The C-Level Hiring Guide · CEO
An early-stage CEO job is a different beast from a late-stage, commercial biotech CEO job. Early, the CEO tells the story and wins belief. Later, the CEO builds the organisation that delivers on it. Most founders do not leave by choice, and success triggers the change more often than failure. This page is about reading the seat before the board does, and about what the package looks like on both sides of that line.
Two jobs share the title
Nobody changes the job description. The stage changes the job.
Conviction and storytelling. Sells a vision, hires the first five to ten, sits in lab meetings, spends most of the week on capital.Looks for: storytelling power, scientific credibility, conviction that survives a no, network depth, comfort with ambiguity, hiring scars.
Institutional leadership. Multi-site clinical operations, a real BD function, a finance team with its own CFO, a board with crossover investors. Not in lab meetings; if you are, something is wrong.Looks for: a hundred-plus organisation run before, public-markets exposure, BD muscle, the ability to integrate executives, the willingness to step back from the science. Some founder-CEOs grow into this. Most do not.
The seat, stage by stage
Six stages, one seat. The label is the state of the seat at that stage; the line under it is what the seat has to deliver. All ten roles on one timeline.
FounderSeed, preclinical. The founder tells the story and wins belief. The week is the lab, a pitch deck, the first scientist to hire and a grant application, all before lunch.
FounderSeries A, heading for IND. Still the founder's seat. Capital is most of the time. In an academic spin-out the CEO question arrives a stage early; a COO beside a scientist CEO is what keeps it latent.
WatchSeries B, Phase 1b/2. The CEO does not fire at Series B unless the origin is a scientist-CEO from a spin-out. What changes: a surprise is now a deviation, sixty people instead of six, a protocol regulators will hold you to.
UpgradeSeries C, Phase 2. The Series C story, three scenarios modelled live, an institutional board, lead managers, stepping back from the bench. The CEO transition surfaces here most often, and it is the hardest one.
OperatorPhase 3, pre-commercial. Runs the machine. Phase 3, a commercial build, analysts, a board that hears no surprises. A different job, and often a different person.
SuccessionFiled, approved, selling. Planned eighteen to thirty-six months out. Argenx showed how: the COO joined in 2023, became CEO in 2026, and the co-founder became chairman. The successor was in the building long before the handover.
What makes the question live
Vacancy never counts, the seat is always held. So I read the CEO question from what happens around it.
Past about thirty people, a scientist CEO who also runs the operation becomes the bottleneck. You see it as missed milestones. Hire the COO and the CEO question stays latent into Series C. Skip it and it arrives as a succession conversation with less room.
A new lead usually brings a new expectation of what the leadership team should look like, and prices leadership risk into the round. A seat that has outgrown its design shows up in diligence.
The company is at Series B or C and the CEO profile is still the Series A one. Achim Plum said it on Willing to Win: raise your hand now and drive the leadership question yourself, or someone else will drive it for you.
Which shape
There is no fractional CEO. There is an interim CEO between a founder departure and a permanent search, and there is the planned handover.
Between cycles: a founder departure, a failed readout, a board that needs a steady hand while the permanent search runs.When the CEO is interim, the permanent CEO decision gates every other seat, the CFO included.
The operator CEO for Series C onward, or the planned successor who joins as COO or president first.A move the founder can still lead, never a removal. Discovery founders move to CSO, restless builders to business development, co-founders to the chair.
Successor in the building twelve to thirty-six months before the date.The best transitions I have seen were announced as plans, not as surprises.
The package
Base, bonus, equity, change of control, severance. The structure is the same in every market. The numbers and the contract law are not.
What the package covers
The one number everyone quotes and the least informative one. It moves with market (Boston and Basel differ), stage and whether the company is listed. Private biotechs pay double-digit percentages below listed peers at C-level.
A target as a percentage of base, paid on milestones the board can verify. I tie it to outcomes, never to activity. Listed US biotechs set targets around 40 to 50 percent of base for non-CEO roles and 60 to 66 percent for the CEO (Bedford Group, FY2023 proxy data).
In a private company a percentage of the fully diluted shares, usually options, vesting over four years with a one-year cliff, refreshed at the next financing rather than annually. Listed companies grant an annual value, increasingly a mix of options and restricted stock.
Often the real negotiation. Candidates walk over trigger terms and unvested equity more often than over base. Double trigger (deal plus loss of the job) is what governance advisers and proxy firms prefer; over 85 percent of listed US biotechs allow some acceleration.
Private companies write one number in months of salary. Listed US companies: twelve months for the CEO is the norm, nine to twelve for the others, and eighteen months of salary plus target bonus on a change of control for the CEO (Pearl Meyer; Bedford). Notice periods in Europe are a contract matter, see the country layer below.
