Reference

GTM compensation benchmarks for venture-backed startups, 2026

This page collects what public data says startup go-to-market roles are paid in the United States. Advertised salary medians come from startup.jobs listings that disclosed compensation over the twelve months to September 2026, with the number of listings behind every row; account executive on-target earnings, quota and ramp come from The Bridge Group's 2026 research across 158 B2B companies. Every figure names its source. Founders Connect does not yet publish figures from its own placements; when it does, they will appear here in a separately labelled column.

Last updated 3 September 2026.

What do startup sales and marketing roles pay in 2026?

Median advertised salary by role, United States, twelve months to September 2026. The range column is the 5th to 95th percentile of the same listings. Only roles with at least 200 listings disclosing compensation are shown.

Advertised salary by role, USD per year. Source: startup.jobs, twelve months to September 2026, retrieved 3 September 2026.
Role	Median	5th–95th percentile	Listings	Source
Sales Development Representative (SDR)	$70,602	$48,607–$118,671	1,509	startup.jobs
Business Development Representative (BDR)	$71,132	$48,957–$122,232	1,103	startup.jobs
Account Executive	$146,174	$66,478–$315,327	9,880	startup.jobs
Account Executive, Enterprise	$155,165	$116,514–$278,316	205	startup.jobs
Sales Engineer	$163,865	$93,890–$263,608	1,314	startup.jobs
Sales Manager	$129,791	$72,056–$314,792	2,557	startup.jobs
Director of Sales	$178,750	$115,991–$300,519	228	startup.jobs
Customer Success Manager	$115,296	$68,419–$181,966	2,274	startup.jobs
Growth Marketing Manager	$130,617	$97,661–$174,435	275	startup.jobs
Product Marketing Manager	$155,749	$107,262–$222,419	1,155	startup.jobs

Across every role startup.jobs tracks, not only go-to-market, the median advertised salary in the United States over the same period was $133,994 from 399,837 listings.

What is a typical account executive OTE, quota and ramp?

Advertised salaries do not separate base from variable. For the on-target picture, The Bridge Group's annual research is the most specific public source: 158 B2B companies, published June 2026.

Account executive benchmarks, B2B SaaS. Source: The Bridge Group, State of Sales 2026, 158 companies.
Metric	2026	Trend
Median account executive OTE	$200,000	up from $190,000 in 2024 and $167,000 in 2022
Median quota	$960,000	quota-to-OTE ratio of 4.6x, up from 4.2x in 2024
Ramp time	6.2 months	the highest in the study's history
Average experience required at hire	3.7 years	up from 2.7 years in 2022

The Bridge Group · June 2026

The number they get wrong is quota, not base. A first sales hire at Seed is building the motion they're being measured on, so putting them on the same quota multiple as a Series B rep sets them up to miss. I'd rather see a lower multiple and a real ramp than a big OTE nobody ever pays out. The founders who get this right treat year one as buying a repeatable process, not buying bookings.

Jonny Leighton, Founder and Principal Recruiter, Founders Connect

How should you read these numbers?

Source and method. Salary benchmarks computed by startup.jobs from job listings that disclose compensation, United States, trailing twelve months. Retrieved through their API on 3 September 2026. The Bridge Group figures are quoted from the published report.
What "advertised salary" means. The figure an employer put in the listing. The source does not separate base salary from on-target earnings, so a listing's number may be either, depending on how the employer wrote it. Treat the medians as a market signal for what roles are being advertised at, not as a base-salary benchmark.
Geography and period. United States only, twelve months to September 2026. No funding-stage split: the source does not segment by stage, and no public source we could verify does so for these roles with on-target earnings included.
Suppression. Roles with fewer than 200 listings disclosing compensation are not shown as figures. Below that floor the sub-segment account executive rows did not order sensibly against each other. Omitted, with their listing counts: Account Executive, SMB (182), Account Executive, Mid-Market (60), VP of Sales (22), Revenue Operations Manager (30), Director of Marketing (25), Head of Marketing (41). No disclosed-salary listings were available for Head of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer, VP of Marketing, Head of Growth, Demand Generation Manager, Lifecycle Marketing Manager or Content Marketing Manager.
Equity. Not covered. We have not found a public equity-by-stage source current enough to cite.
Founders Connect placement data. This page currently carries public data only. Founders Connect does not yet publish figures from its own placements. When it does, they will appear in a column labelled as such, drawn only from accepted offers, with the sample size shown.
Refresh. Figures are re-pulled when the page is updated; the date at the top and the changelog below record each refresh. A row whose sample falls under the floor is removed and noted, never carried forward.

Which compensation terms matter here?

One line each; the glossary has the full definitions.

OTE.: On-target earnings: base salary plus variable compensation at 100% of target.
Base salary.: The guaranteed, fixed part of pay, paid regardless of performance.
Pay mix.: The split between base and variable, written base/variable, such as 60/40.
Quota.: The revenue or bookings target a seller is measured against, usually annual.
Ramp.: The period a new seller is given to reach full productivity, often with reduced quota.

Changelog

3 September 2026. First publication. Ten roles from startup.jobs listing data (floor 200 listings); account executive OTE, quota, ramp and experience from The Bridge Group 2026. No Founders Connect placement data yet.