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2024 GTM Compensation Report
A comprehensive overview of the latest compensation trends for go-to-market (GTM) leadership and individual contributor roles at venture-backed startups.
By:
Jordan Wan
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We’re excited to share our 2024 GTM Compensation Report. In recent years, the role of GTM leadership has shifted from blitzscaling executives to functional frontline managers. Overall, we’ve seen a downshift in executive hiring and, correspondingly, a softening of on-target earnings (OTE) and equity compensation. Base salary and cash earnings continue to grow steadily in line with inflation.
We continue to see an inflated base salary and OTE level at the Series A stage relative to Series B. We believe this is attributed to the premature "stretch" executive hiring that we have observed for many years.
We generally discourage early-stage startups from hiring executives in Seed and Series A stages unless they demonstrate clear signs of repeatability and have the mandate and budget to truly blitzscale.
As we have observed in prior years, the primary driver of GTM leadership compensation continues to be the company's funding stage, which correlates with operating budgets and leadership needs. Secondary factors, such as the number of direct reports, can justify adjustments but are not consistent drivers. Hence, leadership compensation is benchmarked based on the company's venture funding round.
Our methodology integrates multiple data sources, including verified third-party data vendors, recent executive survey results, real-time active search parameters, and our proprietary database of anonymized candidate compensation data.
We’re excited to share our latest compensation report with you and encourage you to share it with founders and operators in your network. For more detailed insights and a free consultation, please contact us or say hello@formativesp.com.
About Formative
Formative is a go-to-market (GTM) leadership search firm helping startups and their investors navigate key inflection points in scaling their revenue function. For over a decade, we have been entrusted to lead C-Level, VP, and Head of Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success searches for innovative startups and scale-ups.