Actually, there have been a lot of times where I'd spend more of my own money (and have) than I would startup money -- e.g. I'll bring in my personal game systems but wouldn't pay for them with company money, let people use my personal car, etc. That's a rational decision for a founder, especially since behaving that way might encourage others to be cost-conscious (you wouldn't expect employees to do the same thing, but they might be willing to try a software load balancer instead of a $50k F5 if you have the right culture, or at the very least to get the best pricing and terms possible from vendors)