I’ve never believed in the Silicon Valley idea that you’ve got to work 24/7 and sacrifice everything to build a successful company. For me, building a business and raising a family go hand in hand. These contrasting views are perhaps best illustrated with a personal anecdote.

Long ago, when a former business partner and I were raising our A round for a company we’d founded, I found myself sitting across some investors from Silicon Valley. I knew they wouldn’t have flown out to meet us unless they were fairly serious about investing — they weren’t the type of people to waste time and money on something they didn’t believe in.

My wife Rachel and I had recently learned that Rachel was pregnant with twins. The pregnancy wasn’t planned, which meant that we’d gone from thinking we were going to have zero more kids to discover we were actually having two at once in the blink of an eye. I was about to become the proud father of not four but six highly energetic daughters.

To break the ice, my co-founder shared the above with our would-be investors. In most cases, spicing up generic small talk with a story about unexpected twins is at least entertaining. But the investors weren’t amused.

The senior investor — I’ll never forget his name, even though I won’t mention it here — was as serious as a heart attack. He looked straight at me and said, “You know, I have a hard time taking guys like you seriously. Why would you have a family when you should be dedicating your whole life to running your business?”

Without missing a beat, I responded, “That’s interesting — I’ve always struggled to understand guys like you. What’s the point of making money if you don’t have anybody to enjoy it with? Where’s the satisfaction in being a single, 45-year-old guy living in a penthouse on University Avenue in Palo Alto? Wouldn’t that feel empty and old after a while? For me, my work is filled with purpose; I get to go home and play with a bunch of adorable little kids who love me.”

I said this in a calm, philosophical way as if I were simply sharing an alternate point of view instead of countering an insult. My co-founder, meanwhile, appeared to be devastated that he’d brought the whole thing up — the meeting was as good as over now.

But you know what? The second those words came out of the senior investor’s mouth, I knew I didn’t want his money. Family means too much to me to partner with someone who could dismiss it so cavalierly.

Related: An Open Letter from an Entrepreneur Dad to His Kids on How to Find Success

Family and business

Family and business are not mutually exclusive, but let’s be realistic. Running a business is highly difficult, stressful and unpredictable. There will definitely be times when you have to power through setbacks, seemingly at the cost of spending time with the ones you love most.

The problem begins when obstacles and opportunities are treated as marathons rather than sprints. Every entrepreneur faces a sprint at one point or another — something goes off the rails, or there’s an opportunity you want to capitalize on, so you spend more time at work than you normally want to.

A marathon, on the other hand, is what occurs when you’re working around the clock merely to alleviate the inevitable anxieties of entrepreneurship. You tell yourself that you must work around the clock because it makes you feel better to do so — “If I’m working, I’m not failing.”

Make no mistake, this is a lie. Like all lies, it’ll end up hurting you temporarily, no matter how good it makes you feel.

Related: You Don’t Need to Sacrifice Your Family to Pursue Being an Entrepreneur. Here’s How to Save Yourself 500 Hours Per Year.

Sacrifice versus rewards

It’s a dismal picture: you put in a thirteen-hour day and get home at seven or eight to find that you’ve missed dinner, the kids are already in bed and your partner’s angry that once again you’ve chosen work over family. In this case, you aren’t alleviating the stress of entrepreneurship as much as adding to it unbearably. You’re pointlessly exhausting yourself while avoiding your greatest resource for inspiration and renewal.

My general rule of thumb for balancing family and work throughout my whole career has been to take advantage of travel. When I’m out of town, I work constantly. I shove five days of work into three. When I’m in town, I’m always home by six or six-thirty. When I’m home, I’m always present with my kids, present with Rachel. It’s only when everyone’s asleep that I grind out extra work hours if needed.

I can’t imagine trying to crank out those same hours and being distracted by the fact that you feel like a loser because you’re missing dinner yet again. It’s the same number of hours regardless — why not go home, take a break, clear your head, invest in a purpose outside of work and then go back to that work once you’ve fulfilled your obligations as a parent and partner?

