It sounds like you know what you want to do. All I can do is share with you my experience. I haven't had a "job" in 2 years. It's been the happiest time of my life physically, emotionally and financially.

I knew quickly after getting a job that I wanted to do a startup. I read TechCrunch every day so I thought I knew something. After a couple of jobs and 6 years later I was still super comfy at my corporate job. But I hated it. I came to realize one day that life is meant to be lived right freaking now. So I left, all of a sudden, one day.

Initially, doing a startup with no money really sucked. You just watch your savings go down and to the right. But it taught me an important lesson really early. How important cash flow is. It forced me to think about making money as soon as possible.

So, I wouldn't look at it in terms of taking a pay cut. In fact, you can decide for yourself how much you want to pay yourself. To supplement that income, assuming that you're now good at sales, you can do a consulting engagement when you want a nice bump in cash. It's great when you want to go work on your startup when you're in a different country for a little while.

To get to that step wasn't easy for me, however. It was a lot of god damn work. Before turning things around I drained my savings and built up credit card debt. I made many mistakes and lost lots of money before having any small amounts of success.