[sytelus]

I would argue exact opposite. If you have family and mortgage, you most definitely don't want to go seek funding unless you are willing to lower living standards for your family. Funding will almost always come with significant cut on your income.

So if you do have family and mortgage, the best route for you is a long slow crawl. This means, you do your regular job and then burn midnight oil to do a single person startup. With 2X more determination as well as 4X longer time than typical startup, you might find yourself in a year or two with a product that is compelling and convincing. By this time lots of risks had been absorbed by you and VC/Angels would be far more in favor for the terms that allows you to continue your income levels.

Larry Ellison started Oracle pretty much this way and so many other founders who started out later in life with lots of financial obligations hanging on their heads.

[argonaut]

Why do you think that's the opposite? Nothing is stopping you from paying yourself a six-figure salary after taking investment.

[cookiecaper]

Many investors will do whatever they can to stop you. I've personally interacted with a few of them, who've instructed me that if I took their money, I should not "take anything more out of the company than what's required to eat, sleep, drink". Of course, their ultimate ability to enforce that may be questionable, but the guys 'round these parts are certainly not shy about their expectation that founders live on practically nothing.

[argonaut]

There are good investors and there are bad investors.

Good investors won't take board control after a seed financing and will understand if someone with a family takes a $100k+ salary.

Now, if you're a 20-something who can survive on ramen, a mattress on the floor, and internet, investors will be very suspicious of you taking a $150k salary.

Expectations shift.

[cookiecaper]

Well man, send some of your good investors to Salt Lake. We need them up here.