To begin with, it recharges your batteries. Brain science has taught us that you have a limited amount of time each day to perform at the highest level. After a certain number of hours, there are diminishing returns on the energy you expend versus the quality of the results.

Trust me— when you’re feeling good about yourself as a spouse or a father or mother, it’s like a shot of pure energy. Putting in the extra hours after you’ve reaffirmed your love for your family will be a much more productive experience.

There’s really only one rule when it comes to spending time with family: be present, be present, be present. It’s not about pretending to be there when your mind is still brooding in the office. To achieve a balance between work and family, you’ve got to put down your phone, close your computer and give yourself totally to the moment.

Meta sent employees an internal memo on Friday outlining what to expect as the tech giant implements its latest round of layoffs affecting 5% of its 72,000-person workforce, around 3,000 employees.

A memo obtained by Business Insider and posted to Meta’s internal Workplace forum by Vice President of Human Resources Janelle Gale said that employees affected by the performance-based cuts will be notified Monday morning through an email sent to their work and personal email addresses. The times are scheduled for different time zones beginning Sunday at 1 p.m. PT with some international employees not hearing the news until Feb 18.

Related: Meta Reminds Staff of Its Strict No-Leaks Policy — That Has Since Been Leaked to the Press

U.S.-based employees will receive a notification on Monday at 5 a.m. PT. Within an hour of receiving the email, affected employees will be kicked off of company systems. The email will inform them of their termination and contain details about their severance package.

“For teams that have a teammate or manager exit on Monday, I understand this might be a difficult day, and there could be some disruption and short-term impacts on your day-to-day work,” Gale wrote in the memo.

She also added that Meta’s offices would be open on Monday, but anyone “whose job allows” was allowed to work from home and have the day count as “in-person time.” Meta currently follows a hybrid schedule, requiring full-time employees to work from the office three days per week and two days remotely.

^{Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

Gale included an FAQ section in the memo clarifying that Meta does not plan to tell the entire company who was laid off after notifying affected employees and intends to backfill the impacted roles on an unspecified timeline. She also wrote that if employees had a manager who had been terminated, their newly assigned manager would reach out to them.

Related: ‘Masculine Energy Is Good’: Mark Zuckerberg Tells Joe Rogan He Thinks Companies Need More Aggression

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees about the layoffs last month, informing staff that he had “decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster.”

Zuckerberg wrote that while Meta “typically” manages out employees who don’t meet expectations over a year, Meta was going to make more “extensive” cuts of low performers during the performance cycle ending in February.

Meta isn’t the only tech giant to recently conduct layoffs. Amazon laid off dozens of employees last month and Salesforce reportedly let go of 1,000 workers earlier this year.

Stop guessing what works in your marketing. Most entrepreneurs use AI for basic tasks, but you’re about to discover a hidden goldmine: turning Google AI Studio into your personal, 24/7 marketing consultant — and it won’t cost you a dime.

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The latest “Employment Situation Summary” report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed the labor market started the year on a downshift from 2024. EY senior economist Lydia Boussour told Entrepreneur in an emailed statement that the findings give the Federal Reserve “the luxury of time” to cut rates.

The report showed that the U.S. economy added 143,000 new jobs in January, below consensus forecasts of 170,000 and beneath the average monthly gain of 166,000 jobs in 2024. Boussour described the labor market as “frozen, but robust.”

“Business executives continue to rein in hiring but are still holding off on layoffs as they navigate a more uncertain economic and policy environment,” she stated.

Related: December Jobs Report Indicates a ‘Strong Economy’ That Is ‘More Resilient Than Anticipated,’ According to Experts

January’s job gains were highest in the healthcare, retail, and social assistance industries, each of which added at least 22,000 jobs. Employment meanwhile declined by 8,000 jobs over the month in the mining, quarrying, oil, and gas extraction industry after little change in 2024.

^{Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu via Getty Images}

The private sector added 111,000 jobs in January while government roles increased by 32,000. Private sector wages rose by 17 cents over the month to $35.87 while the average workweek decreased by 0.1 hours to 34.1 hours.

