Cohort 1

1. Build leadership teams of 4-5 ‘true’ CXOs and 7-12 VPs

Average number of CXOs and VPs by firm size

emp_cat CXO Founder CXO VP Founder VP
a. 1 - 50 1 2 1 1
b. 51 - 100 2 2 3 1
c. 101 - 250 3 2 7 1
d. 251 - 500 5 2 13 1
e. 501 - 750 5 2 19 1
f. 751 - 1000 6 2 23 1
g. 1001 + 11 2 42 0

Explore data by company, by absolute number and by ratio (CXO = 1):

excluding founders

2. Exec team build-out over time

Share of companies with that role identified

1. by funding rounds

2. by firm size

3. At what point (in terms of total headcount or funding round) is the first VPx or CxO (ie: per function) hired?

Employment counts when first VP or CXO was hired by function

excluding founders

4. At what HC is the first person in X function hired?

Eg Talent/Recruiting (20th), HR (50-60), Finance (25-30), Legal (70-80) - with some nuance by sector etc

Employment counts when first VP or CXO was hired by function

excluding founders

5.Evolution of team functional-split

by funding round (and by headcount-stages, and by biz model) - see tech/eng drop, as GTM grows

1. by founding round

2. by headcount

3. by business model and firm size

6. Ratios of Mktg:Sales:BizDev:CS.

Differences by scale & biz model

8. The more technical/ back-end driven your product, the fewer PMs you’ll have…

PM to engineer ratio (much lower at database company versus consumer Internet)

9. RIFs: How many companies experienced a drop in headcount at some point?

When? Which? How severe? Which functions most affected?

10. How many companies specifically experienced drop in headcount since covid (March 2020+)?

As above, how severe, which functions, and to what extent recovered now?

Cohort 2

1. Tenure by exec role

not sure what diffs if any we’ll find (also grouped by function, stage, bizmodel)

excluding founders

exec_role tenure(months)
CEO 44
COO 29
CTO 29
CProductO 28
CFO 27
CRO/CCO/CBO 24
CMO 21
CHRO 18
Other CXO 24
VP Engineer 26
VP Product 22
VP Sales 22
VP Marketing 22
VP Finance 21
VP HR 20
VP CS 23
VP Operations 21
VP Business Development 26
GC 29
GM 22
Other VP 22
NA 67
  1. by biz model

2. Secondary Hubs

we don’t have locations for previous job positions, so we would only be able to show the current snapshot of geo breakdowns, but not the trends.

2. Engineering: Higher % of team non-HQ based (ie remote) vs other functions, even where no secondary eng hubs:

% of team non-HQ based, by by functions (current snapshot)

functions numeric.mean numeric.sd numeric.p25 numeric.p50 numeric.p75
product 56% 21% 40% 54% 69%
engineering 63% 18% 53% 63% 77%
design 60% 22% 46% 60% 73%
analytics 60% 23% 44% 59% 77%
sales 79% 19% 67% 84% 94%
marketing 64% 18% 50% 65% 75%
account management 81% 21% 68% 86% 100%
business development 75% 22% 58% 79% 93%
legal 66% 25% 50% 67% 92%
recruiting 62% 22% 48% 63% 76%
HR 62% 23% 45% 63% 79%
general management 67% 22% 52% 69% 83%
finance 57% 21% 43% 57% 71%
administration 71% 20% 60% 75% 86%
customer success 74% 18% 64% 78% 89%
retail 76% 22% 62% 79% 100%
operations 73% 19% 60% 75% 87%
unknown 77% 17% 68% 81% 89%

% of team non-HQ based by HQ location

location HQ_n numeric.mean numeric.sd numeric.p25 numeric.p50 numeric.p75
Other 71 34% 18% 21% 27% 47%
san francisco, california, united states 60 30% 12% 21% 29% 38%
new york, new york, united states 29 34% 12% 24% 34% 45%
london, england, united kingdom 16 31% 11% 22% 27% 41%
los angeles, california, united states 12 37% 8% 30% 39% 42%
paris, île-de-france, france 6 28% 5% 26% 29% 31%

