--- title: These $1 Billion-Plus Startups Pay the Best description: 'These billion-dollar startups pay the most: Airbnb, Uber, Medallia, Cloudera, Gilt and Pinterest.' authors: - name: Martha C. White role: Writer url: https://money.com/author/martha-c-white/ education: BA, English, Princeton University at_money_since: 2015 articles: 350 covers: - Career Advice - Banking - Business - Credit - Credit Cards - Debt - Economy and Politics - Education - Federal Reserve Rate Cuts - Health and Wellness - Housing - Identity Theft - Insurance - Investing - Lifestyle - Loans - Mortgages - Personal Finance - Professional Services - Retirement - Shopping - Taxes - Technology published: '2015-11-18T20:58:14.000Z' modified: '2024-04-16T07:38:13.000Z' section: Career Advice tags: - pubdesk - Tech - Workplace word_count: 271 canonical: https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/ type: Article source: structured-blocks --- > **Disclosure:** We research all brands listed and may earn a fee from our partners. Research and financial considerations may influence how brands are displayed. Not all brands are included. [Learn more](https://money.com/page/disclaimer/). ![Pinterest software engineer interns Kevin Lau, from left, Charlie Gu and Neil Raina play foosball in the office in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 1, 2015. The San Francisco-based venture capital darling celebrated its fifth birthday in March 2015.](https://img.money.com/2015/11/151118_car_highpayingstartups.jpg?crop=0px%2C35px%2C2100px%2C1181px&quality=85) *Pinterest software engineer interns Kevin Lau, from left, Charlie Gu and Neil Raina play foosball in the office in San Francisco, Wednesday, April 1, 2015. The San Francisco-based venture capital darling celebrated its fifth birthday in March 2015.* In Silicon Valley-speak, they're referred to as "unicorns" — startups with valuations of $1 billion or higher. From within this elite group, [TechCrunch sifted](http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/17/the-20-highest-paying-startup-unicorns) through the numbers to come up with an even more specialized list. With the help of salary data from [Glassdoor.com](http://Glassdoor.com), they compiled a rundown of the 20 top-paying unicorns. With a valuation of $51 billion, ride-sharing service Uber tops the [CrunchBase Unicorn](http://techcrunch.com/unicorn-leaderboard/) List, but it's not tops for pay. While it does make the cut for the Top 20, it's only at #15, with a median salary of $101,600. (Notably, this does not include the pay of drivers, who are classified as independent contractors.) That might sound like a decent chunk of change, but in the hyper-competitive startup world, high-paying jobs are a key way to snag the best employees. The top-paying startup unicorn on the list, big-data tech company Cloudera, is worth about $4.1 billion and pays a median salary of $142,240. Rounding out the top five with the highest salaries (in order) are fitness-tracker manufacturer Jawbone, business software provider Medallia, DIY-centric social sharing network Pinterest and cloud storage service Dropbox. The rest of the list is surprisingly eclectic, including well-known names like Airbnb, Credit Karma, Eventbrite and Gilt Groupe along with a handful of companies, mostly in the B2B space, that are less well-known but still pay median salaries well above the national average. (All but two have median salaries above $100,000.) Another surprise is who's not on the list: TechCrunch pulled payments platform Square because it's moved out of startup territory with plans to go public. Its IPO is set to be priced [today](https://time.com/4110095/tech-ipos/). ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "@id": "https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/#breadcrumb", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://money.com" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Career Advice", "item": "https://money.com/career-advice/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Salaries and Wages", "item": "https://money.com/salaries-and-wages/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "These $1 Billion-Plus Startups Pay the Best" } ] }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://money.com/#website", "url": "https://money.com", "name": "Money", "publisher": { "@id": "https://money.com/#organization" } }, { "@type": "WebPage", "@id": "https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/#webpage", "url": "https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/", "name": "These $1 Billion-Plus Startups Pay the Best", "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://money.com/#website" }, "datePublished": "2015-11-18T20:58:14.000Z", "mainEntity": { "@id": "https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/" }, "inLanguage": "en-US", "breadcrumb": { "@id": "https://money.com/billion-plus-startups-highest-pay/#breadcrumb" }, "dateModified": "2024-04-16T07:38:13.000Z" }, { "@type": "Article", "headline": "These $1 Billion-Plus Startups Pay the Best", "articleSection": "Career Advice", "image": [ { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://img.money.com/2015/11/151118_car_highpayingstartups.jpg?crop=0px%2C35px%2C2100px%2C1181px&quality=85", "width": 1012, "height": 569, "caption": "151118_CAR_HighPayingStartups" } ], "author": [ { "@type": "Person", "name": "Martha C. 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