Sign-on appears from Phase 1 and 2 onward, rarely preclinical. Relocation is the honest conversation more often than people admit. Outside commitments (board seats, advisory work, an academic post) get settled before the offer, not after.
Ranges, with sources
Numbers move every quarter, so treat these as the shape of the market, not as an offer. Medians and ranges, native currency, source and year in the last column.
| Market and stage | Base | Bonus | Equity | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US, listed (small cap) | Base median $594K to $658K by market cap | Target 60 to 66% of base | Annual grant median $474K to $5.14M; 89% have a severance agreement | [1] |
| US, private, Seed and Series A | Cash median about $262K under $30M raised; $329K total cash preclinical | no reliable public figure | Non-founder CEO about 5% fully diluted; founder CEO about 16% preclinical | [2] |
| US, private, clinical (Series B, C) | Total cash median about $447K | no reliable public figure | Non-founder about 5%; founder about 9%. The big step is preclinical to clinical | [2] |
| Europe, listed | Evotec €900K, argenx €732K, Genmab €1.37M, Idorsia CHF 682.5K | Targets 60 to 100% of base, Evotec part deferred into shares | LTI targets from 1.5x to 7x base. Mid and large caps, far above small-cap norms | [3] |
| Europe, private | Michael Page 2026, sector-wide: €180K to €500K, average €340K. BIO Deutschland 2020: Geschäftsführer median €254K | no reliable public figure | no reliable public figure | [4] |
No public survey covers venture-backed European biotech at C-level. The listed-company figures above are mid and large caps and overstate what a Series B company pays. Sector-wide German data exists (Michael Page 2026: C-level in healthcare and life sciences €170K to €500K, depending on the role), but it mixes industries. On a call I give you the range from my own mandates, for your stage and your city.
What I tie it to. Severance and change-of-control terms matter more in this seat than anywhere else, because the CEO is the one person the acquirer may not keep. Listed US norm: twelve months of salary on termination, eighteen months of salary plus target bonus on a change of control. In a German AG the Code caps severance at two years of pay.
[1] Bedford Group Transearch, Biotech Compensation Report 2024 (FY2023 data, 189 Nasdaq-listed biotechs under $2B market cap). [2] J. Thelander Consulting, private-company compensation data, 2024 to 2026. [3] Evotec remuneration report 2025. [4] Michael Page Gehaltsreport 2026, C-level healthcare and life sciences (sector-wide).
The country layer
The Geschäftsführer is an organ of the company, not an employee: a service contract, no protection under the Kündigungsschutzgesetz, no statutory severance. Because the statutory notice period is disputed, the contract has to fix it. Terms of two to five years are common, a post-contract non-compete runs at most two years, D&O cover is standard. Removal as organ does not end the service contract; both have to be handled.
Vorstand members are appointed for at most five years (section 84 AktG). The Corporate Governance Code caps severance at two years of pay and the remaining term, and asks boards not to agree change-of-control payments.
Statutory notice runs from one month in the first year to three months after ten years, and most executive contracts set more; Idorsia's executives sit on twelve months. In listed companies severance for board and executive committee members has been prohibited since 2023, and shareholders vote on aggregate pay.
Six to twelve months of notice at the executive level, defined-contribution pensions, and tax-advantaged option schemes (EMI, CSOP) in place of US ISOs. Listed companies put the remuneration report to an annual advisory vote.
At-will employment with the economics written into the offer: severance, change-of-control terms and acceleration carry the protection a European notice period would. Four-year vesting with a one-year cliff is the market standard.
How I read the seat
The CEO seat is not judged from the outside. The work is to understand the person's top two needs and to test, in one conversation, whether the next stage feeds or starves them.
Formation and Build feed variety and recognition. Translation and Inflection feed predictability and growth and starve variety; the discovery founder goes quiet a year before anyone names it. Scale feeds predictability and contribution and starves the hero kind of recognition.
Add a COO who runs the operation while you keep the story and the science. Or bring in an operator CEO while you move into a CSO or president role. Both are moves, not removals, and both are easier a year early than a year late.
Did this CEO hire people unlike themselves in the last twelve months? It is the tell for growing into the next stage, and it is answered by the org chart, not by the CEO.
You already have a CEO
Read it before the next round reads it for you. If the seat keeps feeding what drives you, the question stays latent and the board never raises it. If it starves you, the honest moves are a COO beside you, a successor in the building, or a role that fits the person you are. New investors price leadership risk into the round either way; the difference is whether you set the terms.
Your next stage changes the CEO job.
Let's talk
Sixty minutes on a call, no brief and no pitch. I name the role, the reason and whether it should be permanent or fractional.