How Does Your Company Stack Up?

Posted by On May 31, 2012 0 Comment

Compensation at startups is different than almost any other kind of organization you might join and one of the biggest differences is around options or equity.  There is a lot of information available on compensation at large organizations, but really only one when it comes to startups: Compstudy.  CompStudy is now in it’s 13th year (I’ve been involved for the past 5) and it is the world’s largest database of compensation data in entrepreneurial organizations.  And that’s not just me saying that…here’s a bit by the Wall Street Journal today echoing the same thoughts.

The way it works is that each year nearly 1,000 companies complete a comprehensive survey of the executive compensation in their company as well as detailed demographic and firmographic information.  These data are then anonymized and presented in an interactive web tool (ahem….designed by my firm, ExtensionEngine) which allows you to look at six different compensation elements:

  1. Base Salary
  2. Target Bonus
  3. Actual Bonus
  4. Equity at Hire
  5. Current Equity
  6. Severance
Further you can slice the data to look at just those firms and positions that are comparable.  Users can slice the data by:
  1. Industry
  2. Year
  3. Country
  4. Geography
  5. Position
  6. Founder status
  7. Headcount
  8. Revenue
  9. Funding
  10. Sub-Industry
That makes it a really powerful tool.  If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you take the survey and check out how your organization stacks up and have access for when you need to recruit a senior executive or board member.