3. Establish hierarchy of eng titles as they scale

Dev, Senior Dev, Principal Dev, EM, ED - look at numbers & ratios in team with scale

Engineering team by level and firm size

emp_cat line Manager Director VP CXO
a. 1 - 50 3 0 0 0 1
b. 51 - 100 15 1 1 0 1
c. 101 - 250 31 3 2 1 2
d. 251 - 500 68 6 3 1 2
e. 501 - 750 107 10 6 2 2
f. 751 - 1000 157 16 9 2 2
g. 1001 + 415 43 15 3 2

Engineering team by level and firm size (CXO = 1)

emp_cat line Manager Director VP CXO
a. 1 - 50 2 0 0 0 1
b. 51 - 100 10 1 1 0 1
c. 101 - 250 20 2 1 0 1
d. 251 - 500 41 4 2 1 1
e. 501 - 750 62 6 3 1 1
f. 751 - 1000 90 9 5 1 1
g. 1001 + 174 18 6 1 1

4. "The most senior product-role at company evolves with scale (from Head -> Director -> VP -> CXO): review by funding round & headcount-split

what’s the Goldilocks equation for hiring Product leadership to substitute founder (not too fast, not too slow! not too junior, not too senior!)"

by funding round

stage line Manager Director VP CXO Founder CXO Founder VP
Pre VC 0 0 0 0 0 1 1
Early Stage VC 2 0 0 0 0 1 NA
Later Stage VC 14 1 2 1 0 0 1
Exits 26 2 4 2 1 0 NA

by headcount

emp_cat line Manager Director VP CXO Founder CXO Founder VP
a. 1 - 50 0 0 0 0 0 1 NA
b. 51 - 100 2 0 0 0 0 1 NA
c. 101 - 250 5 1 1 0 0 1 NA
d. 251 - 500 11 1 2 1 1 1 1
e. 501 - 750 18 2 3 1 1 1 1
f. 751 - 1000 25 2 3 2 1 1 NA
g. 1001 + 62 5 7 2 1 NA NA

5. Manager/Directors

  • Hire Ho or Do Product at Series A or B;
  • Hire FC, FD or HoFinance at Series A else B;
  • Ho or Do People at Series A or B

Share of companies hire their first Manager/Director by functions in each stage

6. Chief of Staff increasingly common, but 25% of the time, and higher if no COO

  • Overall: 39.4% has a Chief of Staff, 15.3% has a COO
  • No COO: 37.3% has a Chief of Staff
  • has COO: 58.3% has a Chief of Staff

7. How many of the first 10, 50, 100 employees at a startup are still there x years later, or by time of IPO?"

(expect very few - because journey is long and talent needs change…reality-check for founders to expect attrition, but to make sure that those early joiners are treated well (good leavers, secondary equity, etc)

excluding founders

average % of early employees that are still there in 1, 5, and 10 years

*does not add up to 100% because values represent average percentages across all companies

first < 1 year 1 - 5 years 5 - 10 years more than 10 years
10 29% 49% 27% 24%
50 29% 52% 18% 10%
100 32% 53% 15% 7%

8. How quickly does organization turn over (as in >=50% new faces)?

6-12 months? What about executives, 12-18 months?

2016 Snapshot: how many months did it take to replace 50% of the team since 2016-01-01?

excluding founders

level numeric.mean numeric.sd numeric.p25 numeric.p50 numeric.p75
CXO 41 21 21 38 65
Director 27 16 17 24 33
line 25 11 18 23 28
Manager 29 14 19 25 34
VP 33 17 20 27 44

9. How long are people in their roles by tier?

Tiers: Leadership (C-Suite), Sr. Management (EVP, SVP, VP), Management (Directors, Managers), Other

excluding founders

level tenure(months)
line 17
Manager 18
Director 20
VP 23
CXO 27