Executive Pay Benchmarks for Pre-IPO Companies

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Equilar: Executive Compensation Intelligence for Growing Companies Navigating Board and Leadership Pay

The Challenge

For companies between 100 and 500 employees, executive compensation decisions often happen in a data vacuum. Leadership teams find themselves asking fundamental questions—what should we pay our new CFO, how do equity grants compare to peers, what does competitive board compensation look like—without reliable benchmarks to guide them. The stakes are high: underpay and you lose talent to competitors, overpay and you create internal equity issues or burn through runway unnecessarily.

This challenge intensifies as companies prepare for pivotal moments like fundraising rounds, board expansion, or IPO readiness. Suddenly, compensation decisions that once felt like educated guesses need to withstand scrutiny from sophisticated investors and board members who expect market-aligned pay practices. HR leaders and CFOs at this stage often find themselves cobbling together data from salary surveys that don't adequately cover executive roles, or relying on anecdotal information from recruiters with their own incentives.

How Equilar Approaches It

Equilar has built its reputation on aggregating executive compensation and board intelligence data, primarily from public company filings and proprietary surveys. The platform provides access to compensation details for thousands of executives and board members, allowing users to benchmark roles against companies of similar size, industry, and geography. For mid-market companies, this means access to data that was previously available mainly to large enterprises with dedicated compensation consultants.

The core product centers on compensation benchmarking tools that let users filter and analyze pay packages across base salary, annual incentives, and equity components. Rather than presenting a single number, Equilar provides percentile distributions that show the range of market practices. This granularity helps compensation committees and HR leaders understand not just what the median looks like, but what it takes to position pay at the 75th percentile when competing for high-demand talent.

Beyond raw data, Equilar offers governance insights that prove particularly valuable as companies formalize their board structures. The platform includes board composition analytics, director compensation trends, and peer group development tools. For a company adding independent directors for the first time or restructuring equity grants ahead of going public, these features provide a framework for making decisions that align with market expectations and regulatory requirements.

The approach distinguishes itself through data sourcing and breadth. While many compensation tools focus narrowly on either broad workforce data or highly specific executive surveys, Equilar occupies a middle ground with deep coverage of C-suite and board compensation specifically. The platform also integrates relationship mapping features that help users understand board interlocks and executive networks, which can inform both hiring decisions and governance planning.

Who It's Built For

Equilar's sweet spot includes companies approaching or exceeding the 100-employee mark where executive compensation has moved beyond founder salaries and informal equity grants. These organizations typically have established HR functions, are adding experienced executives from larger companies, and face pressure from investors or boards to demonstrate thoughtful compensation practices. Pre-IPO companies and those with institutional investors tend to extract particular value from the platform's governance-focused features.

Signs that a company is ready for this level of compensation intelligence include hiring C-suite executives from public companies who benchmark their own packages, expanding the board beyond founders and early investors, or receiving due diligence questions about pay practices from prospective investors. If compensation discussions in board meetings have shifted from quick approvals to detailed comparisons and justifications, that signals a need for more rigorous data to support those conversations.

What Customers Are Saying

Users frequently highlight the depth of executive-specific data as a differentiator. One HR leader at a growth-stage technology company noted that Equilar allowed them to respond confidently when board members questioned proposed executive packages, referencing specific peer data rather than general market assertions. The ability to build custom peer groups based on revenue, employee count, and industry proved particularly useful for companies that don't fit neatly into standard survey categories.

Compensation committee members have pointed to the governance tools as valuable for professionalizing board practices. Reviews mention using Equilar's director compensation data to restructure board retainer fees and equity grants before IPO, ensuring alignment with public company norms. Some users note a learning curve with the platform's more advanced features, but describe the underlying data quality as consistently strong for their executive compensation needs.

Getting Started

Equilar operates on a subscription model with pricing that varies based on company size, data access needs, and feature requirements. Prospective customers typically engage through a consultation to identify which data sets and tools align with their specific use cases. Implementation involves platform training and guidance on building relevant peer groups, which directly impacts the usefulness of benchmarking outputs.

Companies should expect an onboarding period as users learn to navigate the data effectively and establish the peer comparisons that will inform ongoing decisions. Organizations preparing for specific milestones like board restructuring or IPO readiness often find value in engaging Equilar's advisory services alongside the platform itself.

Key Takeaway

For mid-market companies where executive compensation decisions increasingly require defensible, market-aligned data, Equilar provides specialized intelligence that generic salary surveys cannot match. The platform earns consideration from organizations ready to treat leadership and board compensation with the same rigor they apply to other strategic decisions.

Learn more at equilar.com