The report also showed that the unemployment rate was at 4%, its lowest level since May 2024, according to the NYTimes.

Related: ‘Really Hard to Find a Job’: 1.7 Million Job Seekers Have Been Looking for Work for at Least 6 Months

Boussour expects job growth to continue to be below last year’s average of 166,000 jobs added per month and for the unemployment rate to increase towards 4.4% as businesses conduct more layoffs.

When it comes to Federal Reserve policy, she says that the Fed will be more cautious in reaction to the January jobs report and slow down the pace of rate cuts.

“We believe Fed policymakers will judge the labor market as giving them the luxury of time when it comes to easing monetary policy further, especially considering the stronger wage figures,” Bousssour stated. “Even though we anticipate inflation will decelerate markedly in the coming months while labor market conditions cool, we anticipate the Fed will maintain a wait-and-see approach.”

While Boussour previously expected three rate cuts in 2025 (in March, June, and September), she now anticipates only two cuts in June and December.

Related: The Fed Just Cut Rates for the Third Time This Year. Here’s How It Will Affect Mortgage Rates, According to a 40-Year Veteran of the Real Estate Industry

As we emerge from Spotify Wrapped season, many will agree that this past year’s recaps looked a bit … different, disappointing some who proclaimed this iteration a “flop” due to over-reliance on generative AI, barely a year after Spotify’s conspicuous layoff of 1,500 people.

This sort of narrative is not unique to the music industry. It’s an ongoing conversation across sectors: How do companies strike a balance between AI’s benefits and its human cost? How should AI be regulated? And who is responsible for policing AI while we work out the answers to these questions?

A balancing act

The potential AI offers is well-documented: the intelligent automation of clerical tasks and advanced decision-making, increased capacity to process and infer from data, and the ability to mimic human creativity.

The real-world implications here are significant. Publications have questioned, for example, “will we still need software developers” in a world where AI can write code or, in the legal industry — where even junior associates may bill nearly $1,000/hour for the sort of legal research and drafting that AI is already becoming adept at replicating — whether the billable-hour will remain viable (or ethical).

Qualms about AI, too, are well-documented: ethical and moral concerns centered on bias, privacy and job loss; environmental concerns; and existential concerns about the displacement of human labor by nonhuman models trained on the output of those very same humans they seek to mimic (or replace).

Related: AI Agents Are Becoming More Humanlike — and OpenAI Launched a New One in January. Are Entrepreneurs Ready to Embrace the Future?

The regulatory dance

The collective uncertainty clouding today’s largely pre-regulated AI landscape is not altogether dissimilar from past technological disruption. Those familiar with the music industry, for example, will recall the uneasy transition to digital streaming, seemingly cannibalizing revenues derived from paid downloads. Downloads had themselves risen to prominence as something of a defensive maneuver — an attempt to salvage something in the post-Napster world, which had thoroughly destroyed the CD-driven sales boom of the 1990s. Even the CD itself was only the last of many dominant 20th-century music technologies to rise and fall. In each instance, the industry adapted and survived.

In some cases, the industry’s internal response happened in a vacuum; in others, legislative, regulatory or judicial actions shaped that response — from recent legislation tailoring licensing practices to the realities of streaming, to 1990s and 2000s case law clarifying the rules surrounding sampling, all the way back to WWII-era consent decrees imposed upon licensing societies formed by rightsholders in the early days of radio.

In each of those cases, though, the response from the applicable branch of government came several years after the industrial rise of the relevant technology. The same is likely to be true of AI. Scores of AI bills are currently stalled before Congress. Dozens of AI-focused lawsuits, too, continue to inch through the judiciary. At the regulatory level, there is significant uncertainty as to how the looming shift in Executive control will affect AI policy, even as current regulatory efforts by the U.S. Copyright Office to propose AI policy recommendations have already fallen well behind initial deadlines.

