[harscoat]

before you really get financial traction (from paying users) it should be low (imho around the 50k) as you set the expectations for the rest of the team. One way to still get some cash upfront after the seedround closing is to have in your seed agreement that the company's debt twds you (the amount you invested either in cash or salary not paid) be repaid in a slump sum. You could do the same after the seed: salary should be 80k but you just get 50 and the rest will be repaid as debt owed when Series A comes in.

[helveticaman]

Does this work? Don't VCs make you relinquish on that debt?

[harscoat]

It should work, you can enforce this. You can see that some VCs even encourage founders to offload some of their stocks because it "destresses" the founder (a little bit of money in the bank= more zen) from worrying about money too much to refocus on the business instead.