Our hero Richard Hendricks starts as the founder and CEO Pied Piper, a small startup. Startup founders usually choose what to pay themselves — some take no salary, and reinvest that cash into the business. More commonly, founder salaries for small startups start around $50,000 per year.
In the current season, Hendricks finds himself with the new title of CTO. With that title, and Pied Piper enjoying some funding, Payscale data indicates he could be making as much as $150,000.
Donald "Jared" Dunn is Pied Piper's head of business development. That means it's his task to help Pied Piper grow, either by finding new sales opportunities or through partnerships. He'd make around $100,000 per year.
Dinesh Chugtai is a Senior Programmer with Pied Piper. Engineers like Dinesh are a crucial part of making the real Silicon Valley run — he's actually helping build the main Pied Piper technology. Senior programmers make around $94,000 on average per year, but in the Bay Area they can make even more.
Bertram Gilfoyle is Pied Piper's Senior Systems Architect. He builds and maintains the servers and networking infrastructure that makes Pied Piper work, and would make around $106,000 for doing it.
It's worth noting that programmers like Dinesh and Gilfoyle are in such high demand that their actual salaries may be higher. As we've seen in this season of "Silicon Valley," finding top talent is incredibly competitive.
Even CEOs at early-stage startups like Pied Piper can make a lot of money. “Action Jack” Barker, the new CEO, could be making as much as $250,000 per year — that's how much Eric Schmidt made when he first came to Google in 2001.
Ehrlich Bachman isn't an employee of Pied Piper. He does sit on Pied Piper's board, however, which can come with a stipend. But we do know he has a 10% stake in the company — which could be worth millions if the company ever goes public.
Monica Hall is an Associate Partner with Raviga Capital. It's her job to spot new investments, like Pied Piper, and help develop them into something that will pay out for the firm in spades. She probably makes $110,000 per year, plus performance bonuses.
Laurie Bream, a Lead Partner with the fictional investment firm Raviga Capital, likely makes around $300,000 per year. But that's not the whole story: A significant portion of her income goes back into Raviga's funds, which then get re-invested in startups like Pied Piper. She makes most of her money in equity, too.
In fact, the salaries only tell half of the story. The potential for equity-based payouts are what really drive the tech startup industry. Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin owned just 2% of the social network when it went public in 2012. But that was still worth over $2 billion. A little equity goes a long way.
Going public isn't the only way to make money, either. When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, it made founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton into instant billionaires.
Hooli CEO Gavin Belson takes a lot of his inspiration from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. They share a flair for the dramatic and a love of eastern philosophy. Benioff makes a base salary of $1,550,000 per year, plus he holds another $3.9 billion in stock and other investments.
It's worth noting, too, that some CEOs, like Mark Zuckerberg, take a $1 salary... they know that the stock grants they get are where the real money is.
