{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Moneywise","title":"250 CEOs Confessed Their Pay. Half Earn Less Than Staff","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/6d6e3b4b\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1022,"description":"Nearly half of 250 founders pay someone on their team more than they pay themselves.\nWe're still surprised people did this but... 50+ founders worth $10M to $4B reveal their personal finances. Here it is: https://joinhampton.com/mw-wr\nWhy do we do this? Because if you're an aspirational person or someone who runs a business and is making money, it's incredibly challenging to figure out what to do. Information is impossible to find — and that's what we put together: the net worth reveal and why we do this podcast, Moneywise.\nIn late August 2026, Hampton anonymously surveyed 250 founders and CEOs about what they actually take home. Founder salaries turn out to look pretty normal even when the companies don't: about $150K below $10M in revenue and about $400K at $30–50M. Fifteen founders reported a $0 salary, and six of those took at least $500K on top of it.\nDaniel walks through the split between bootstrapped and venture-backed founders, where 39% of bootstrapped founders took $500K+ in additional compensation and not one venture-backed founder reported more than $300K. He covers the IRS rules that make the \"tiny salary, big distributions\" advice risky, the compensation that never shows up on payroll (credit card points, vehicles, real estate), and what senior teams get paid. The episode closes on why being personally broke changes the decisions you make for your company, plus a three-question exercise to check your own pay.\nAlso, this podcast is made by Hampton, which is a community for founders doing on average $20 million a year in revenue. We saw a lot of these money conversations happening privately behind closed doors and we thought, \"What the heck, let's make it public.\" If you are a founder, apply here: http://joinhampton.com/mw\nTimestamps:\n00:00 — Founders know their revenue cold and go quiet about take-home, so Hampton asked 250 of them anonymously\n00:42 — How to read the data: 296 records, 250 complete, answers in ranges, and who qualifies for Hampton...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/vCvB-0dtzg339Iof9Uhri-E5Cu1YvE_goNcKch75CeI/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83ZTZj/OWRiMTI3NjI1YWUy/MWY4ZWJkOTU2YzFl/NzE0Mi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}