Are we paid fairly

Executive Summary

After closing its Series A, Nagi Bioscience, a life sciences startup working at the frontier of organism-on-chip technologies, was ready for its next phase of growth. But as the team expanded, so did a very real question: “Are we paying people fairly?”

With no clear framework in place, compensation decisions were hard to explain, let alone scale. This is why Nagi partnered with Sharpmania to build a structure from the ground up: benchmarking salaries, defining job levels, and creating transparent salary bands. The result? A solid, startup-appropriate framework that brought clarity to the team and set the stage for growth with confidence.

About Nagi Bioscience

• Location: St-Sulpice, Switzerland
• Team: 25–30 people across Switzerland, the US, and Europe
• Stage: Early-scale up, post-Series A
• What they do: Nagi develops innovative testing platforms using living micro-organisms to accelerate drug discovery and research.

The Challenge

As new team members joined, compensation conversations became more frequent and harder to navigate. Nagi’s leadership team recognized a few key gaps: 

• Employees were asking valid but difficult-to-answer questions about their salaries
• There was no internal structure to compare roles or ensure fairness
• The company lacked market data to assess its competitiveness

Nagi needed a clear, reliable compensation framework that could grow with the company and support conversations with the team.

The Work

Together with Sharpmania, Nagi co-designed a practical and scalable compensation framework that matched their stage and ambitions. The key steps:

• Job Evaluation: A structured review of all roles to understand their scope and complexity.
• Job Architecture: Defining clear levels and career paths across teams.
• Salary Benchmarking: Mapping roles to market data for an objective view on pay positioning.
• Salary Bands: Creating tailored ranges for each level, grounded in data and company values.
• Outlier Review: Identifying inconsistencies and helping make data-driven recommendations.
• Change Communication: Equipping managers with the tools and messages to share the results transparently.

What Changed

The collaboration brought structure and clarity to an area that had previously been informal and difficult to navigate. The impact was clear:

• Greater transparency: Employees gained understanding of how compensation decisions were made.
• Market alignment: Nagi could see how competitive they were and where to adjust.
• Improved internal alignment: While not every individual agreed with all outcomes, clear and consistent communication ensured internal alignment on expectations.
• Scalable structure: The new framework in place supports future hiring and team growth.

What We learned

• Start before it’s urgent – Putting structure in place early saves time and tension later.
• Keep it practical – Look for framework that fits your stage.
• Be transparent – Open communication builds trust, even when outcomes are challenging.
• Data wins – Market benchmarks cut through bias and guesswork.

What’s Next?

Nagi has a solid foundation in place now: salary reviews are clearer, hiring is more consistent, and internal conversations about compensation are grounded in shared understanding.

Next steps may include performance-linked compensation, deeper benchmarking as the team grows globally, and further alignment with evolving roles. But now, there’s a structure that can handle it and a team that understands it. 

In Their Words

“We worked with Maria Waller at Sharpmania on a salary benchmarking exercise and really appreciated the collaboration. Maria quickly understood where we were as a company and was responsive and supportive throughout. She helped us shape the scope to fit our size and stage, and guided us through both the analysis and how to communicate the outcomes to the team.

The exercise gave us a much clearer picture of our current salary levels, helped align internal expectations, and pointed to what we need to build as we grow. More broadly, it gave us the essential tools to start managing compensation and HR topics with more structure. We’d definitely recommend this kind of exercise to any startup looking to get ahead on compensation early on.”

Thinking about compensation in your startup?

If you are growing fast and feeling the pressure to “get compensation right”, you are not alone. Sharpmania helps startups turn compensation from a guessing game into a strategy. Get in touch, we would love to help.