Top management team compensation in high-growth technology ventures

We examine the key compensation issues pertaining to the top management team that occur during the early stages of growth in new ventures, specifically those anticipating rapid growth such as in technology-intensive markets. Similar to other new ventures, high-growth technology ventures are small in size but they have a goal of rapid growth giving rise to a need for resources and managerial talent to sustain the growth. New ventures are likely to compete in the market with larger organizations for top management team members. As a result, new ventures in rapid growth technology markets experience some unique compensation challenges. Critical for these firms is the issue of distributing equity among members of the founding team and structuring compensation to attract and retain non-founder executives. Drawing from the human resource management and entrepreneurship literatures, this paper develops a set of propositions predicting top management team compensation strategies for rapidly growing new ventures. Directions for future research are also discussed.