>"I received a comment that this is untrue for startups by someone today. For a funded startup which has enough engineers to warrant a foosball table, the company payroll is well north of $100,000 a month."
That has to cover everything for about half a year, including developers, artists, lawyers, rent, travel expenses, regulatory costs, etc... And we've made it go pretty far and will likely raise a much larger round in the near future. I'm sure everyone at the company would love to be making more money, especially those who have worked in richer countries. However, even a couple of developers pushing for the kinds of salaries that pattio11 is would mean the start-up burns its cash, the founders lose their invested time and money and worst of all, we don't improve kids' education.
Of course there is always the chance that those two guys have such beastly skills that they can get us market dominance (and profits or a much larger investment) before that happens. Would you take that gamble?
Disclosure: I don't speak for the company, I'm not privy to top level strategy discussions and I don't own any of it or represent it, etc... I do like what we're doing, though.
The flipside is that maybe the execs aren't good enough to get the kind of funding necessary to build the company effectively, or that the business idea (beyond "improving kids' education") is not viable in its current implementation path.
One of the founders has successfully sold a start-up in China in the past and the CTO has sold 2 in the US. The product fit still isn't 100%, though. The business has gone through a couple of pivots just in the time I've been there.
It should go without saying that before hitting market fit is a terrible time to take on overly mercenary employees. Goal #1 is to survive off of the money long enough to reach that point.
Goal #1 should be to get to that point, goal #2 being to be able to pay someone else to do it. Goal #1 only involves paying someone if you can't do it yourself, and if that is so, you have to achieve goal #2 to an extent that it ensures goal #1.
I'm 90% sure that was in reference to this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3499480
Our most recent round of funding at the start-up where I'm working was 750k. (http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/24/smartots-raises-750000-offe...)
That has to cover everything for about half a year, including developers, artists, lawyers, rent, travel expenses, regulatory costs, etc... And we've made it go pretty far and will likely raise a much larger round in the near future. I'm sure everyone at the company would love to be making more money, especially those who have worked in richer countries. However, even a couple of developers pushing for the kinds of salaries that pattio11 is would mean the start-up burns its cash, the founders lose their invested time and money and worst of all, we don't improve kids' education.
Of course there is always the chance that those two guys have such beastly skills that they can get us market dominance (and profits or a much larger investment) before that happens. Would you take that gamble?
Disclosure: I don't speak for the company, I'm not privy to top level strategy discussions and I don't own any of it or represent it, etc... I do like what we're doing, though.