Assuming it is financially viable and healthy, founders should be paid around the same as some of the more expensive hires in the company. If the company is hir

Assuming it is financially viable and healthy, founders should be paid around the same as some of the more expensive hires in the company. If the company is hiring talent that asks for e.g. 300k total comp, but founders are left behind at say 100k, it gets increasingly distasteful to hire people that probably should be hired because not everyone of these 300k total comp hot shots end up working out for the company (and need to be eventually let go). Down the line, this in my experience leads to poor hiring decisions where founders get increasingly frustrated of the discrepancy between their pay and that of hired talent and start opting for people whose ask is closer to what the founders are being paid (when they infact should really go for the best available talent that the company could afford). In early(er) stage startups the situation is of course different, but once there is revenue and maybe larger capital injections from VCs, it is my experience that compensation committees or who ever is deciding founders salaries, should make sure founders are not left too far behind compared to what new hires are being paid.