This is going to take a while to sort out. n the interim, industries will continue to experiment with new ways to use AI. And bad actors will find new ways to exploit this underregulated frontier.

Related: AI Could Ruin Your Life or Business — Unless You Take These Critical Steps

Who’s minding the store?

Meanwhile, absent an effective regulatory schema, industries are left to self-police those bad actors. But whose job, exactly, is it to do that?

In the music industry, there are a number of practical realities that are particularly attractive to fraudsters: a sprawling streaming ecosystem where millions of tracks are uploaded monthly; the billions of hours of music that are streamed each year for fractions of a penny; and a convoluted licensing regime where the streaming services best-positioned to police fraud often pay a blanket percentage of revenue (rather than per-stream) to license music, and thus are perhaps less incentivized to police fraud than the individual creator whose share of the overall streaming pie necessarily narrows when fraudulent slices of that pie disappear, but who has no realistic means to counter that fraud.

In one high-profile example, an individual was indicted for using AI to create music distributed under fake “artist” monikers and then again using AI-powered bots to inflate stream counts and drain around $10 million from the royalty pool available to legitimate creators. The fact that someone may have scammed the music industry for monetary gain is not surprising; that’s a tale as old as time. Two things are noteworthy, however: The alleged fraudster in this case turned to AI only after traditional methods of fraud had floundered; and it took nearly six years for his scheme to be flagged by an industry licensing entity (and it may have altogether eluded many of the streaming services themselves).

Federal prosecution notwithstanding, even this example is just a drop in a much larger bucket of AI-powered fraud that either goes entirely undetected, or goes undetected for longer than would be the case if the incentives and the ability to police fraud were aligned or if an effective regulatory framework to police fraud existed.

Related: Nearly Half of Americans Think They Could Be Duped By AI. Here’s What They’re Worried About.

The human touch

While one can understand why businesses across sectors want to embrace AI in their zeal for efficiency, these recent headlines caution against an absolutist approach. AI is an answer, not the answer. Though it can be tempting to lose patience with governmental entities lagging behind industrial experimentation with AI, regulators and the regulated alike should proceed with caution, balancing both innovation and integrity, both efficiency and human-centricity — not simply because it is the right thing to do, but because we have plenty of examples for why abandoning that approach is self-defeating.

Both art and fraud derive from human ingenuity, and the effects of both are experienced by real human beings. Even if both can be enhanced or disrupted by AI, both are fundamentally human endeavors. As AI’s infancy transitions into an uncertain adolescence, industries and regulators alike should act accordingly.

When the Super Bowl airs on Sunday, February 9 at 6:30 p.m., one ad from Google will run with some last-minute alterations.

Last week, an X user posted that one of Google’s new Super Bowl ads about a Wisconsin cheese market owner was “AI slop” and is “unequivocally false.” In the commercial, the company’s Gemini AI tool writes a product description that says, “Gouda accounts for 50 to 60 percent of the world’s cheese consumption.” The post has screenshots of the alleged error.

Related: A Company Is Giving Away $10,000 Every Second During the Final 2 Minutes of the Super Bowl

“Cheddar & mozzarella would like a word,” the post continues.

Google’s President of Cloud Applications, Jerry Dischler, replied to the post, saying that the copy is “not a hallucination” and the stat was found in multiple places across the web. Still, as anyone who is Very Online would know, that doesn’t mean the information is correct.

Hey Nate – not a hallucination, Gemini is grounded in the Web – and users can always check the results and references. In this case, multiple sites across the web include the 50-60% stat. Gouda news: many love this cheese! Bada news: not everyone thinks it’s as grate. ?

— Jerry Dischler (@jdischler) February 1, 2025

Google confirmed that the company collaborated with the cheesemonger featured and remade the ad to remove the stat.

“Following his suggestion to have Gemini rewrite the product description without the stat, we updated the user interface to reflect what the business would do,” Google told the BBC, in a statement.

The BBC notes that, for some reason, accurate data on cheese popularity is tough to source, though cheddar and mozzarella are considered to be the most popular in the world.

