According to a Transparent Career survey which includes a wide range of salaries received by MBA graduates in the four years after finishing the program, remuneration in startups varies considerably.
The report included 150 jobs at startup companies ranging from newly launched ventures to unicorns, or companies that have already obtained their first billion in investments.
What The Data Shows
The Poets&Quants research has proved extremely useful, as it was able to collect details impossible to receive via common tracking applied by business schools. Incidentally, universities can track only the average, or median, remuneration level for recently graduated MBAs. Their data doesn't show whether the company giving the job is a newly launched startup or an already established firm. The recent survey, on the contrary, shows more parameters, so it is actually possible to track how much startups pay their MBA employees.
Average Salaries At Different Types Of Startups
The startups are subdivided into categories according to their investment level. “Pre-seed” companies, or those that have yet to collect important investments, provide an average compensation of $84,255. If we take a “seeded” startup, the baseline remuneration for an MBA immediately starts going up to $93,000. A “Series A” company is able to give their employees a $96,600 salary, while a “Series B” organization raises this number up to $99,083. However, ventures that are considered to have made the “late stage”, can offer a compensation of no less than $114,759. Among these “late-stage” companies are such well-known and established firms as Amazon, Uber and Microsoft. “Stage-B” organizations include such names as Yelp and Commonbond, among many others.
Total average remuneration at “seed” companies is reported to be 108,309 dollars. For Series A and Series B startups, this number equals 108,000 and 115,508 respectively. “Late-stage” organizations offer a total compensation of no less than 149,072 dollars, which makes quite a significant difference.
The Transparent Career survey provided a lot of help to fresh MBA graduates who are considering a job at a startup company, as normally the process of negotiating a viable compensation is tiring and nerve-racking.
According to data obtained from graduates and schools alike, more established “late-stage” startups usually offer a much higher basic salary rate, but considerably less equity, while newly launched “seed” ventures are reported to offer more equity but a lower remuneration.
All in all, the trend seems to be as follows: for companies that are just starting, it's not so easy to “lure in” a candidate with a newly obtained degree if the startup is not ready to compensate lower baseline salary rates with a higher equity to increase the employees' well-being.
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