Average CEO Salary in SaaS

The Blossom Street Ventures team analyzed the CEO salaries of 87 SaaS portfolio companies before the IPO.

There are not data of early-stage startups, because it's private. And companies, goes to IPO, share their data.

This article by Sammy Abdullah – co-founder at Blossom Street Ventures. He writes very engaging articles on SaaS.

1. A range of the CEO's annual salary varies from $35k to $400k (plus bonus).

2. Some CEOs can afford not to have a salary. For example:
   – Marc Benioff (Salesforce) had $1 annual before IPO.
   – Dustin Moskovitz (Asana) had $1 too.
   – Patrick Shiong (Nant Health) didn't have a salary.
   – Thomas Siebel (C3) had $6k annual.

3. $319,292 – median annual salary of the CEO in SaaS company before the IPO. This salary is considered rather modest.

4. In addition to salaries, CEOs get bonuses and options.

5. Median bonus for CEO => $125k annual.

6. Median option compensation for CEO => $84k annual.

7. Some founders got high-value options beforе the IPO. For example:
   – Drew Houston (Dropbox) got $109m options a year before the IPO.
   – Ryan Smith (Qualtrics) got $142m options.

8. If CEO does a good job – drive high growth for his SaaS company, good VCs not against high-value options for the CEO. It's a reward for a good job.

9. All salaries of other CEOs with bonuses and options you can see in a table from the article.

10. After looking at this table, I understand - how founders are earning millions of dollars before the exit. The options. They can be sold on secondaries.