Here’s the new ad, set to run on Sunday, while the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles.

Related: Why Super Bowl Commercials Are the Ultimate Marketing Play

Walmart may have generated the most revenue of any other company in the S&P 500 for the past 12 consecutive years, but another e-commerce giant is coming for its crown.

Amazon reported revenue of $187.8 billion in its latest earnings release for the fourth quarter of 2024 after market close on Thursday, which is more than the $180 billion in revenue Walmart is projected to report for the same quarter on February 20, according to a Thursday report from CNBC.

If the Walmart projection comes to pass, it would mark the first time in over a decade that another company has usurped Walmart as the top revenue-generator on the S&P 500. In 2012, Walmart took the top spot from Exxon Mobil, per CNBC.

Related: Walmart Is Laying Off Hundreds, Relocating Others as the Company Closes a U.S. Office

“The holiday shopping season was the most successful yet for Amazon and we appreciate the support of our customers, selling partners, and employees who helped make it so,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated in the earnings release.

Amazon’s online shopping business has skyrocketed since the pandemic. The company’s annual sales in North America have grown by more than 100% since 2019, per CNBC.

Amazon’s successful cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), also contributed to its revenue growth. Revenue in the division has swelled in the past few years, growing from $45.37 billion in 2020 to nearly double that amount, or $90.76 billion, in 2023, according to Statista.

^{Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

In the third quarter of 2024, AWS revenue increased 19% year-over-year and contributed to 17% of total sales.

Amazon also hit a milestone for its revenue for the full year of 2024. The company crossed the $600 billion mark for the first time in 2024 with a record revenue of $638 billion.

In this measure, Amazon isn’t expected to surpass Walmart, which is predicted to report full-year revenue of $681 billion for 2024 and has already exceeded the $600 billion mark in 2023 with revenue of $611.3 billion.

Related: Top-Performing Walmart Managers Can Now Make $620,000 a Year

Public relations is an industry that thrives on storytelling, human connection and creative strategy. Yet, even PR professionals aren’t immune to the rapid advancements of artificial intelligence. AI tools like ChatGPT, MidJourney and Jasper are already being used to generate press releases, create social media content and even analyze media coverage — tasks that once required human effort.

Does this mean your PR job is at risk? It could be — if you don’t adapt. But history teaches us that professionals who embrace change and evolve their skills often come out stronger. Here’s how you can prepare for the AI revolution in PR, based on lessons from the past and insights into the future.

Related: How to Leverage Artificial Intelligence in Public Relations

Lesson #1: Embrace collaboration, not competition

When the printing press was invented, scribes who hand-copied manuscripts feared obsolescence. While their roles changed, new opportunities arose for writers, publishers and editors. The same holds true for AI in PR. AI isn’t here to replace PR professionals; it’s here to augment their abilities.

AI tools can handle repetitive tasks, such as drafting initial press release templates or generating email pitches at scale. What they can’t do is build genuine relationships with reporters or navigate the nuanced dynamics of reputation management.

What you can do:

Learn how to integrate AI into your workflow. For example, use tools like Cision or Meltwater to analyze media trends or Grammarly to refine your writing. Let AI handle the mundane, so you can focus on high-value tasks like creative strategy and fostering relationships with journalists.

Lesson #2: Become a storytelling specialist

AI is adept at summarizing data and generating straightforward content, but it struggles with nuance, emotion and cultural context — qualities essential for PR storytelling. Historically, professionals who could tell compelling stories have always stood out, even in the face of technological change. For example, advertising legends like David Ogilvy thrived by combining creativity with an understanding of human psychology, despite the rise of automation in advertising.

What you can do:

Hone your storytelling skills. Dig deeper into your clients’ missions, values and audiences to craft narratives that resonate emotionally. While AI can generate ideas, only a skilled PR professional can weave them into stories that capture hearts and headlines.

Lesson #3: Focus on relationship building

In the PR world, relationships are everything. Historically, roles that require human connection — such as sales, negotiation and leadership — have remained resilient to automation. AI can help you identify reporters to pitch, but it can’t forge genuine relationships or build trust.

