Founder Salary Confessions: How Much Should You Pay Yourself? AMA with 3x Founder Waseem Daher
Hey Product Hunt! I'm Waseem Daher, co-founder of Pilot, the largest startup-focused accounting company in the US. I'm a 3x founder (my previous ventures were acquired by Oracle and Dropbox) who's raised over $120M from Sequoia, Stripe, Jeff Bezos, and more.
Today we're releasing our 2025 Founder Salary Report with data from 1,800+ founders, and the findings might surprise you:
Founder salaries dropped 43% in the past year
AI founders are bucking the trend (paying themselves more)
Bootstrapped companies jumped 57%
Only 5.4% of founders pay themselves nothing (down from 9% last year)
We founders talk endlessly about burn rates, runway, and valuations but no one talks about what they pay themselves. It's time to change that.
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Founder Salary Report by Pilot.com - 2023 salary data from founders across the globe
"What should I be paying myself?” is one of the most common questions founders ask, and getting solid data is tough. We surveyed 750 founders worldwide to find the answers you need, including salary ranges, averages, and distributions.