My Favorite Things: First Round Survey 2016

Thanks to First Round for continually providing such great data about the start-up community.   This year’s report is even more informative than the first. There’s so much great stuff here, I encourage everyone to read it all, but here are my main take-aways to share with our community:

1. I appreciate the greater emphasis on diversity.   I will weigh in on the side of the females on the root causes of diversity gaps, it’s not just that there aren’t enough women entering the field -  the 61% of all-male boards is pretty strong evidence of bias as there are plenty of strong female leaders out there - especially when you think about diversity decreasing as the companies grow (!)  

2. The data about equity is really useful, but speaking as a provider of comp data to many companies in the start-up space, I would caution possibly-alarmed readers that this survey is heavily skewed to earlier-stage companies. Series B, C or later companies couldn’t possibly sustain grants of this size, and their salary/benefits/equity mix changes accordingly.

3. Most important, glad to hear that hiring continues to be the #1 concern of founders and company leaders!  As a founder myself, I sympathize with the challenges of finding the right talent.  But since helping our clients build their engineering, sales/marketing and HR/recruiting teams is the dominant part of our business - this is clearly a good thing for Gray Scalable!

This is great information, Thanks First Round! 

Written by Charlie Gray, President of Gray Scalable