Last week FoG covered compensation at technology startups on the national level. Today we are going to get a little closer to home and talk about technology compensation in Atlanta.
The source for this information is the 2011 Atlanta Technology Executive Compensation Survey conducted by the Technology Executives Roundtable. This is the third year that TER has been conducting its survey. The survey is a bit different than the national CompStudy report. Here is the profile of the TER respondents:
- 74% have been around for more than five years
- 68% of the companies are angel or venture capital funded
- 85% had revenues of less that $25 million
- 67% had revenues of less than $10 million
So all in all the companies are more mature than those surveyed by CompStudy. With that setting the table here are the results of the survey rounded for presentation purposes.
|
Atlanta Technology Compensation |
|||
|
Title |
Cash |
Bonus |
Equity |
|
CEO |
$220,000 |
$95,000 |
7.0% |
|
COO |
$200,000 |
$68,000 |
1.5% |
|
CFO |
$175,000 |
$60,000 |
1.5% |
|
CTO |
$155,000 |
$50,000 |
3.8% |
|
Head of Sales |
$150,000 |
$65,000 |
1.4% |
|
Head of Marketing |
$135,000 |
$35,000 |
1.3% |
|
Head of BizDev |
$160,000 |
$55,000 |
1.9% |
Interesting figures by themselves but even more interesting when compared to the CompStudy non-founder compensation figures. The differences are presented below. Using the CEO slot as an example the way you read this data is an Atlanta CEO makes $10,000 less cash salary, a bonus that is the same, and has 1% more equity than their national counterparts.
|
Atlanta vs National Compensation |
|||
|
Title |
Cash |
Bonus |
Equity |
|
CEO |
$(10,000) |
- |
1.0% |
|
COO |
$15,000 |
$13,000 |
-1.5% |
|
CFO |
$10,000 |
$15,000 |
0.5% |
|
CTO |
$(5,000) |
$5,000 |
1.8% |
|
Head of Sales |
$(15,000) |
$(35,000) |
-0.6% |
|
Head of Marketing |
$(25,000) |
$(5,000) |
-0.8% |
|
Head of BizDev |
- |
$(5,000) |
-0.1% |
Keeping in mind that this is a little bit of an apples and plums conversation, from a cash comp point of view (aside from stinginess on marketing base and sales bonus) the figures are pretty much in line with the national numbers. On average folks in Atlanta make 3% less than their counterparts spread across the country.
The equity side is a bit of a different story, 16% less. I attribute this difference to three factors. The Atlanta companies are more mature, the national study reports equity granted at hire not percentage currently held, and the driver of the difference is the COO slot which you mostly find at more mature companies and thus less equity for the gig. If you remove COO equity from the equation the difference in equity held by those in Atlanta versus the national mean drops to just 2%.
The TER report is chock full of great information. The full report is available to members of TER. If you qualify it seems like $400 well spent. You also may be able to get your hands on the study by reaching out to one of the report sponsors. They are Arketi Group, ExecuLinks, Frazier & Deeter, Morris Manning & Martin, Pritchard & Jerden, Silicon Valley Bank, and Wm Leonard & Co.
Next week FoG will have some thoughts on compensation specifically for seed stage angel funded companies. Until then would love to hear how these numbers compare to your experience as well as any questions you may have. It is a little challenging to present excel spreadsheet data on a blog.