A scientist with patents and a business person with extensive
experience are building a business around the scientist's intellectual
property. However, they are having problems figureing out how much of
the company the CEO should get and what his starting salary should be.
Therefore, I am looking for benchmarks (preferably in Biotech) on how
other start-ups have handled similar situations.

VentureOne, a company that does research and consulting on the
venture-funded organizations, has done a semi-annual survey of
startups for several years.  Though they don't have the surveys,
"Executive Compensation at Privately-Held Startup Companies" listed at
their website, they have done a series of press releases outlining
some of the data available.  You may wish to get a copy for more
details.

Just recently, their release "Executive Base Pay Up, Bonuses Down at
Startups" (Aug. 5, 2002) noted that the median base pay for CEOs of
venture-backed companies increased to $2000,000 in the first half of
the year, from $190,000 a year earlier.  Bonuses remained flat.

Venture One notes that health care-related (which includes biotech)
companies have received increased attention from investors and that
salaries were up across the board for that sector.  CEOs at
venture-backed health care companies have a median salary of $215,000,
up from $200,000 a year earlier.

The most-recent release:
http://www.worldatwork.org/newslinenews/generic/html/newsline-aug05-1.html

VentureOne's Sept. 18, 2001 press release:
http://www.ventureone.com/press/archive/SBT10918.pdf

The press release on 2000 trends (Nov. 7, 2000) includes a fair amount
of information on equity positions offered executives:
http://www.ventureone.com/press/3Q00Compensation.pdf


Google search stratey:
"executive compensation" + startup

Also consider using Google to search the VentureOne site, as it
produces a superior indexing of what's available on executive
compensation:
site:www.ventureone.com "executive compensation"


One final note from personal experience.  These numbers are for
venture funded companies.  Frequently in the stages before first-round
funding, compensation structures are different.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

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Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 21 Oct 2002 20:06 PDT

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