What you can do:

Double down on relationship-building efforts. Attend industry events, network with journalists, and cultivate meaningful connections. When reporters know and trust you, they’re more likely to open your emails — something AI-generated pitches can’t achieve on their own.

Lesson #4: Master media analysis and strategy

In the early days of digital advertising, tools like Google Ads automated much of the media buying process. However, marketers who excelled at interpreting campaign data and adjusting strategies accordingly became invaluable. PR is headed down a similar path. AI tools can analyze media sentiment, track campaign performance and identify trends, but they still need human oversight to make strategic decisions.

What you can do:

Learn to interpret and act on the insights provided by AI tools. For example, if AI shows declining media sentiment about your client, it’s up to you to craft a crisis communications plan. If it identifies emerging trends, you can align your PR strategy to capitalize on them.

Related: Jobs Are Disappearing — These 3 Strategies Are What You Need to Future-Proof Your Career

Lesson #5: Innovate with new formats

AI is opening doors to innovative formats and platforms for PR, such as virtual events, AI-generated influencer partnerships and personalized video pitches. While AI can automate the technical aspects of these initiatives, creative strategy is where PR professionals shine.

What you can do:

Experiment with AI-powered tools to create engaging campaigns. For instance, you could use generative AI to design virtual press kits or create interactive media experiences. By staying ahead of the curve, you position yourself as a leader in leveraging technology to deliver results.

Lesson #6: Diversify your skills

When the internet transformed PR in the early 2000s, professionals who embraced digital skills — like social media management and SEO — gained a competitive edge. AI is driving a similar shift today, making it essential for PR professionals to broaden their skill sets.

What you can do:

Invest in learning adjacent skills like data analysis, SEO and digital advertising. These complementary areas will make you more versatile and better equipped to integrate PR with broader marketing strategies.

Lesson #7: Advocate for ethics and transparency

As AI becomes more prevalent, ethical concerns about its use in PR will grow. For example, AI-generated content can blur the lines between authentic and synthetic communication, potentially eroding trust if not disclosed. PR professionals have an opportunity to lead the charge in advocating for transparency and ethical AI use.

What you can do:

Stay informed about ethical guidelines and best practices for AI in PR. Position yourself as a thought leader by writing about these issues, speaking at conferences or consulting on responsible AI implementation.

Related: Is AI Going to Take Over PR? Here’s Where It Belongs and Where It Doesn’t in Content Creation

AI is undoubtedly transforming the PR landscape, but it’s not a death knell for the profession. Instead, it’s a call to evolve. By embracing AI as a tool rather than a threat, focusing on uniquely human strengths like storytelling and relationship-building and staying adaptable, you can future-proof your career.

Technology has always disrupted industries, but history shows that those who innovate, specialize and lead with creativity come out ahead. Yes, AI might take some PR jobs — but it doesn’t have to take yours.

The key is to act now. The future of PR belongs to those who combine the best of human ingenuity with the power of AI. Will you rise to the challenge?

Then there’s the old-school mentality among some investors that founders should “stay hungry,” implying modest compensation is necessary to stay driven. Let’s be real. Running a startup is a grueling job, and founders deserve to be compensated justly for their efforts.

Compensation can be a tricky subject, especially for investor-backed founders. Yet, it’s a topic that too often gets pushed aside. Studies have indicated that startup founders, on average, take home up to 20% less in cash compensation than non-founders in comparable corporate roles.

Startup founders earned an average of $150,000 in 2022, significantly less than private company CEOs, who averaged $377,850. This stark gap highlights just how undervalued founders can be, even while shouldering the immense responsibility of building and scaling their companies. Interestingly, technical and product founders tend to earn more (around $155,000) versus their CEO counterparts (approx. $142,000). However, some founders forego pay altogether, a trend that increased from 7% in 2023 to 9% in 2024, according to the Pilot Founder Salary Report.

