# Founder Salary Report 2025

We asked 1,844 startup founders what they pay themselves. Answers ranged from nothing on up to some pretty high numbers.

## Key changes over the last year

### Salaries are down

### AI startups are up

### There’s less funding

## What's Inside

- Ranges, averages, and distributions for 1,844 founder salaries
- Salary analysis by company size, stage, funding, and geography

- Detailed breakouts for the SF Bay Area, New York area, Boston area, Texas area, and more.

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- Why founders chose the salary they did, in their own words
- What factors increase or decrease pay, such as funding, stage, or founder age

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## Founders often start with a low salary

60% of founders this year paid themselves less than $100K.

## One of the biggest factors? Region

- $103K - SF Bay Area
- $65K - Other US
- $93K - Boston Area
- $98K - NYC Area
- $70K - Texas Area

## Mean salaries were down 43% this year

Up until last year, salaries were rising. This year, they declined significantly, both by mean and median. Almost twice as many founders paid themselves less than $100k this year compared to last year.

That said, more founders paid themselves something. Whereas 9% of founders did not pay themselves anything last year, just 5.4% said the same this year.

## There were 287% more AI startups this year

AI startups took over this year’s dataset. Last year, 14% of founders were running AI startups. This year, it was 40%—an increase of 287%. This is noteworthy given the average age of the startup in our report is seven years. A significant number have pivoted to AI in the last year.

AI founders make substantially more than non-AI founders (+20%). Though they too have taken a significant and commensurate pay cut this year.

## A tale of shrinking term sheets

Funding is down significantly this year. Last year, the average startup in our survey raised $11 million with a median of $4 million. This year, the average was down by one-third and the median down by 8x. This does not necessarily suggest that is their total capitalization—only that it’s how much outside funding they raised. A founder could be using their own money. In fact, many are.