Salaries are hard. We are in a somewhat identical situation, seed funded 6 month old, and were grappling with salaries after we closed our seed round.
We went with something slightly different but probably more appropriate for a Scandinavian or European country. Basically each founder has a fixed sum that they can cost the company each month. It's up to each founder to decide how they split that sum between salary, benefits and mandatory retirement schemes. The salary itself can vary by as much as 30-40% depending on how you compose your package.
From my point of view, as the keeper of the cash, this makes burn rate planning manageable. All of us feel that the system is fair and we also feel we can optimize it for our own particular lifestyle. As for the actual sums we agreed on an equal split, with a slightly higher amount for the founder who had kids (that would be me).
I remember reading a long article it seems I never bookmarked, unfortunately, on how less likely it would have been for Linux to start and get traction in any other place, because of the ethos of community and cooperation which apparently is very strong in Finland (and Scandinavia - never been to Finland, Italian here :)
We went with something slightly different but probably more appropriate for a Scandinavian or European country. Basically each founder has a fixed sum that they can cost the company each month. It's up to each founder to decide how they split that sum between salary, benefits and mandatory retirement schemes. The salary itself can vary by as much as 30-40% depending on how you compose your package.
From my point of view, as the keeper of the cash, this makes burn rate planning manageable. All of us feel that the system is fair and we also feel we can optimize it for our own particular lifestyle. As for the actual sums we agreed on an equal split, with a slightly higher amount for the founder who had kids (that would be me).