There was a time where I thought the same way: That the founders should reduce their salaries to basically minimum wage until the company is profitable. I belie

There was a time where I thought the same way: That the founders should reduce their salaries to basically minimum wage until the company is profitable. I believed it was the right and honorable thing to do, while also signaling to investors that we were serious and would not "take (their) money out" of the company until it was appropriate. The problem is that investors are not driven by honor and if things go bad one day they will leave you with nothing and not have your back. You are also always exposed to a higher legal risk and things are a lot easier when you have the savings to pay for counsel in such a situation. The investors even tried to leverage the fact that we had zero savings to force us to agree to very unfavorable terms. I still believe a founder should demonstrate commitment and not unnecessarily drain the startup of resources, especially early on. But you don't have to earn minimum wage for that. At my current startup, the founders are the lowest paid team members, but in today's world of high developer salaries that still plenty to live comfortably and build some savings. I also believe that once a startup starts having significant growth/revenue or profits, founders should use one of the subsequent fundraising rounds to set aside a safety cushion for themselves - not a huge payout, but maybe a years salary or so. This levels the playing field with investors as rounds and valuations grow and enable the founders to make decisions that are not driven by them being afraid of their livelihoods/living expenses/family. In difficult times you want to have founders who keep a cool head and make decisions that are best for the company and not for themselves. There is often a phase in the beginning where you a bootstrapping/just starting out/don't have investors yet where there just isn't any money to pay yourself and there isn't much one can do about it except live of savings/family and reduce personal spending (like in this case). But that phase should end once the startup is in a better financial situation. In the end, founders are expected to work a lot, prioritize the company over personal matters and take a discounted salary. In general that's fine, but we ought to recognize that there should be balance. You don't have to ridiculously overwork yourself be successful and it's OK to draw an livable salary, take occasional holidays and spend time with family. P.S.: The industry standard in the VC industry is that the general partners collect a yearly management fee of about 2%. For larger funds, that's a lot of money and I've never heard anyone demanding that GPs don't pay themselves a salary and instead only receive the carry (percentage of profits after paying the investors/limited partners) in case the fund performs well a few years down the line. Instead, they always get the management fee (=founders salary) plus the carry (~20% of profits), the later possibly being significantly larger than the management fee if the fund performed very well (=successful exit). If they can live comfortably from their profession, so should the founders.