Salary Without Sabotage: Compensating Yourself While Preserving Runway

Paying yourself too little can make the business personally unsustainable. Paying too much can shorten runway and weaken future options. This guide helps founders navigate that tension with clear financial criteria. It examines minimum personal requirements, cash reserves, profitability, tax treatment, benefits, debt, and business stage. Readers build a compensation policy that can change with evidence rather than emotion.