Chief executive estimates top pay is up about tenfold in five years
The chief executive says standard pay bands are a joke, and the rise for the most valuable people is accelerating.
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy · Christina Cacioppo - Building an Enduring Software Company in the Age of AI - [Invest Like the Best, EP.496]Christina Cacioppo, co-founder and chief executive of security and compliance software company Vanta, estimates that total compensation for the company's top earner is up roughly tenfold from five years ago. She said the figure should be higher still.
Her philosophy, she said, is that you never pay top people enough. Standard pay bands are now a joke, she said, and whatever salary data a company has is wrong compared with what is being offered to those people. What makes them worth millions, she said, is being high context people who understand the company, the customers, and the work, "making generally reasonable decisions and sometimes bad ones," then fixing the bad ones and just moving.
She said the rise in pay for the most valuable people is accelerating. The main brake she named is investor concern about dilution and stock based pay, pressure that was strong in 2022 and 2023 but has since gone quiet.
Questions people ask
What does total compensation include?
Total compensation usually means salary plus bonus plus the value of stock awards. At startups, the stock part can dwarf salary, especially when the company's valuation is rising fast.
What is dilution, and why would investors worry about it?
Dilution happens when a company issues more shares to employees or investors, shrinking each existing shareholder's slice. Investors tolerated heavy stock pay in the 2010s, pushed back around 2022 and 2023, and have since gone quiet again.
Why does this kind of pay jump happen in stock rather than salary?
Cash pay is limited by budgets and fairness inside a company. Stock can stretch much further because it promises a share of future growth, which is why bidding wars for star hires usually happen in equity, not salary.