Pillar VC and Pave Release Biotech Compensation Analysis

BOSTON, April 4, 2023 — Today, early-stage venture firm Pillar VC and real-time compensation platform Pave announced the inaugural Biotech Compensation Analysis, a dataset for benchmarking salaries across the entire biotech industry.

“Biotech founders are very data-driven people, and yet, when it comes to determining salary levels for their employees, they’re often left making decisions based on incomplete information they gather from investors and peers,” said Tony Kulesa, principal at Pillar VC. “Our hope is that biotech founders are able to use this report as they’re thinking about what positions they need to hire for, as well as the salary bands they should offer their employees as they progress from a seed-stage startup to a large organization.” 

Pillar VC and Pave collected over 3,700 salary-related data points from 90 biotech companies. Highlights include:

• Biotech salary benchmarks by job function: The three job function categories commanding the highest median salaries are C-Suite ($256,000), Legal ($201,000), and Principal Scientist ($190,000).
• Scientist salary by level: The report reveals salary ranges for eight different scientist levels at biotech companies, and shows how these salary ranges differ depending on the amount of venture capital dollars a biotech company has raised. For example, a principal scientist at a biotech company that has raised between $5–20 million in venture capital has a median salary of $155,000, whereas a principal scientist at a company that has raised $200–500 million has a median salary of $200,000.
• Job function composition by company size: As biotech companies grow, the types of roles they hire for evolve. For example, according to the report, a biotech startup with 25–50 staff consists of less than 1% finance employees on average, whereas a biotech company with 200 or more staff is made up of 4.7% finance employees. 

To read the full report, visit https://founderledbio.com/biotech-compensation/.

About Pillar VC
Pillar VC is an early-stage venture firm co-founded by 22 CEOs who have built Boston’s most successful companies, including the leaders of Wayfair, Ginkgo Bioworks and DraftKings. Pillar is typically the first capital in for founders building next-generation pillar companies; the firm’s investments include PillPack, Desktop Metal, Algorand, Hometap, Jellyfish and Asimov, among other companies. To learn more, visit www.pillar.vc.

About Pave
Pave is a real-time compensation platform that helps companies effectively plan, communicate, and benchmark compensation. The Pave suite integrates with dozens of ATS, HRIS, and equity management tools, including Greenhouse, TriNet, BambooHR, Namely, Lever, ADP, Workday, Jobvite, Shareworks, Equity Edge Online, Carta, Rippling, Justworks, Paylocity, Sapling, Personio, Capdesk, Ledgy, and UltiPro. Founded in late 2019 by CEO Matt Schulman, Pave is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more about Pave at pave.com.