I’m currently working on my MVP with my other co-founders and the assumption is that I would quite my job once we receive our seed round. I’m not sure what the salary amount would be in respective of our burn and even reaching a series A.
My current role is senior eng making low 6 figures given the state of the market.
Our assumption is our seed would be around 3~5 mill and I would be taking the CTO role.
I’m trying to figure out what would be the appropriate salary and the opportunity cost of quitting my full time job?
You need to be in alignment with what is going on in the industry otherwise your investors may ask tough questions later.
Generally speaking $100-125k for CTO is around average right now. The bigger question is what is your stock compensation as that is how you make up for lower salary if your company is successful.
On the stock side you should try to have acceleration on change of control for some percentage of your unvested share and be careful to understand how you could be diluted in future funding rounds.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90958008/startup-founder-salary-ceo-report-2023