2025 VC Salary Survey
The Benchmark for Venture Capital Compensation
700+ professionals. 50+ firms. Years of compensation trends across every VC role.
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Responding Firms
Key Highlights
Cash compensation is down
Average total cash compensation declined or stayed flat across all roles below Partner over the past two years.
Analyst roles hit hardest
Analyst compensation declined 20%, reflecting the impact of AI and automation on junior VC roles.
Partner compensation bifurcated
Partner compensation increased, with a clear bifurcation of cash : carry ratios for emerging vs established managers.
(Respondents Exclusive) Carry Data
Exclusive insights into estimated carry dollars at work across roles and firm types for those who shared their comp data.
Compensation Trends by Role
Full distributions, bonuses, firm-type splits, and historical comparisons are included in the full report.
Analyst / Senior Analyst
Associate
Senior Associate
VP / Principal
Partner (Investments)
Partner (Operations)
Who this report is for
Full distributions, bonuses, firm-type splits, and historical comparisons are included in the full report.
VC analysts, associates, principals, and partners
Firm leaders benchmarking compensation
Candidates negotiating offers or promotions
Emerging managers and first-time fund builders
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Compensation Trends
Full distributions, bonuses, firm-type splits, and historical comparisons are included in the full report.
Analysts
The overall average base salary for Analysts was $78K, down from $105K in 2024, a 26% decrease. That was a reversal in trend from the 8% increase from 2023 to 2024, 6% increase seen from 2022 to 2023, and especially the drastic 21% rise we saw from 2021 to 2022. Before this year, the last time we saw a decrease in Analyst pay year-over-year was in the 2020 to 2021 transition, coinciding with the coronavirus global pandemic.
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Associate
The overall average base salary for Associates was $126K, down from $133K in 2024, a 5% decrease. Associate compensation has followed a notable seesaw pattern over the past several years — the 5% rise we saw from 2023 to 2024 has now been reversed by a nearly equal decline, echoing the 7% drop from 2022 to 2023 that followed the dramatic 23% spike during the 2021 to 2022 transition. In fact, Associate salaries have alternated between gains and losses every single year since 2020, suggesting this role remains particularly sensitive to shifts in the venture hiring market. Despite the volatility, the current $126K figure still represents a 13% increase over where Associate pay stood in 2019.
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Senior Associate
The overall average base salary for Senior Associates was $154K, down from $166K in 2024, a 7% decrease. This marks a sharp reversal after three consecutive years of growth — a 10% jump from 2021 to 2022, a 6% increase from 2022 to 2023, and a 2% rise from 2023 to 2024 — a trajectory that was already showing signs of deceleration before this year’s pullback. The current $154K figure lands exactly where Senior Associate pay was in 2022, effectively erasing three years of gains. The last time we saw a year-over-year decline at this level was during the 2020 to 2021 pandemic-era dip, when salaries fell 5%.
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VP / Principal
The overall average base salary for VPs and Principals was $206K, down from $213K in 2024, a 3% decrease. While this breaks a three-year streak of consecutive increases — 7% from 2021 to 2022, another 7% from 2022 to 2023, and 2% from 2023 to 2024 — the decline is notably modest compared to the sharper corrections we saw at more junior levels this year. VP/Principal compensation has shown remarkable stability at the senior end, holding in a tight $195K–$213K band over the past four years. The current figure still represents a 19% increase over 2019, and the 3% dip is far milder than the 7% drop we saw during the pandemic-era pullback from 2020 to 2021.
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Other Roles More Senior Than “Senior Associate”
The overall average base salary for other senior roles — titles above Senior Associate, but not yet Partner that fall outside our standard VP/Principal and Partner categories — was $216K, up from $182K in 2024, a 19% increase. This marks a sharp rebound from the 7% decline we saw from 2023 to 2024, and represents the largest single-year gain of any title in this year’s survey. The volatility in this category reflects its nature as a catch-all for titles that don’t map neatly to the standard VC hierarchy — including CVC Directors and other roles where firm-specific titling conventions differ from the traditional Analyst-to-Partner track. Given the compositional diversity and smaller sample size, year-over-year swings here are best interpreted with caution rather than as a clear market signal. At $216K, this category sits between VP/Principal ($206K) and Partner-level compensation.
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Partner: Investments
The overall average base salary for Investment Partners was $317K, up from $311K in 2024, a 2% increase — making this the only investment-track title to see a salary gain this year. While the pace of growth has slowed from the 7% jump we saw from 2023 to 2024, the direction stands in stark contrast to the pullbacks hitting Analyst through VP/Principal levels. Investment Partner pay has now climbed in three of the last four years, with the lone exception being a negligible 1% dip from 2022 to 2023. The more dramatic story remains the 21% surge from 2021 to 2022, which reset the baseline for Partner compensation well above its pre-pandemic range. At $317K, Investment Partner salaries are at an all-time high in our survey’s history, up 28% from 2019.
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Partners: Operations
The overall average base salary for Operations Partners was $317K, up from $311K in 2024, a 2% increase. This marks a continued upward trajectory since we began tracking this title separately in our 2023 survey, with compensation rising 7% from 2023 to 2024 before moderating to 2% growth this year. While the shorter data history makes it difficult to identify long-term trends, the consistent gains — even as most investment-track roles pulled back — suggest that firms continue to place a premium on operational expertise at the partner level. At $317K, Operations Partners have reached base salary parity with Investment Partners, a milestone that speaks to the growing strategic importance of the role — even as the carry gap between the two tracks remains substantial.
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How does your role stack?
Median Base Salary across titles in VC.
Geography
This map visualizes cash compensation across survey respondents in 175+ United States zip codes. The intensity reflects both response volume and compensation levels — areas with more respondents and higher pay appear more saturated.
