Depends on the startup and what stage it is. If it's a successful startup, then the CEO is sitting on a pile of stock that will likely be worth millions. If it's also a later stage startup, then likely he is making at least as much as his senior developers on top of that.
Either way, he's a much better bet if you want to be a millionaire's wife some day. Also, executives typically have expense accounts that afford them a very nice lifestyle _right now_, even if their salary isn't that high. You can be making a modest salary, but leading a jetset life on business expenses.
> Are there really very many VCs out there?
Yes there are. Here's just one random list of them:
That's a pretty expected outcome when you pay that game.
If you take the sum of all the comments, it goes something like this:
1. Women are disproportionally flocking to a few guys at the very top of the income / success curve.
2. Those guys have amazing dating life, and no pressure to commit.
3. They will go through dozens of women and eventually settle with one. So if they date X women in their bachelorhood, only one 1/X will end up marrying them, and X-1/X will be left disappointed and unhappy.
4. X can be 200+, so that's a lot of unhappy women.
5. Meanwhile tons of guys below the top would love get a date, and can't. They're also unhappy.
6. Evolution isn't optimizing for happiness.
To contrast this, I think at least a quarter of the ones I know have this as an ambition. Knowing people that do want something or that do not has nothing to do with averages, unless you happen to know everyone :)
I've had shares worth millions on paper that later turned out to be worthless many times... It really need to be a later stage startup with real traction for that to really mean anything.
However, it's a different path for top executives versus the rest of us.
If you follow folks at that level, you'll notice that even when their startup fizzles, they tend to come out on top.
There are ways to get paid well at an exit even when your stock are nominally worthless. If you're an executive. Not to mention that if their startup was worth $100m+ at one point, they would likely get a chance to start another.
None of this is criticism, by the way: many of these guys worked harder and longer than most engineers.
They did get disproportionately compensated for it, though.
One example: if you're the one who approves the sale, you can arrange for a cushy job with a golden parachute at the acquiring entity. Say, $1m/yr comp with $30m mandatory severance whenever you leave for any reason.
Congrats, you just got paid $30m+ as an exec for an exit that paid nothing to all other shareholders.
