Cost of Not Hiring
The median founding-marketer role has been open 53 days. The salary you save while the seat is empty is real, and small. The growth the seat exists to produce is the number that matters. Put your own figures in — in dollars, pounds or euros — and see what every open day is costing you.
- Growth arriving 53 days later
- $581k $4.0m of ARR over 12 months = $10,965 a day. Not cash out of the bank — but it is the reason you’re hiring.
- Founder time on the search
- $10k 6 h a week at $150 an hour, for 53 days. This one is real money: hours you’re paying yourself for that aren’t going into the business.
- Cost of not hiring so far
- $591k Growth delayed plus founder time. The salary you’re not paying is not in this number.
- For reference: the seat you budgeted for
- $48k $175,000 × 1.30 ÷ 250 working days = $910 a day. You’re saving this, not spending it — it’s the value of the work you decided was worth paying for and aren’t getting.
Defaults are the medians from the Founder's Guide research: a $175k posted mid-point and 53 days open. Method: the ARR the plan attributes to the seat, spread evenly over the plan, times the days it is delayed; plus founder time at the rate you set. The budgeted-seat line uses the vacancy-coverage method (loaded salary ÷ 250 × days open) and is shown for comparison only. Time-to-fill benchmarks: LinkedIn Talent Trends 2025 (growth marketing 48 days, marketing manager 52), SHRM 2025 (44 days average; nearly 40% of senior roles exceed 90).
How it works
Two things are added up. Founder time: the hours a week you spend on the search, at whatever you think an hour of yours is worth, for every day the role is open. Growth arriving later: the ARR your plan attributes to this hire, spread evenly over the plan, times the days the plan is delayed because nobody is in the seat. Neither is a cheque you write, but the second one is the reason the role exists.
The dashed line at the bottom is the value of the seat itself — the loaded salary divided by 250 working days, times days open. You are not paying that salary, so it is not a cost; it is shown so you can see what you decided the work was worth against what the delay is costing.
The defaults come from our research into 169 live founding-marketer roles, written up in The Founder’s Guide To Hiring Your First Marketer: median posted mid-point $175k, median age 53 days, 29% open past 90.
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