My point is that this is not the case. I don't know anyone taking a big pay cut to work at a startup unless they are a very, very early employee, essentially a

My point is that this is not the case. I don't know anyone taking a big pay cut to work at a startup unless they are a very, very early employee, essentially a co-founder. A company's seed round might be $2M these days (this used to be an A round) and A rounds are easily $6-8M. It's hard to justify not paying someone market rate when you have $2M in the bank and a plan that says you're going to use it to hire engineers.