Pay yourselves enough to cover basic living costs until you raise a priced round. Kruze Consulting's 2025 payroll data puts the average seed-stage founder salary at $147,000. What matters more for a cofounder team than the number is agreeing on it together, in writing, before any gap in what each of you needs starts to feel unfair.
How much do founders typically pay themselves?
It climbs with the stage, and it climbs fast. Kruze Consulting's 2025 report, built from anonymized payroll data at more than 450 venture-backed startups, put the overall average founder salary at $161,000, up 14 percent from $141,000 the year before. By stage, the averages were $147,000 at seed, $203,000 at Series A, and $214,000 at Series B. Those numbers describe companies that have already raised institutional money. Pre-seed and bootstrapped founders routinely pay themselves far less, or nothing, in the first year.
Justworks frames the shift plainly: many founders skip a paycheck early on to reinvest in the business, then start paying themselves once revenue arrives. The decision to start, and how much, should track the business's actual needs rather than a number you read in a benchmark report.
Should both cofounders earn the same salary?
Not automatically, but you need a reason either way. Most founder-compensation advice treats salary and equity as two separate questions. Equity is a bet on the company's long-term value, split however you agreed when you started. Salary is current pay for current work, and it can reasonably differ by role, time commitment, or market rate for what each of you does.
Equal pay has one real advantage: it removes a recurring source of resentment, especially when the two of you can't easily tell whose job is "worth more." But a flat equal-pay rule ignores genuine differences, like one cofounder supporting a family on a single income while the other has savings or a working partner. Neither approach is wrong. What breaks partnerships is not deciding, so the gap just sits there until someone notices it and feels misled.
When should you give yourselves a raise?
Tie it to events, not the calendar. The two natural trigger points are closing a priced round, when a cash cushion exists to support higher pay, and hitting a revenue milestone that covers the raise without extending your runway risk. Outside of those triggers, a fixed review date, every six or twelve months, keeps pay from drifting out of sync with what the company can actually afford.
How do you agree on founder pay without it causing conflict?
Run it as a short process, not a conversation you have once and never revisit:
- Each of you writes down the minimum you need to stay in the company full time, not what you'd like.
- Compare those numbers honestly, including anything not obvious from the outside, like a dependent or a second income.
- Set the number together, using our cofounder alignment check first if you're not sure where you actually agree and where you only assume you do.
- Decide who approves future changes using the same logic in your decision rights framework, so the next raise isn't a fresh negotiation from scratch.
What belongs in a founder pay agreement?
Put the number in writing, with the date you set it and the date you'll next review it. This belongs in the same document as your other operating terms. Our guide to building a founder operating agreement covers where compensation sits alongside roles and decision rights. If you don't have a written agreement yet, our founders' agreement resources include templates to start from rather than drafting one cold.
Cofounder salary disagreements rarely start with the number itself. They start with one person discovering, weeks or months late, that the other already changed theirs. Agree the process before you need it, and the number stops being a fight.
Frequently asked questions
- What is a reasonable cofounder salary at seed stage?
- Kruze Consulting's 2025 payroll data, drawn from more than 450 venture-backed startups, puts the average seed-stage founder salary at $147,000, up from $132,000 the year before. That is an average across many companies and runway situations, not a target. Pay what your runway and your personal costs allow, then revisit it as you raise.
- Should cofounders be paid the same salary?
- Most advice treats salary and equity as separate decisions. Pay can track role, market rate, or need, while equity reflects long-term ownership. Equal pay removes one source of resentment, but a flat rule ignores real differences in cost of living or financial runway. Agree the logic together, then write it down.
- When should founders stop skipping a paycheck?
- Most founders go unpaid or underpaid early on and reinvest everything in the business. The shift usually comes once revenue covers costs or you close a priced round. At that point, paying yourselves becomes a business decision with real tradeoffs, not a question of whether you can afford it at all.
- What happens if one cofounder needs a higher salary than the other?
- Name the reason out loud: a dependent, a higher cost of living, a longer runway gap. Decide together whether the difference is temporary or lasting, and whether it adjusts equity, a future true-up, or neither. The problem is rarely the gap itself. It is one cofounder finding out about it after the fact.