These guys live in here Melbourne, cost of living is pretty crazy high. Sure, you could get away with paying yourself less than that, but 60k (less business expenses) puts them in the realm of basic office clerk.

Maybe the startup founder's lot in life is to be poor while they are starting up, so could probably do it with less. But they are hardly overstepping the mark.

There are a few schools of thought with founder salaries for early stage startups (assuming you have money to pay salary).

1. Pay yourself the barest minimum you can to survive, which may be 0.

2. Pay yourself just enough that you're not worried about money.

High founder salaries, especially in early stages goes against many investment theses.

Perhaps its a good way to validate the idea / test the market? I wouldn't pay a $1 myself, but if they can get 1,000 people to pay $60, more power to them.

Putting up a high friction point seems like a unintuitive way to validate the idea.

I'm taking the founders at their word--they need the money to launch their product. It just seems like they could do it for less--however I don't have much detail so I'd like to understand the money breakdown.