This is especially true for early-stage startups, which often lack structure such as compensation committees. In such cases, founder pay can easily get neglected, particularly as lead investors get stretched thin serving on multiple boards and making new investments. So if you don’t advocate for yourself, who else will?

As a former founder and investor who now sits on several company boards, I’ve made it a priority to address founder compensation early on. I’ve seen how neglecting this issue can lead to burnout and resentment, ultimately affecting both the founder and the company. Here’s how you can champion the topic of your compensation and yet do it in a diplomatic way.

Related: Founders’ Salaries Are Shockingly Humble, New Report Finds

Approach the conversation strategically

When it comes to discussing your compensation, tread carefully — you don’t want to risk being seen as greedy and self-serving. Many founders face pressure from antiquated industry norms that glorify under-compensation. Some investors believe that CEO pay correlates with greater startup success, perpetuating the notion that “the lower the CEO salary, the more likely it is to succeed.” While this idea of “staying hungry” might resonate with some, for many founders, balancing personal and professional obligations makes fair compensation a critical factor in maintaining motivation and preventing burnout.

One way to approach this is to start by addressing the broader executive compensation package for your team. Solicit the board’s input for current and future key hires. Once that’s on the table, you can transition into asking the board how they view your executive compensation in the context of the overall team.

Framing your compensation as part of a larger board process rather than a personal ask makes it less self-serving and more about the company as a whole. If there are also personal circumstances that are distracting you from your role, such as rising living costs or health issues, be sure to mention them so your board can understand your full picture.

Be prepared and methodical

Once you’re ready to approach your board, be organized. When coaching founders on boards I serve on, I always tell them to prepare data that will help me advocate on their behalf. For example, you can show your board surveys or market data that highlight what others in similar roles are earning. If your pay is below market, it’s an easy case to justify a raise.

If you’re unsure where to start, tools like Christoph Janz’s salary calculator can help. For example, a San Francisco-based founder with two kids who has raised a $5 million Series A might be suited for around $150,000 in annual compensation; meanwhile, for a Berlin-based founder with no kids and a $2 million seed round, $50,000 might be a more realistic average. By demonstrating how your proposed salary aligns with factors such as company stage, location and family obligations, you can make a stronger case for fair compensation.

Giving them detailed cap tables with pro forma calculations can also help them understand how increasing your equity impacts other stakeholders including themselves.

Related: 4 Expert-Backed Tips to Negotiate a Raise or Promotion

Don’t overlook equity

Equity is another frequently understated aspect of compensation. Many founders have fully vested their stock after four years and find themselves with nothing left to earn. If there are no additional equity or top-up grants, your motivation could drop, especially as your ownership dilutes over time through new funding rounds and issuing options to new employees.

At Vungle, I received several equity grants that helped keep me motivated. Some of these grants were designed to protect my stake, particularly as we raised $25 million across multiple funding rounds. Without these grants, my equity would have been diluted significantly.

If you’re nearing the end of your vesting schedule and haven’t secured any new grants, it’s time to let the board know so they can discuss giving you more equity. It’s also an opportune moment to ask the board for “single-trigger acceleration,” which allows you to fully vest new equity if the company is sold. This can give you greater negotiating power in the event of an acquisition by a larger company. Some boards may be averse to this but the economic impact on your net worth can be substantial if it’s granted so it’s worth asking.

Related: The Ultimate Guide to Equity Compensation

Time the topic correctly and bring in advocates

The best opportunity to bring up compensation is during year-end planning cycles. The board is already focused on budgets, performance targets and strategy for the upcoming year, making it a natural moment to address pay. I like to work with founders on creating a board-approved annual plan and then relating the founder bonus to the achievement of this plan. For instance, if you hit base goals, you might secure a 20% bonus, while exceeding targets could unlock a 40% bonus. Just remember to cap those bonuses. Founders should be incentivized, not compensated like a sales team.

