Peter Thiel explains why he always asks the startups he invests in: “What’s the salary of the CEO?”

The one that I think is always really good is, what is the salary of the CEO as an investor? What's the right answer to that? Less than 150,000, even post series A. If you like the people, you like the business model, you like the technology, you like everything. I found that that single question is incredibly predictive because it ends up setting the culture. Are people doing it for equity or cash? It drives the people who are being hired. The random Data point on LinkedIn, I remember when it was getting started, Reed was taking a salary of $15,000 a year. It was the minimum wage so you could get health insurance. And, you know, maybe you didn't need more money or anything, but it was sort of setting the right tone for the company. And you always want to sort of get to this question of motivation. Do people actually believe in what they're doing?