In this bubble, if you are joining a funded startup you should not take a below market salary, period. If the bubble bursts, your equity won't matter anyway.
If you are taking a salary cut because you are joining a pre-funded or seed stage company, you better be getting near founder level equity.
We will continue to develop and push our app forward.
To me, the overwhelming benefit of getting into YCombinator would have been the interaction among other founders and advisors. It is less about the money and publicity as it is the access to experience and ideas. I do believe, though, that the community on news.ycomb serves this same role in a less direct way.
We got a no as well. Probably could have spent more time editing/polishing our application but sometimes time gets away from you. Would have loved to get more feedback, though I am sure there were far too many applicants for that.
In this bubble, if you are joining a funded startup you should not take a below market salary, period. If the bubble bursts, your equity won't matter anyway.
If you are taking a salary cut because you are joining a pre-funded or seed stage company, you better be getting near founder level equity.