A few weeks ago I had coffee with an experienced product designer. Let’s call him Carl. He’d been working at a respected San Francisco startup for five years, but he was getting restless. Carl had excellent experience and skills. Heck, the guy was even a decent coder.

I fired off a few emails to several startups that were right up Carl’s alley. One was an almost perfect match–it offered the right design challenges and aligned with Carl’s personal interests. He interviewed with the company the next day and the team was thrilled. In less than 24 hours the CEO sent Carl an offer to be their lead designer.

A so-called ‘Senior UX Designer’ at an SF-based agency is quite possibly a 24-year-old recent graduate earning $60,000 a year.

Unfortunately, the company significantly low-balled him on compensation. Carl was not impressed. He personally felt undervalued, and he worried that the company’s culture might underrate design generally. How did this crucial misstep occur?

For startups, coming up with a fair offer can be difficult. Publicly available data from popular job sites is murky at best. Even when salary charts appear credible, they’re riddled with hidden problems. Be careful, most of the data you will find skews very low.

At Google Ventures, we help our portfolio companies find, interview, and hire senior design talent–more than 40 top-level designers in the last two years alone. We know about what works and are always keen to learn more.

I spent a few days analyzing publicly available salary information to clarify the picture for our portfolio companies and other startups like them. This is what I found.