Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Fair Compensation

Lots of college kids these days are looking to be fairly compensated when they finish their degree and get a real job. What they really want is a competitive, or better than market-rate, salary to justify the four years they spent studying and paying for their expensive college tuition.

But the fact is, that’s not really fair compensation.

Fair compensation, in an ideal world, is when you are paid a little less than your net contribution to a company. The difference between your net contribution and your salary goes towards the company’s overall profits.

Not a lot of workers understand that though. Market-rate salaries are what you should ideally be paid, if you produced as much results as the average guy, but if you aren’t a very good worker and cannot produce good results, no one could ever justify paying you ‘fairly.’

What is fair though, is compensation in startups. Livable salaries and stock options for your commitment in building the business.

At our custom men’s shirt venture, we pay equity and sometimes cash. Depending on the employee’s situation, it is one, the other, or a mix of both. But it works. There is no greed to get more money or more equity. You live comfortably and just keep pushing harder so that your efforts are not in vain in a few years.

We’re trying our best to be the number one men’s dress shirts, slim fit dress shirts, and fitted dress shirts e-tailer out there. As long as our employees are fairly compensated, they will make a big effort to make sure we make that happen and continue to push co-creation to effectively change retail.