How Are ETA CEOs Really Faring?
Daniel Lazier, Alex Schneider, A. J. Wasserstein. (2026)
Yale Case, no number printed, August 11, 2026
Sample. Qualtrics survey: "distributed a reusable, anonymized link to ETA investors, who forwarded it to their operating CEOs, and to other community channels." "We netted 181 observations that we deemed valid and usable for our analysis. These 181 CEOs span every funding model, with exit dates ranging from 2003 to 2026" (p2). 52 fields. No sampling frame or response rate. Per-field n is much lower than 181 (figure, p34): cash compensation 143, equity share at exit 104, personal proceeds 101, MOIC 100, IRR 95. Funding path (n = 181): traditionally funded 122 (67.4%), self-funded 35 (19.3%), accelerator or incubator 15 (8.3%), other 9 (5.0%). 18.3% outside the U.S. and Canada. Included and excluded. "181 ETA CEOs who have exited and whose projects are fully resolved." (p1). Excludes operators who have not exited and searchers who never acquired: "Every figure in this note therefore describes the end of a funnel rather than the entrance to it." (p5). Proceeds are per person, pre-tax, cash at first liquidity event; rollover equity, earnouts and escrows "may be treated inconsistently across respondents". Headline numbers. "Median equity proceeds are $6.0 million, or roughly $964,000 pre-tax for every year invested from search launch to liquidity; however, our sample is a winners' circle, a practical upper bound rather than an expectation, and the distribution is brutally concentrated." (p2). "the median personal proceeds for entrepreneurs are $6.0 million, with an average of $7.7 million ... Nine earned zero, and 20 (including the previously mentioned nine) were below $1 million." (p14). "Of the 101 respondents who reported personal dollar proceeds, 28 (27.7%) garnered $10 million or more on a pre-tax basis." (p15). "Cash compensation clusters tightly around a $200,000 median" (p19); "28% of CEOs took an initial pay cut" (p20). "The typical company enters with $1.88 million in EBITDA and exits with $4.0 million. The median MOIC and IRR land at 5.0x and 40.0%, respectively." (p8 to p9). Self-funded versus traditional (the comparison Stanford and IESE do not have). Ownership: "Traditionally funded searchers hold a median of 18.5% in equity, while self-funded searchers hold 75%" (p13; n = 70 and 17; Mann-Whitney p < 0.001). Proceeds: "by funding structure the medians run $6.6 million for traditional projects, $4.9 million for accelerators, and $4.0 million for self-funded" (p16; n = 68, 11 and 16), and the gap is not significant ("neither gap approaches significance (p = 0.741 and p = 0.646)", p24). Entry size: "Traditionally funded searches buy at a median of $2.0 million, while self-funded searchers buy roughly two-fifths the size, $0.85 million" (p11; p = 0.001). Pay: "traditionally funded projects see a median rise of 50%, whereas self-funded projects take a median cut of 16.3%" (p20). Salary medians $214,000 traditional (n = 95) versus $190,000 self-funded (n = 27) (figure, p20). Against Stanford. "just 14% of our sample falls below 2.0x MOIC, compared with 47% to 59% in the Stanford and Yale studies; only 10% lost money ..., against 26% in the Stanford study and 32% in the Yale study; and 28% reach griffin status, compared with 8% and 2%, respectively." (p7). The authors use this to show their sample is skewed to winners. Limits. Authors: "it is self-selected and non-random, not a representative sample ... Neither the outcome levels nor the relationships between variables can be projected onto the full ETA CEO population" (p6); the link travelled through investor networks "to which self-funded searchers have the loosest ties; the self-funded cells, therefore, carry a second layer of selection"; on self-funded downside, "our reported floor is zero and theirs is not" (personal guarantees and own capital are not netted); "this section reports more than sixty distinct comparisons. Run that many and about three will look meaningful by luck alone." (p24). Reader's notes: all figures self-reported and unverified; no inflation adjustment stated across 2003 to 2026 exits; the headline annualised figure ($964,368) is identical to the traditionally funded cell, the self-funded cell is $844,507 (n = 16, figure, p36); self-funded n varies by field from 14 to 27.