You often hear about founder salaries being set intentionally low by VCs to keep founders hungry.
While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.
For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.
Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.
We've kind of had the hat-trick of weasely-ness going on recently. They get overworked, underpaid, and then the promise of a big payout at the end is diluted away by investors who were barely involved beyond sloshing a bunch of other people's money in their general direction.
I don't like industries that institutionalize the consumption of individuals enthusiasm or altruism. We've essentially lost medicine to the latter and it sucks to see the startup scene consumed by the former.
While I don't dispute the power of stress and pressure to light a fire under someone's ass, I don't think it should come in the form of a person's livelihood.
For example, it's not hard to imagine founder(s) that have been working for years on something with no pay, putting them far behind their traditionally-employed peers. They may even have family obligations on top of that. Proceeding to then pay them low wages in the interest of motivation isn't exactly the best idea.
Granted, I do tend to agree with the ethos of having the founder being the lowest-paid employee in the company. Ideally that just ensures everyone else is paid really, really well.