Yes they should pay themselves market rates (for their skillset, eg if they could get 200k as a dev). The founder's bargain is not a great one otherwise, you ar

Yes they should pay themselves market rates (for their skillset, eg if they could get 200k as a dev). The founder's bargain is not a great one otherwise, you are getting a relatively small budget to pull off a miracle with a performance incentive that has a small chance of being very good. If you were doing something similar in an internal role, you would probably have more budget and safety net, and have to work less. Not to imply it isn't worth it, but a lot of the time, especially with single digit millions funding rounds, it's a ton of work and personal responsibility for not that much money or budget (lots of managers would control way more). VCs are getting a good deal if they think you're going to work for anything materially below market.