Founder salary: how much to pay yourself after you raise

In October 2025 the investor Creandum asked more than 700 founders, from the Baltics to San Francisco, what they pay themselves. The median at seed stage came out at €89,000 a year. Southern Europe was one of the nine regions in the survey. It got no figure of its own, and Italy isn’t mentioned.

So what should your founder salary be once the round lands, and how does an Italian SRL actually pay it? This guide covers the published data (and says when it’s only American), what investors expect, the two legal routes, what INPS and income tax take in 2026, a worked budget for two founders and the red flags. New to all this? Start with the beginner’s map from zero to a first round.

How much should a startup founder pay themselves? The data

Start at home, because that’s where the gap is. We found no published survey of what Italian founders pay themselves. So the closest yardstick is an ordinary job. In 2025 the average Italian employee was paid €36,594 gross and cost their employer €48,150. Those are OECD figures, summed up by Assolombarda.

Creandum’s report, Founder Compensation 4.0, came out in February 2026. Bootstrapped founders pay themselves a median €77,500. Raise a seed round (the first sizeable one from professional investors) and it’s €89,000. By Series A it’s €154,464. France and the DACH countries (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) sit around €100,000 to €115,000, the UK at €100,000. US founders? Roughly 1.5 times any European region.

The most detailed numbers are American. Kruze Consulting, a US accounting firm, reads the payroll of its venture-backed clients, and its 2026 report gives the median startup CEO $159,000. Useful, as long as you remember these are US salaries paying US rents.

Benchmark	Figure	Who it covers
Founder median at seed (Creandum)	€89,000	700+ founders in nine regions, Europe and US, surveyed October 2025
Founder median at Series A (Creandum)	€154,464	Same survey
CEO salary at seed stage, typical range (Kruze)	$130,000 to $170,000	Payroll of US venture-backed startups, 2026
CEO salary at Series A, typical range (Kruze)	$180,000 to $230,000	Same data
Average Italian employee, gross pay (OECD)	€36,594	Single worker at the average wage, 2025

What investors expect from a founder salary after the round

Vanessa Kruze, who founded Kruze Consulting, says investors in seed-funded startups ‘tend to want the founders to take enough salary to not have to stress’. Creandum’s version is shorter: ‘reasonable, not rich’. Enough to focus, then. Not enough to save.

What they dislike is surprise. Kruze’s advice is to discuss founder pay with investors before they invest, well before the term sheet (the written offer), and to show it in your model, where a reasonable number means ‘you shouldn’t have any problems’. On the slide, your pay sits inside the people line of your use of funds, the breakdown of where the round goes. In the spreadsheet it’s part of your burn rate, the cash you spend each month, so every euro of it shortens your runway, the months of cash you have left. Our guide to calculating burn rate and runway does the arithmetic.

Cash running short and a bridge round, a smaller round to reach the next one, on the table? A temporary cut in founder pay is the cheapest month of runway you’ll find. Haven’t raised at all yet? Our guide to how much money it takes to start a startup covers the months before a salary is possible.

Director’s fee or employment contract: how an SRL pays founders

Most founders of an Italian SRL are paid as directors. The compenso amministratore, the director’s fee, is set in the statuto (the articles of association) or by a shareholders’ resolution. Make that resolution explicit. In 2008 the joint chambers of the Corte di Cassazione (Sezioni Unite) ruled that approving the annual accounts doesn’t count as one, and in a 2019 ruling the court tied the fee’s tax deductibility to a formal decision of the shareholders.

Can you be an employee instead? Sometimes. INPS message 3359 of September 2019 sets the limits. The amministratore unico (sole director) can’t be an employee of the same company; neither can a sole shareholder, or a director with general powers to act without the board. A chair, or a director with specific and limited powers, can be one, if they truly answer to the board’s direction, control and discipline and do work outside the director’s role. Holding a majority of the company isn’t, on its own, a bar.

Two other routes are usually closed. Invoicing your startup through a flat-rate partita IVA, a sole trader’s VAT number? The forfettario excludes anyone who controls an SRL doing related business, as our guide to the flat-rate tax regime for founders explains. Dividends? An innovative startup must not distribute, or have distributed, profits, so they’re off the table while you keep the status.

