2025 Startup CEO Salary Report

Early-stage CEO salaries bounce back

Startup CEOs are seeing a significant increase in average salaries this year, in contrast to the declining averages of the prior two years. The average salary increased slightly more than 14%, from $141,000 in our 2024 report to $161,000 this year. This good news for founders reflects the improved fundraising outlook for 2025, with Pitchbook expecting US fundraising to increase to $90-110 billion from 2024’s total of $71 billion.

Kruze Consulting has produced its annual salary report for the last seven years, and it’s the longest-running startup CEO salary report based on anonymized payroll data. Kruze reviews the payroll data from more than 450 startups across a wide range of industries, including SaaS, biotech, fintech, AI startups, and more. Rather than relying on survey data that can be inaccurate, our analysis of actual payroll data provides an unbiased view of executive/founder compensation for venture-funded startups.

The Startup CEO Salary Report was created to provide fundraising founders insight into the compensation they should request, as well as include in their financial models. Founders often find discussing compensation with VCs difficult, but the reality is that VC firms aren’t opposed to paying founders. Investors understand that, for the startup to function, founders need a living wage so that they’re motivated to build the company and not distracted by personal finances. So founders shouldn’t be afraid to ask for a reasonable salary. Which, of course, leads to the question: “What is a reasonable salary?” Many VCs don’t offer much salary guidance to the management of their portfolio companies. We think this report provides valuable information to startup founders to help them understand how they should compensate themselves as they grow.

Startup CEO Salary Calculator

To help you determine a salary that’s appropriate for you, we’ve built our Startup CEO Salary Calculator using the data from our report, including over 450 seed and VC-backed startups. This calculator will provide you with an estimated range of compensation for a startup CEO based on the amount of funding raised by the company, the stage of the company (i.e. Seed, Series A, Series B, etc.), and the company’s industry. Most early-stage, non-CEO founders are often paid about the same amount as the CEOs, so founders can also use this calculator to estimate their compensation.

Trends in startup CEO salaries over time

The 2025 Startup CEO Salary Report shows that CEO compensation reflects the broader VC ecosystem and the various stages of startup development. In other words, executive pay strongly correlates to the fundraising market, trends in different industries, the performance of individual startups, and their prospects for raising additional funding rounds.

For example, CEO salaries declined slightly in 2024, which reflected the difficult funding environment. However, executive compensation in 2025 shows a significant increase, indicating that the overall funding landscape has improved. The median salary continues to show a steady upward trend, illustrating how consistently resilient the startup ecosystem has been since the turbulent markets of 2019.

VC-backed CEO pay by stage

In 2025, CEO pay by stage showed a significant convergence of average pay levels between Series A and B, with the Series A average only $11,000 less than Series B. That continues a trend from 2023, where Series A salaries increased while Series B salaries declined. In contrast, while lower than Series A, seed-stage average salaries tend to move largely in parallel.

The increase in seed and Series A salaries contrasts sharply with the decrease in Series B salaries and raises some interesting questions. According to data from Carta, seed-stage startups raised 12.5% less capital in 2024 than in 2023. Similarly, Series A fundraising declined by 6.7%. However, capital raised by Series B companies rose by 17.3%. What could account for the difference in average salaries between these groups? One word: Valuation.

While dollars raised were down for seed and Series A companies, so were the number of fundraising rounds. For example, seed startups raised 18% less dollars, but the number of fundraising rounds declined by 26%. Spreading dollars across fewer fundraising rounds means that deals are larger, and valuations are higher. In fact, Carta shows seed-stage median pre-money valuations increasing by 17% in 2024, and salaries likely reflect that increase.

Seed Stage CEO salaries

Seed-stage CEO salaries showed a larger increase than in 2024, moving from $132,000 per year to $147,000, an increase of slightly more than 11%. The previous year’s increase was a much more modest 2.3%. That suggests that seed-stage valuations continue to improve and reflect the improved fundraising market. According to Carta, seed startups raised $1.8 billion in new funding more capital with 7.3% fewer total rounds. Raising more cash on fewer rounds means the average deal size increases. That, in turn, implies that VCs considered the companies that raised funding last year solid investment opportunities. Another factor that might have influenced salary increases is persistent inflation, particularly since startup hubs tend to have a higher cost of living than other locations.

Series A CEO salaries

CEO salaries for Series A startups continue the upward climb that began in 2024 but with even greater gains. While the increase from 2023 to 2024 was 6.5%, 2025 saw a 13.4% increase in salaries for Series A CEOs. Again, data from Carta shows a 14% increase in Series A valuations in 2024 from 2023, reflecting larger deals from Series A fundraising.

Series B CEO salaries

Salaries at the Series B stage have continued to decline from their peak in 2022. This year saw a 5.8% drop in average salaries for Series B CEOs. While capital raised by Series B companies increased by 17.3%, the number of fundraising rounds also increased by 8%, contrasting with both seed and Series A, where both funding and number of rounds declined. Series B companies’ valuations rose by 14% year-over-year, but that’s not the whole story. Series B valuations peaked earlier in the year at nearly 20% before declining. That suggests that Series B CEOs are focused on managing their expenses and reducing their burn rates, and their compensation reflects that.

One reason Series B startups might be facing a cash crunch is that VCs may be reluctant to continue funding later-stage companies that aren’t showing high growth potential. They are shifting their focus to earlier-stage companies with greater upside potential. But what could be fueling that growth potential? One major cause may be artificial intelligence (AI).

The impact of AI on startup funding (and founder salaries)

According to Crunchbase, nearly a third of global venture funding in 2024 went to AI companies, making AI the largest venture investment sector. AI funding in 2024 totaled $101 billion, up from $56 billion in 2023, an increase of more than 80%. In other words, AI funding experienced a major boom in 2024. Almost a third of that funding went to foundational model companies, with the rest going to companies impacted by these new foundational models.

Venture capitalists are increasingly favoring early-stage companies building AI-native applications over later-stage companies with more mature, non-AI-native products. While later-stage companies may attempt to integrate AI features, this process is often costly and time-intensive, limiting growth potential and creating tension between performance and valuation. In contrast, AI-native startups are seen as inherently more agile and scalable, which aligns better with investor expectations. This preference, coupled with the larger funding rounds typical for early-stage AI startups, is likely driving up founder salaries at earlier stages. Meanwhile, Series B founders face downward salary pressure as they contend with stricter performance benchmarks and the challenges of justifying high valuations in a competitive funding environment.

Startup CEO salaries continue to show a gender gap

The 2025 data continues to show a gender pay gap in startup CEO compensation, though the gap has narrowed slightly. The good news is that female CEO salaries increased by 17.8%, while the salaries of their male counterparts rose by 13.9%. That means that in 2024, female CEOs earned $14,000 less than male CEOs, but in 2025, the difference has shrunk to $11,000.

Since we’ve been tracking the gender pay gap, it peaked in 2020 at $45,000 and is now down to $11,000. That suggests that transparency, allowing all stakeholders to understand compensation rates for specific roles, is vital to resolving gender pay gaps. We hope that highlighting this issue as part of our Startup CEO Salary Report will contribute to overall salary transparency and help founders and VCs evaluate pay structures across similar roles.

It’s normal for startup CEOs to get paid!

As we have since 2018, Kruze Consulting continues to encourage founders to accept salaries as soon as they’ve got funding. Our CEO Salary Report shows that paying CEO/founders is the norm across a wide swath of startup companies, and moreover, it’s a smart investment in the startup’s future. Financial stability and a reasonable salary enables founders to focus on growing their startups, meeting objectives, and achieving milestones without being distracted by not being able to pay their bills.

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