New York and San Francisco remain the clear centers of gravity, representing over 60% of respondents.
Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago form a second tier — each showing a distributed presence across multiple zip codes, suggesting broad firm representation rather than concentration of multiple respondents from few firms.
Austin, DC, Salt Lake City, and the North Carolina Triangle are emerging with smaller but growing footprints. Five to ten years ago, these markets barely registered in industry surveys, and their presence now signals a slow but real geographic diversification of the industry.
Methodology
For the 8th year straight, we polled our audience of 50,000+ VC and Startup ecosystem subscribers to see how much salary, carry, and bonus they’re getting.
More than 700 VC responses across Institutional VCs, Corporate Venture Capital teams, Incubators + accelerators, and Family Offices were compiled to bring you this report.
How Do VCs Make Money? (VC Comp Structure)
There are 3 pieces that make up the compensation structure of a VC:
- Salary
- Bonus
- Carry
Salary
Salary is, well, salary.
It makes up the majority of a (non-intern) VCs comp in any given year.
Salary is usually paid out of a fund’s management fees.
Most VC funds above a certain size will charge a 2% or 2.5% management fee for the active investment years.
Smaller funds will have lower management fee percentages.
(And teeny tiny funds won’t pull any management fees.)
This is because a firm that has $500k or $2 million (or even $5 million) under management isn’t going to have much — or any — cash lying around to pay you a full-time salary.
That’s why you see some VCs who run small funds doing side hustles to pay the bills while they wait for their bets – (I mean, investments) – to pay off.
Bonus
Bonus isn’t a given like it is in investment banking or other traditional finance shops.
But many respondents (across all titles) say that they’re getting them.
And significant ones too.
Carry
Carry is shorthand for carried interest.
It’s the percentage of investment profits (often 20%, sometimes 25% or even 30%) that the partners in the VC firm get paid in addition to fund management fees.
You might have heard this talked about as the “2 and 20” model – the (typically) 2% management fee and the (typically) 20% carry.
In most firms, carry is divided up (often, unevenly) between the General Partners…
…with a few table scraps for the junior staffers.
Of course, there are exceptions.
For example, firms like Benchmark Capital divide the carry equally between all partners.
And according to some academic research, funds with an equitable split of the carry tend to outperform funds that don’t.
When do VCs get Carry?
No realized profits == No carry (i.e. Paper gains don’t count, and cash returns need not apply)
“Carry” is typically only realized after the limited partners in the fund have received over 1X of their invested capital back.
What’s left is the “profit,” and this is the money (the carry) that is divided up using the 20% / 80% distribution.
Typically, VCs don’t get carry until they climb the ranks.
How often do VCs get Carry?
But if you’re keeping score:
You know that your average VC isn’t exactly generating great cash returns — so it’s pretty hard to get into that carry zone.
After all, VC funds as of late have consistently underperformed the S&P 500, NASDAQ, and Russell 2000.
A recent Kauffman Foundation study detailed VC performance as an asset class.
They found that the majority of funds in their study, 62 out of 100, failed to beat public market returns after fees and carry were paid.
(The Lowercase Capitals of the world? They’re the exception, not the rule.)
Who gets Carry in a VC firm?
Just like a startup isn’t going to pile on the equity for someone who isn’t a founder — a VC firm isn’t going to offer up a share of the profits until you’ve proven yourself.
Most funds follow traditional structures and really need the math to work out in their favor before they even dream of paying their juniors something that could be considered substantial carry.
That said, there are many nuances to carry distribution, with some firms employing different mechanisms such as “cliffs” and “accelerations” (or a lack thereof) to incentivize partners and/or lower-level employees to remain at the fund longer – as this can often positively signal LP’s.
Still, as a general rule of thumb, most mid and low-level employees at a fund do not earn much carry.
The data from the survey bears all this out, too.
Less than half of respondents at analyst levels had the potential to earn carry.
How long does it take to receive Carry?
But even if a fund ends up generating carry — it takes a loooong time.
Why?
Venture capital is a waiting game. For example, at the early stage, you’re looking at 10 years (i.e. the average VC fund’s life cycle) to see any meaningful returns on your investment.
Venture is a highly illiquid asset class. Sure, you have shops like Industry Ventures and exchanges like EquityZen that can help investors take money off the table — but it’s far from the level of liquidity and transparency that you would see in the public markets.
Why is Carry “pay to play’?
General partners have a “GP commit” (often around 2% of the total fund) that they have to pay in.
If they don’t have a lot of cash lying around, then they’ll take out a loan to fund that GP commit.
Or if they have enough management fees to draw from, they’ll use those to fund their commit and take a lower salary than they might have otherwise.
Makes sense, right?
If someone is thinking of writing you a check for millions, they probably want to see if you have some skin in the game.
But even if you’re not a GP, you can see this in action.
For example, one fund that I interviewed with had the junior staffers paying in for their carry — in order to get any (potential) carry out.
What this all sums up to is that, clearly, cash (compensation) is still king — and probably always will be — in the VC world.
And with all this (potential) money flying around (mostly) at the top, it only makes sense that the Associates and Analysts of the world want to climb the ranks…
How can you get more Carry?
But therein lies a common point of friction in the VC world…
To climb the ranks in a VC firm and go further down the venture capital career path requires a proven track record and trust, on both ends of the table – and this isn’t always easy to come by.
Why?
Analysts/Associates want the deals they source to do well, so they can be biased when pitching these deals to an investment committee
There’s usually a gray area when it comes to who should get credit for a successful investment
There isn’t always transparency at a VC firm when it comes to financials and beyond
The good news?
At least in terms of that last point, we’re going to try and lift the veil.
2025 Salary Survey
700+ professionals. 50+ firms. Three years of compensation trends across every VC role.
Download the full survey
