Last year, LiveRem and Oxygen Advisors did something that hadn't really been done before in Aotearoa: we published real, anonymised payroll data on what startup and scaleup founders are actually paying themselves.
The response was overwhelming. Founders forwarded it to their boards. Investors shared it with their portfolio companies. And a lot of people quietly admitted they'd been flying blind on this for years.
So we're doing it again - and this time, we want more founders in the dataset.
Why this report matters more than ever right now
When we published the 2025 report, the median founder salary was $195k. The average was $205k. And 42% of founders were taking home less than at least one of their own employees.
But the number that stopped people cold? On average, it takes 29 months before a founder appears on payroll at all.
Those numbers tell a story about sacrifice, but they also tell a story about a market that was still finding its footing. Since then, a lot has changed and a lot hasn't.
The broader economic context heading into 2026 is genuinely interesting. We've got an election year shaping up, which historically tends to create a holding pattern in private investment as both founders and funders wait to see which way policy winds blow. At the same time, the local VC landscape has been slowly recalibrating after a tough couple of years globally - dry powder exists, but investors are being more deliberate about where it goes.
For founders, that means salary decisions are getting more strategic, not less. When you're watching your runway more carefully, what you pay yourself becomes a board-level conversation, not just a personal one.
What we think we'll see in the 2026 data
My instinct, and it's just that until the data comes in, is that founder salaries will be relatively flat at the early stages, but we'll see meaningful increases at the growth end. Founders who've survived the last 18 months of economic turbulence and are still growing have earned the right to pay themselves properly, and their boards know it.
I also expect we'll see the gender pay gap persist. The median gap in 2025 was 25% — a number that genuinely shocked people when we published it. I'd love to be wrong about this one.
One trend worth watching: engineering costs have quietly dropped. AI has changed what a lean founding team can ship, and the supply of good developers in the NZ market right now is higher than I've seen in years — which means hiring is more cost-effective than it's been in a long time. For founders, that's not just a hiring story. If you can optimise your operating costs, that budget has to go somewhere. More of it should be going to founder pay.
Why we need more companies in the dataset
The 2025 report was built on data from 80 founders. This year we want more. More stages, more regions, more roles. And the more founders who contribute, the sharper the picture for everyone.
It's free. It takes five minutes. Everything is fully anonymised.
You can get involved here: liverem.com/joinfounderpayreport
The more founders who contribute, the sharper the picture for everyone. And in a market where information is power, a clearer picture of what's normal, and what's possible, might be exactly what you need to make the call you've been putting off.