INPS and tax on a director’s fee in 2026

Directors’ fees go to the gestione separata, the INPS fund that covers company directors and collaborators. INPS circular 8 of 3 February 2026 puts the 2026 rate for company directors at 35.03%. That’s 33% for pensions, 0.72% for maternity, sickness and family benefits, and 1.31% for DIS-COLL, the collaborators’ unemployment benefit, which directors pay even though they can’t claim it.

The company pays two thirds and you pay one third, withheld from the fee. Contributions stop at €122,295 of income, and the company pays them with an F24, the standard tax payment form, by the 16th of the month after the fee goes out. Already a pensioner, or insured with another compulsory scheme? Your rate is 24%.

For income tax, the fee counts as income similar to employment (art. 50 of the TUIR, the income tax code), as the Agenzia delle Entrate confirms. The exception is a director whose profession covers the role, an accountant say, for whom it’s self-employment income. IRPEF, the personal income tax, then applies at the usual rates. From 2026 that’s 23% up to €28,000, 33% from €28,000 to €50,000 (it was 35%) and 43% above. The company deducts the fee in the year it pays it, not the year it’s earned.

One trap. If you’re also a partner who works in the business every day, and its activity counts as commercial, INPS can ask for contributions to the gestione commercianti as well, on top of the gestione separata. The Constitutional Court upheld that double charge in 2012, and the 2026 commercianti minimum is €4,611.64 a year. Ask your commercialista, your accountant, before you fix the fee.

A worked example: two founders after a €1 million seed

Let’s put numbers on it. The company is invented; the rates are the real 2026 ones.

Say Giulia and Marco own a B2B software SRL in Milan, 50/50, and they’re the only two members of its board. They’ve just closed a €1 million seed round meant to last 20 months, and each will take €48,000 gross a year, €4,000 a month. That’s about a third above the Italian average wage and roughly half Creandum’s seed median.

Per founder, per year	Director’s fee	Employment contract
Gross pay	€48,000	€48,000
Contributions paid by the company	€11,209.60 (two thirds of 35.03%)	About €15,158 (OECD average rate)
TFR, the severance pay employers accrue	None	€3,556 (pay divided by 13.5)
Cost to the company	€59,209.60	About €66,713
Contributions withheld from the founder	€5,604.80 (one third of 35.03%)	About €4,560 (9.5%, OECD average)
Both founders, 20 months	€197,366 (19.7% of the round)	About €222,378 (22.2% of the round)

The fee costs the company about €7,500 a year less per founder. It isn’t really a free choice, though. With nobody else on the board, whom would Giulia and Marco answer to as employees? That’s exactly the question the INPS test asks.

Either way, about a fifth of the round goes on the founders. Fine, if the milestone needs both of them full time for 20 months. A problem only if the model hides it. Our guide to a startup financial model you can defend shows where the line belongs, and our financial model template (Excel, €129) already prices every hire at Italian employer costs, month by month, next to your runway.

Red flags investors notice in founder pay

None of these breaks a law. Each makes an investor slow down.

• A salary that jumps the month the money arrives, with no milestone behind it.
• Back pay. Months you worked for free, settled out of a round raised for growth.
• No founder line in the model at all, or one hidden inside ‘consulting’.
• Co-founders on very different pay, and nobody can say why.
• Fees paid without a shareholders’ resolution, which also puts their deductibility at risk.
• Pay far above the benchmarks for your stage: Kruze warns that a board will expect your valuation, traction and fundraising profile to justify it.

Checklist: set your founder salary before the term sheet

1. Write down your personal monthly minimum: rent or mortgage, family, debts. That’s the ‘no stress’ floor.
2. Compare it with the benchmarks above, for your stage and your country.
3. Pick the route with your commercialista. Director’s fee or employment contract, given the INPS test?
4. Price it at company cost: about 1.23 times the gross fee for a director, nearer 1.39 times for an employee once TFR is in.
5. Give it its own line in the model and in the use of funds, then recheck runway.
6. Tell your lead investor, the one setting the terms, before the term sheet, and record the fee in a shareholders’ resolution.
7. Agree when you’ll review it: at a revenue level, or at the next round.

This article is general information, not legal or tax advice. Contribution rates and tax rules change every year: check with your commercialista or payroll consultant before you set your pay.