The "founders don't take salary" myth is destroying founder mental health and skewing decisions.

There's a persistent Indian startup culture norm: founders shouldn't take a salary until profitability. The reasoning is morally clean and operationally destructive. Founders without income make worse decisions, burn out faster, and tie company survival to personal survival in unhealthy ways. The healthier baseline: take a market-aligned founder salary as soon as the company can support it (usually post Series A, sometimes earlier with revenue). Bombarding investors with "we don't take salaries" signals founder-team risk, not commitment. The best Indian VC funds are now pushing this conversation actively in pre-investment diligence.