What should you pay yourself as a medtech or healthtech founder?

Read our founder salary report this year and you’ll see that founder salaries appear to be down year-over-year—43% on average. We also found that more companies were bootstrapping (17%) and there were far more AI companies (40% of the total list).

There’s a lot to unpack here but our biggest takeaway is that we are seeing how the difficult fundraising environment has changed how founders think about salary. They are paying themselves less so they can fund operations.

With this as the backdrop, we pulled out the data for the cohort of founders in life sciences, which we’ve defined broadly as healthtech, medtech, biotech, agtech, foodtech, climate tech, and fitness tech, as well as financial startups that relate to life sciences—biotech AI, health insurance, medical payment platforms, and similar. 

Let’s look at what these founders pay themselves. At the end, we offer prompts for having the salary conversation with your advisors.

Companies in our dataset

The life sciences companies in our dataset were younger than our overall cohort—they’d been in business five years versus seven on average. Other than that, these startups and founders were similar to others. When asked, they too are most likely to say they pay themselves “What the startup can afford.”

Life sciences startups are 36% more likely to be in “optimize” mode

In our survey, we asked founders what phase their company is in: grow and acquire new customers, optimize what exists, simply survive, or look for an exit. Life sciences founders were 36% more likely to say they are in “optimize” mode and 30% less likely to say they are in growth mode. 

This is understandable both given the nature of life sciences companies—a long path to commercialization, a culture akin to academia, and different funding sources like grants—and all the change in healthtech and medtech last year. (Which is to say nothing of developments in 2025. We ran this survey in November 2024, before the NIH funding cuts.)

Median salaries are 17% higher

Life sciences founders make an average of $109k, which is 12% higher than other founders, and a median of $88k, which is 17% higher than other founders. Though of course, like all founders, they experienced a 40%+ median pay decline from last year.

They are 17% more satisfied with their salary

It’s rare you get coincidences like this but life science founders are more satisfied with their pay in direct proportion to how much more they are paid—17% higher pay, 17% more satisfied. You can’t make this stuff up.

By salary funding level

Perhaps it's no surprise but salaries rise with the amount you’ve raised. Though please note: Our sample size was smaller on this measure and it is less certain than other factors.

By salary phase

Growth stage founders are paid more. Though the gap is somewhat less among life sciences founders—they are paid 12% more when in growth stage, compared to overall founders who are paid 20% more.

Salary by number of employees

The more employees a startup has, the more the founder is paid. True of all founders, true in life sciences.

Salary by company age

Salary rises by company age up to a point. Write-in responses suggest that after a certain size, founders are much less fixated on the value of the salary, either because there is no division between company profits and their salary as they get a percentage of the profit, or because they are putting everything into the business to fund those extra hires.

Salary by region

In the Boston area, Texas area, and the rest of the U.S., life sciences founders far outearn other founders. In the Boston area in particular, the largest hub of life sciences startups in the U.S., founders command a 58% premium. 

The difference is less pronounced in the San Francisco Bay Area and NYC area where salaries are only somewhat higher.

How to make your case for a higher salary

Early on, founders take less salary, whether in life sciences or not. The biggest factor at that point is region. They are betting that they will grow and so will their salary, in measure—with more funding, revenue, and employees. 

But salaries do not grow as quickly as the whole company because the “right” amount of salary is not just how much the startup can afford, but also what you can afford to live on. Below a certain threshold, a too-low salary will leave you distracted. You’ll stress about making rent and caring for dependents, and you’ll be less effective. That isn’t a very good bet for your investors; certainly no better than you being paid too much. 

It’s a balance. Find that middle ground—what salary helps you fund operations, but also allows you to give it your full focus.

For more data and salary insights, read the full report.