Elizabeth Yin (co-founder and GP at Hustle Fund) wrote this article back in 2016. Now, prices and housing markets have changed since then. But in general she does still agree with her stance in that article.

So here's the deal: when you first start a company, you (the founder) owns 100% of the business. So whatever the business earns is actually your money. In these early days, it probably makes the most sense to not pay yourself anything (or very little) and put pretty much all the profits back into the business.

As you start to raise your pre-seed and seed-stage rounds, you still own the majority of the business but not the whole thing. You've started to sell off bits of the company to your investors. At this point it probably makes sense to start paying yourself a small salary... still less than market rate, but something.

This is because the long-term benefits to putting money into the business far outweigh the benefits you'll see if you get a higher salary. 

Once you raise your Series A and beyond, when you own less than 50% of the company, you no longer own your business. That's when it becomes more like a job. And this is when it makes sense to pay yourself a salary at market rate.

It's also worthwhile to consider where you're living and where the business is based in the early days. Founders who live in NYC or SF will need to pay themselves more than founders who live in a less expensive city. Those founders are also probably hiring local talent, which means NYC-based employees will cost the company more than, say, Memphis-based employees.