Whether a founder takes a salary is not a lifestyle choice first; it is an entity question. The structure you incorporated under decides whether money reaches you through payroll, through draws, or, for a while, not at all. Getting the mechanism wrong creates payroll tax problems that are expensive to unwind, so it is worth knowing which lane you are in.
C corp founders are employees on payroll
If your startup is a C corporation, the Delaware default for venture-backed companies, you are legally an employee of the company you founded. Compensation for your work must come as W-2 wages through a payroll system, with income tax withholding and payroll taxes handled like any hire. You cannot simply wire yourself money from the company account; that is either wages that skipped payroll or a distribution, and both create problems. Distributions from a C corp are dividends: not deductible by the company and taxed again to you, the double tax founders are warned about.
Investors also expect a salary line. After a seed round, founders typically move to modest salaries; below-market is normal early, but the money that does move to a working founder should move as payroll.
LLC founders take draws instead
If you formed an LLC and never elected corporate taxation, the answer flips: you generally cannot be on W-2 payroll of your own single-member LLC. You take owner draws, simple transfers to your personal account, and you are taxed on the company's entire net profit through your personal return, including 15.3% self-employment tax, regardless of how much you actually drew. Draws are not deductible and their size does not change your tax bill; profit does. Multi-member LLC founders receive their share on a Schedule K-1, and an LLC that elects S corp status via Form 2553 moves to the salary-plus-distribution model with a reasonable-compensation requirement.
Deferring salary before revenue
Plenty of founders pay themselves nothing for the first stretch, and for a C corp that is generally fine: there is no law requiring a founder salary while the company is pre-revenue, and burning runway on payroll taxes for money you would immediately loan back rarely makes sense. Two cautions. First, do not work around a zero salary by having the company cover personal expenses; that becomes taxable compensation or a constructive dividend when found. Second, once the company has real revenue or funding and you are working full time, an S corp founder in particular cannot stay at zero forever, since reasonable compensation rules require pay that matches the work.
A useful sequencing for a solo SaaS founder: take nothing while pre-revenue, start a modest W-2 salary when MRR or a funding round can support it, and revisit the number annually. The salary is deductible to a C corp, so once the company is profitable, founder payroll also reduces the corporation's own 21% tax bill. What matters most is that the mechanism matches the entity: payroll for corporations, draws for LLCs, and never an undocumented wire in between.