The Montgomery Summit Notify me• Mar 16, 2026• 46:26ConferencePanel

Best Practices: Equity Incentives & Compensation

From The Montgomery Summit · 2026

Deanna Kempinski(Moderator, Baker Tilly)•Rory O'Driscoll(Panelist, Scale Venture Partners)•Charly Kevers(Panelist, Carta)•Sean Feller(Panelist)•Kris O'Toole(Panelist, Semler Brossy)

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Executive Summary

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Compensation Philosophy and Governance Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Incentives

5 quotes

Concerns Raised

Companies developing messy, inconsistent compensation plans without a guiding philosophy.
The significant dilution pressure faced by mature SaaS companies.
The challenge of competing for top-tier AI talent against massive compensation packages.
Lack of proper documentation and governance leading to issues with auditors and lawyers pre-IPO.

Opportunities Identified

Using bonus plan discussions to align the entire company on key strategic goals.
Maintaining simplicity in equity plans (e.g., time-based vesting) to ensure predictability.
Differentiating compensation to reward and retain top performers.
Providing benefits like tax advisory services to help employees navigate liquidity and equity.

Key Themes

Research Findings5

An estimated 75% to 80% of all secondary market transactions for private companies are concentrated in a small number of high-profile companies like SpaceX and Stripe.

Elon Musk's new compensation plan at Tesla includes performance metrics tied to stock price, robo-taxi rides, Optimus robot milestones, and EBITDA.

A new executive compensation plan at Google incorporates a mix of valuation targets, base compensation, time-based RSUs, and significant performance-based components.

Rory O'Driscoll believes that DoorDash's stock price is unlikely to reach the targets set in its large, multi-year executive compensation plan from the IPO era.

The compensation and talent market for SaaS companies, exemplified by Salesforce, operates under different dynamics and pressures than the market for AI companies, exemplified by Anthropic.

Topics

Executive Compensation Startup Compensation Compensation Philosophy Pre-IPO Equity Compensation Stock Options Bonus Structures Corporate Governance Talent Retention Venture Capital Dilution Performance Metrics SaaS AI Talent Private Companies

Processed Apr 19, 2026Daily intelligence brief → yt-dlp + mlx-whisper + Gemini

Best Practices: Equity Incentives & Compensation

Continue your research

Concerns Raised

Opportunities Identified

Key Themes

Compensation Philosophy and Governance

Balancing Short-Term and Long-Term Incentives

Market Fragmentation and Talent Competition

The Evolution of Compensation with Scale

Research Findings5

Topics