Finally, it’s important to be humble and diplomatic when discussing compensation. Always express gratitude for what you’re given, and avoid any sense of entitlement. But more importantly, don’t go it alone. My best advice? Bring an advocate onto your board, whether that’s an independent board member or a VC who is sympathetic to your personal goals, so you don’t have to be the one constantly pushing for your own compensation.

If you have a smaller board, you’ll likely need to support your own case. But if there are multiple VCs, find one who can champion your cause. Ideally, ask the board to create a compensation committee. That way, there’s a formal process in place to ensure you are compensated appropriately.

Related: How to Build an Advisory Board That Drives Startup Success

At the end of the day, advocating for your compensation is about ensuring fairness — for you and for the future of your company. And while humility is crucial, it’s also important not to downplay the importance of fair compensation. A motivated founder is essential to a startup’s success, so advocating for your pay is about alignment, not indulgence.

Anthropic might have advertised its Claude chatbot as proficient in writing, but there’s one writing task that the startup doesn’t want people to use the AI chatbot for: filling out Anthropic’s own job applications.

All of Anthropic’s close to 150 open job positions ask applicants to write their materials themselves and not use AI like Claude or ChatGPT to help. It doesn’t matter if the position is in finance, communications, or sales — the job application asks all candidates to agree not to use AI in their submissions.

Related: An Employee Told Me He Was Quitting to Join OpenAI in 2016. I Said It Was a Bad Idea. Now He’s an AI Billionaire.

The agreement is outlined under a section in the application titled “AI Policy for Application,” which was first spotted by open-source developer Simon Willison earlier this week.

The section is the same across positions and reads: “While we encourage people to use AI systems during their role to help them work faster and more effectively, please do not use AI assistants during the application process. We want to understand your personal interest in Anthropic without mediation through an AI system, and we also want to evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills. Please indicate ‘Yes’ if you have read and agree.”

Related: Amazon Invests $4 Billion in ChatGPT Competitor, Making a Bold Move in the AI Arms Race

Entrepreneur confirmed that all roles had the policy at the time of writing. Even roles like mobile product designer, which did not have the AI Policy for Application as of a Monday report from 404 Media, now have the policy.

^{Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei. Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images}

Anthropic’s preference for no-AI applications isn’t unique. Many other major U.S. employers will not tolerate AI use by job candidates. According to an April survey from Resume Genius, AI-generated resumes were the biggest red flag for 625 U.S. hiring managers, with 53% stating that they were less likely to hire a candidate based on it.

Still, candidates are using the technology. An August report from the Financial Times found that about half of job applicants were using AI to help their job applications stand out, from writing cover letters to infusing their resumes with keywords. Applicants can quickly generate cover letters and resumes, leading to about twice as many job applications per posting.

Related: An OpenAI Rival Developed a Model That Appears to Have ‘Metacognition,’ Something Never Seen Before Publicly

What Is Claude?

Anthropic’s Claude is a popular AI chatbot that can provide everything from health coaching to legal advice, with the New York Times calling it the “tech insiders’ chatbot of choice” last month for its willingness to express opinions and act as a therapist. It has a free tier, an $18 per month Pro tier, and a $25 per person per month Teams tier. Users told The Times that talking to Claude felt more like talking to a smart human than a chatbot.

“It’s eerily good,” one user wrote on X in October. “This is the first time ever that I’m interacting with an LLM and have to keep consciously reminding myself that it’s not actually sentient.”

People were saying that Claude Sonnet works great as a coach/therapist so I’m trying it out now and it’s indeed eerily good. This is the first time ever that I’m interacting with an LLM and have to keep consciously reminding myself that it’s not actually sentient.

— Kaj Sotala (@xuenay) October 29, 2024

Claude isn’t as popular as rival ChatGPT, which draws over 300 million weekly users as of December, but its webpage still drew 73.8 million visits in December, according to Similarweb.

As of last month, Anthropic was in advanced talks to raise $2 billion in a deal that would value it at $60 billion, making it the fifth-most valuable U.S. startup after SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, and Databricks.

Related: Almost Half of VC Funding Raised Last Year Went to Startups in One Category