Sifted - How much do founders earn?

Good morning there,

If you didn't know much about startups, you might think all founders begin paying themselves the big bucks once they've raised a bit of venture capital. 

But you'd be rather wrong: plenty of European startup founders actually pay themselves very, very little, as a new report from VC firm Creandum reveals today. One of the 600+ founders covered by the report took home just €12.5k in 2024 (!) 

Read on for benchmark data on salaries, bonuses and equity stakes at startups — and let me know what you think of it. If you're a founder, how did you decide on a fair salary to pay yourself? How much consideration did you give to what your investors would think? And how do you make bonuses work for your company?

Also coming up: 

• The UK government announces its grand AI plan, with AI infrastructure taking centre stage

• US defence giant Lockheed Martin plans to invest more in European startups
• The EU regulations to look out for in 2025

— Amy Lewin, editor

Why attempt to put a hard hat on a bot?

Hoisting heavy stuff, getting things from A to B, repetitive stacking: most construction tasks seem ideal to hand over to machines. But anyone attempting to automate construction will tell you: the contrast between what you can do in a factory or warehouse and on a site is glaring. Find out who’s on the cutting edge in construction tech and how robot construction companies can succeed or fail.

UK founders are no longer the best-paid in Europe

Startup founder salaries are on the up across Europe, after a tricky few years of cost-cutting and hawkishly watching the bottom line. 

Founder salaries at almost all funding stages increased in 2024 in comparison to 2023, and bonuses bounced back big-time at later-stage and bootstrapped startups, according to a new report from VC firm Creandum. 

They’ve not grown equally across countries, however: French founders have seen the biggest salary bumps, putting the average French founder compensation above that of their UK peers for the first time in a while (€124k vs. €107k). 

Wondering where you fit in the pack? Find out here.

🇬🇧 The UK reveals its big plan for AI. The British government has revealed how it plans to invest in, and use, AI — and investment in the infrastructure that powers the technology is a key focus.

• Following the ‘AI Opportunities Action Plan’, put together by Entrepreneur First’s Matt Clifford, the UK will create several “AI growth zones”, which it says will speed up planning approvals and allow better access to the energy grid for data centres — huge warehouse-like facilities designed to accommodate intense computational demands of AI.
• The government will also build a new supercomputer — as part of a plan to increase public compute power twenty-fold by 2030 — and set up new teams within government to implement AI tools.
• £14bn has been marked by private companies to build data centres, including UK startup Nscale, which has committed $2.5bn and raised $155m in December.

🔀 Google has given its AI division another reorg, moving even more researchers under the umbrella of Google DeepMind, TechCrunch reports. 

• The move comes months after CEO Sundar Pichai announced the team behind the company’s ChatGPT rival Gemini would be absorbed by Google DeepMind in order to “keep increasing the pace of progress.”

🪖 Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) has been accused of treating AI as a novelty and failing to learn from Ukraine and other countries that are already deploying the technology on the battlefield. The cross-party report said the MOD needed to become “more comfortable with rapid change [and] more open to experimentation and risk”. 

• Since Russia invaded in 2022, the Ukrainian military has been using AI on the battlefield for a range of purposes, including gathering information, selecting weapons and piloting autonomous drones.
• “The use of AI in Ukraine shows that it offers serious military advantage on the battlefield, and as AI becomes more widespread and sophisticated, it will change the way defence works, from the back office to the frontline,” the report said.

Here come the builder bots

It’s an elusive dream. Robots hold promise for construction but the technology has proven difficult to perfect. The founders and investors in our report with Leonard, say this is all going to change. Meet the most innovative builder bots from across Europe and beyond. 

🚀 US aerospace and defence giant Lockheed Martin plans to invest more in European startups. The VC arm of the big defence prime has made several investments in Europe, including into British VC Amadeus Capital Partners, but hopes to do more direct startup investments this year, general manager Chris Moran tells Sifted.

🇪🇺 Several key EU regulations are set to reshape the landscape for startups and scaleups in 2025 — from the AI Act's rules on high-risk AI systems to the 28th Regime's push for a unified single market. But, as Mimi Billing finds out speaking to EU insiders, the regulations might not be implemented in exactly the same way everywhere… Sifted looks into what the new regulations cover and how they will impact startups.

✌️ ICYMI: Why only raising from Tier 1 VCs isn’t always a good strategy.

Amsterdam-based Leyden Labs, which is developing nasal sprays that target respiratory viruses, raised €68m in funding. ClavystBio and Polaris Partners led the round and were joined by investors including Qiming Venture Partners, Google Ventures and Casdin Capital.

Zurich, Switzerland-based Numab Therapeutics, which is developing antibody-based immunotherapies for inflammation and cancer, raised a $55m Series C extension. Cormorant Asset Management, Forbion, HBM Healthcare Investment and Novo Holdings led the round.

Kokkola, Finland-based Hycamite, which produces green hydrogen and solid carbon by splitting methane, raised €44m in Series A funding. Sojitz Group led the round and was joined by investors including Stephen Industries, OMV Petrom and MOL PLUS.

London-based Nsave, a banking provider to countries with high inflation, raised $18m in Series A funding. TQ Ventures led the round and was joined by investors including Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator, ACE Ventures and Proton Foundation.

London-based Beams, a home renovation platform, raised $9m in Series A funding. ETF Partners led the round and was joined by investors including Giant Ventures, Firstminute capital and Borusan Ventures.

• Beams was founded in 2023 by Hayden Wood, who previously founded energy startup Bulb, and has now raised $13.3m in total. 

Vienna-based HelloBello, which offers tailored meal planning and a food delivery subscription for dogs, raised €4m in Series A funding from investors including AWS, Michael Hurnaus, Johann Hansmann and Hans Peter Haselsteiner.

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