #Startups #SalaryReport #VC #AI #Bootstrapping #Business #Pilot #StartupSalaryReport #Innovation

😳 Founder pay is down 43% this year. But AI founders? Still paying themselves 20% more. Why? Capital is there but so is the burn. GPUs, cloud & data rack up fast. 💪🏽 Our take at Ganas Ventures: stay lean, validate early and protect runway because most startups won't make it. 📑 Full Pilot.com 2025 Founder Salary Report: https://lnkd.in/gyUg2ucX