Compensation, culture, and cap tables

Build Mode is back. This season we’re breaking down what it really takes to build a world-class founding team starting with your cap table, equity structures, and startup compensation strategy. 

We kick off with Yuri Sagalov, managing director at General Catalyst and former founder, YC partner, and seed investor at Wayfinder Ventures. Yuri has worked with hundreds of pre-seed and seed-stage startups, and he shares practical advice on how early-stage founders should think about startup equity, cap table design, investor selection, and compensation structures from day one.  READ MORE

OpenAI is paying workers $1.5 million in stock-based compensation on average, the highest of any tech startup in history

The ChatGPT maker’s average stock-based compensation hit a whopping $1.5 million among its roughly 4,000 employees in 2025, according to the Wall Street Journal. With a reported $830 billion valuation from its latest funding round, the company ranks among the most valuable private firms ever. An IPO at or near that level could turn thousands of employees into multimillionaires.

This unprecedented employee equity sharing is the highest of any major tech startup in recent history. READ MORE

The Seattle Times pretends to be baffled that Starbucks’ CEO makes more than a barista

The Seattle Times wants readers to clutch their pearls over executive pay at Starbucks. It’s insulting to readers’ basic intelligence.

In a recent piece, the left-wing newspaper plays confused about why the CEO of Starbucks earns dramatically more than the company’s average worker. The framing is not subtle. The article highlights the pay gap and treats it as evidence of something suspect in corporate America. It invites readers to see injustice, not basic economics. READ MORE

Wall Street regulator calls for shrinking exec pay disclosure

Fewer top corporate executives could be subject to extensive investor disclosures about their compensation under pending regulatory reforms, Wall Street's top regulator said Tuesday.

The remarks from Paul Atkins, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, foreshadowed coming proposals aimed at substantially reducing the burden companies face in complying with regulations for public companies, part of a general shift in the balance of power away from investors and back towards companies. READ MORE

Executive Pay As A Signal For Good (Or Poor) Governance

Executive compensation has long been used for rewarding performance and retaining talent. When boards only evaluate pay through a reward-and-retention lens, however, they invite scrutiny from investors, proxy advisors and regulators, particularly around alignment with strategy and long-term value creation.

As attention to pay vs. performance intensifies, executive compensation programs and CD&A disclosures send a message far beyond the boardroom, signaling governance quality, strategic clarity and credibility. Effective committees don’t just approve pay programs, they challenge them. They listen to dissent and apply disciplined oversight, judgment and consistency, continually testing alignment with strategy. To guide this process, here are five questions boards should ask their compensation committees: READ MORE

Is it really enough? The salary most Americans believe is needed to stop worrying about money

In a nation where living expenses keep rising and savings rates remain stubbornly low, Americans are increasingly being asked a simple yet revealing question: How much income would you need to stop worrying about money?

Recent surveys and financial research show that, despite wide differences in lifestyle and location, many Americans believe there's a specific salary threshold that would put them at ease when it comes to their finances. READ MORE

Constraints On Executive Compensation: Practical Or Political?

Wage inequality is rising. According to Investopedia, the ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay in 2025 was 348-to-1.

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) puts that number at 281 in 2024 compared with 21 in 1965. This ratio grew to 60 by 1989 and rose to 380 in 2000 at the height of the stock market bubble. Stock market declines and the financial crisis of 2008 temporarily reduced CEO stock-related pay, but the ratio still reached a historic high of 208 in 2020. In 2024 the ratio was 281-to-1, which is still higher than it was from the 1960s to the early 1990s. READ MORE

Crypto Payrolls: Opportunities and Compliance Considerations for Global Employers

In today’s rapidly evolving global workforce, innovative companies are exploring compensation models that incorporate cryptocurrency, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and stablecoins like USDC, EURC, or emerging euro-pegged options such as Fia, to attract top talent, streamline operations, and stay competitive, often supplementing traditional fiat-only payment systems (i.e., government-issued currency such as the U.S. dollar, euro, or pound sterling). While crypto payroll offers efficiencies for distributed teams, it also raises significant tax, regulatory, and operational risks, particularly when implementing globally. READ MORE

Post-IPO Compensation Strategy: Aligning Executive Pay with Public Markets

Recognizing the importance of an effective compensation plan for attracting, retaining, and motivating key executive talent during an initial public offering (IPO), Alvarez & Marsal Tax, LLC (A&M) released its Initial Public Offering Compensation Report (IPO Report) in 2021 and again in 2024. The 2024 IPO Report analyzed Form S-1 statements filed by companies that underwent IPOs between 2021 and 2023. While these IPO Reports provide valuable insights into the typical market practices for executive compensation during the lead up to the IPO, it is also valuable to understand compensation practices immediately after companies transition from private to public. To that end, A&M performed a similar review of recently public companies’ first proxy statements and compared its findings to the data in its 2024 IPO report. READ MORE

Better retention, better executive pay

As employers and workforces settle into the new year, change, as always, is sure to be among the major challenges they face.

More specifically, says Kevin Rockmann, a professor of management at George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, this year’s change scenario will be particularly acute within the ongoing evolution of remote and hybrid environments. READ MORE

2026 Is Shaping Up to Be the Year of the Job Search

In 2026, employers could see dramatically more people looking for new opportunities, with better benefits narrowly outpacing pay as the primary motivation.

Thirty-eight percent of surveyed U.S. workers plan to look for a new job in the first half of this year, up from 29% in the first half of 2025 and 27% in second half of 2025, according to researchOpen in a new tab released recently by talent solutions and business consulting firm Robert Half. READ MORE

Get £1600 a month to do ‘nothing’ – welcome to an AI future where nobody works

Every week, £282 appears in Elinor O’Donovan’s bank account. The 27-year-old is a multidisciplinary artist who sculpts and makes films and installations, but the money isn’t payment for her work – nor is it a form of benefit or a gift from a generous benefactor. It isn’t means-tested and it comes with no obligation to produce anything in return; how she chooses to spend it is entirely up to her.

It may sound too good to be true, but O’Donovan is one of 2,000 artists and cultural workers currently participating in a basic income pilot scheme in Ireland. In 2024, visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, writers, actors, dancers and 13 circus artists were chosen at random by the Irish government from more than 8,000 eligible applicants to receive the money each week for three years, no strings attached. READ MORE

Tech salaries surge 20% for top AI talent amid market cooling

Integration of artificial intelligence into the corporate mainstream reached a critical tipping point In 2025: 43% of organizations globally utilized AI within their recruitment processes, nearly doubling the 26% figure recorded in 2024. This 65% year-over-year increase serves as a primary indicator of a broader shift revealed in the 2025 market analysis by iTalent and iLeadX. The data suggests that the high-tech sector has moved beyond viewing AI as a theoretical trend, establishing it instead as a fundamental managerial and economic infrastructure. READ MORE

Essential Salary Negotiation Skills For Every Stage Of Your Career

Salary negotiation remains one of the most powerful yet underutilized tools in professional development. Despite knowing its importance, two-thirds of people never negotiate their compensation—a decision that costs individuals roughly $1 million over their careers. The gap between understanding negotiation's value and actually engaging in it reveals a critical truth: mastering salary negotiation isn't just about strategy—it's about mindset. READ MORE

Is your salary competitive? Average earnings by age group

Once you've settled into a new job, you might find yourself focused on the day-to-day, filling your time with meetings, tasks, and projects that keep you busy. You might not think much about how your paycheck stacks up against others'—until you start wondering whether you're being paid what you're worth.

But stepping back to ask a simple question—how does my income compare to others my age?—can give you a better sense of your career trajectory. READ MORE