As a startup founder I find it impractical to pay myself more than a certain extent. Paying others to expand my team/extending runway instead seems more worthwhile.
No one actually needs more than 30-40 LPA to live a decent family life anywhere in India. Yet, so many Indians seem to be eternally chasing a higher CTC through switching jobs every few years.
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Is millions of equity justified for founders?
To a great extent, yes. They are putting in their time, effort and money to build something that doesn't exist. The value must be created from scratch, PMF to be found, pivots to be made and biz models to be tweaked endlessly. The odds are stacked against them most of the time. Big risk = big reward.
And the employees are willing to put in their effort and time to ensure that this dream turns into reality. If you want to compare cost with value, why would someone spend a lot of money on a high end phone when the purpose can be served by a 10K phone too. It’s the added features that come with the high end phone.
Those who are experienced in what they do bring the value and wisdom that’s almost always missing in a startup.
If everyone were to earn basis what they need to live a comfortable life, the divide between rich and poor wouldn’t have been so wide.
"No one actually needs more than 30-40 LPA to live a decent family life anywhere in India"
This is purely generalisation. You need money to buy vehicles, houses, and other items. It is not so cheap. On another note taxes are also there. One has to save money for the future as well.
As the IT field is something which can give value globally, global salaries will come to picture because people have leverage to move anywhere they want.
It's not a generalization. It's based on average Indian earnings.
Top 10% of Indians earn 25k per month or more, which is a very low bar. Most of India survives below 25k per month.
Also, the things you mentioned are wants, not needs. One can survive on needs, and they are very basic. Not everyone needs to purchase a vehicle or house, not everyone does.
Even blue collar jobs fetches more than that in Bangalore, why don’t you hire them train them, and get your work done, you have been repeatedly crying about someone asking 35-40 CTC, after taxes how much in hand will a person get, rent in a decent, I mean in cheap locality with parking is around 25-30K for a 2BHK. What will a person do with equity, share that with the landlord.
Best case scenario you will find 20-30 examples of wealth creation through buy back or equity, what’s the probability your company will end up in wealth creation for employees.
If the person deserves and there are companies paying for it, the person is free to ask that much. Maybe he/she is thinking of saving enough and achieving financial independence early, rather then just surviving like you want them to
Bhai I saw your comments
Tere sath na ho Payega
Paying decent money is one thing, but creating good culture is totally different
From your attitude it looks like you are kind of the person who will tell the employees to bend over cuz you are apparently paying
Your best bet is to find some chutiya agencies who will give resources to you at 5 or 10 dollars per hour and then you can bark at those poor chaps
OP is the toxic founder everyone warned about.
Def I would never work for this guy even if he 2xed my CTC
You aren't a helpless person here - either hire the seniors, hire juniors instead and train them up, or make do without employees and do it yourself
Stop complaining about people asking for money to work for you - you aren't working for your customers and investors for free either
Also, you don't know what people need and don't need to live their lives - no need to guess on their behalf
Easy to say for someone working at coinbase 😂
You're in the top 0.1% of India if not the 1% icymi.
My argument isn't that people should not get paid their dues. My argument is that some of that money should maybe get redistributed to the rest of the company (juniors and mid level folks more so than senior non-founders).
I make my coffee myself and don't go to Starbucks
If that's the argument , you are free to apply it in your company - give your juniors and mid-levels a salary hike and hire fewer seniors or pay them less
See if you can make it work
Please tell me your startup name, so I have one place less to apply. Thanks
My team is responsible for sourcing leads that end up in over $3 million ( 2499 lakh per annum) in revenue for the company. This team wasn't doing that before I joined and I have a very large part in getting it to that level of performance.
Why should I be capped at 40 lakh per annum?
If the team were to expand so that your workload reduces and your salary came down by a few lakhs it wouldn't really make a dent in your life, but it would make a huge difference to someone unemployed right now.
True, but that's how the public government works because they are elected by the people. Private companies work to maximize value and profit, and I'm working on the same principle: I maximize the value I provide and maximize the compensation I earn.
Mixing public and private thinking has never worked in the past, and you're unlikely to get people agreeing with you, since you yourself are trying to maximize profit in the private space.
You're thinking too short-term. In a world filled with uncertainties, people are trying to survive and make sure their family survives for as long as possible. No one can give assurance of the future and long-term. Money can all be lost in a second, life can be lost in a second. No money in the world is enough. I've seen rich families become poor and vice versa. If you take all those things into context, it should make sense why people demand as much as possible.
Exactly my point. There's a lot more to life than money. Demand as much equity, work life balance, perks etc instead of money, I'm all for it. As much as possible.
But the focus on money and CTC growth is strange. People upgrade their lifestyle to try and justify their growth in money earnings and often end up in bad situations wondering about their purpose in life (many here on gv itself).
Too much of anything can be bad, isn't too much money bad for people too?
Not sure, I guess I'll know if I ever have too much money 😂
Billionaires seem to be doing fine though so I'm guessing too much money doesn't hurt😅
Salaries are not determined as per employees’ needs but rather on the basis of the value they create or add to your company!!
As a founder if you want to keep a cap on your employee’s salary but not on the work they do or the value they create then it simply means you (and other founders of the company if any) want to keep earning more and you will at least have a choice of living a luxurious life while making sure the rest of your org will never be able to break the vicious circle of life! Ask yourself is this justified?
Please read the description, I started by saying even as a founder it doesn't make sense to have very high salaries for myself or the founding team.
I'm actually trying to think about how more wealth can be transferred to people not earning more than 25k per month in India, which is most of our population.
At the time of writing this comment, I see ~25% voters think that the 40lpa cap is justified and I came across your interesting POV in your replies so let’s delve deeper -
Reading all your above comments, you are not qualified to be a founder with such a Kanjus mentality. You live in an ideal world bro. Which doesn't exist.
Just do all the work yourself man, why do you wanna hire employees? Learn everything yourself.
You can save all the costs and increase the runway to infinity. Lol.
I do think mass layoffs will start the day MS copilot is available to the public in MS Office 365 lol.
I'm not kanjus (just a bootstrapper), I'm simply arguing some senior folks in the industry might be overpaid. Otherwise they wouldn't be taking paycuts to extend runways right now.
Lol if you think senior folks getting paid 30-40 LPA are overpaid, I don't know what you'll call me if I tell you my salary 😂
If you're paying less than the market trends, as a founder it becomes your job to lure the right talent by giving them equity, giving them an environment so that they can 10x their growth, and convince them of the gains.
I have had managers who have taken a paycut by 30-50% to join startups but eventually left it after a year or so as they just weren't given what they were promised.
Money is the easiest & laziest way a founder can bring in the best talent, and without that it makes the founder's job 10x harder.
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