I would take the decision based on tax law in your country.
If you live in the UK the answer to this is almost always yes. Even if that means making a personal loan to the company so it can pay your salary (at least up to the roughly £10k tax free allowance).
Additionally the UK does R&D tax rebates and since almost all of your salary can be attributed to R&D in the early days you can get cash back from HMRC even if you are pre-revenue. But if you don't pay yourself a salary you can't claim this back as R&D.
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I would take the decision based on tax law in your country.
If you live in the UK the answer to this is almost always yes. Even if that means making a personal loan to the company so it can pay your salary (at least up to the roughly £10k tax free allowance).
Additionally the UK does R&D tax rebates and since almost all of your salary can be attributed to R&D in the early days you can get cash back from HMRC even if you are pre-revenue. But if you don't pay yourself a salary you can't claim this back as R&D.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/corporation-tax-research-and-dev...
Anyway no matter where you live the answer to your question is probably best answered by an accountant.