Ok - I read a lot of books about startups (and ordered more here - and certainly will try it myself) and the early stage to seed funding and investor-rounds etcetera. But this what the CEO from Mahalo wrote is (I think) the best on-top view for guys who didn’t considered their balance-sheet and costs while writing a business plan or talking with possible contacts (talk is cheap).

• Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department
• Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year… which is at least $2,000 a year…. which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you’re getting 10-20x return on your investment… and you’ve got a happy team member.
• Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters… invest in it.
• Don’t buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person… 50 people over three years? $75-100k

There is a lot of common sense behind these points, but experience and work environment knowledge/managerial knowledge, too. Clearly - there are points which might not be understandable from an employees perspective. But in times of an recession where money is not that cheap any more as it was before the 2000 tech-bubble or now after the credit crunch - this post and opinion of an CEO who has Goggle and other search sites as competitor makes more sense than ever before November 2007. You need to be a warrior, you need to have a great team, you need to be a minimalist - to run your company on low key cost.

And then there is the evolving thesis from others (Michael Arrington); (which know the industry in-side-out)

I’m not saying you should chain people to the desk. I’m not saying you should make them work 24 hours a day. What I’m saying is that you should hire people who work 24 hours a day because there is nothing else they’d rather do. If you’ve got a product to launch and you’re ultimately trying to disrupt a bigger and better funded company, it’s likely that you are going to need a superhuman effort from the team. I doubt Google’s early employees complained about the hours (and take a wild guess as to why Google gives employees free lunch and free dinners).

And the ones who have their say on the topic and fail Jason on his thesis. Ok - you have to deal with it when you write things like;

• Fire people who are not workaholics. don’t love their work… come on folks, this is startup life, it’s not a game. don’t work at a startup if you’re not into it–go work at the post office or stabucks if you’re not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.

I am not proclaiming that everything is black and white - it’s more like grey in various shadings and other approaches might work too. But it depends more on what budget you have and how far your are to your black balance sheet - this is a real business finance issue. When you have not the money for certain things than you don’t have it and can’t spend it.

And then there is the HR perspective. Start-up life is for realz people - there is nothing in bread and butter. It’s not a 8 to 4 job. You don’t have to deal with corporate bullshit and managerial hierarchy. You applied for such a job in such a company (you can’t called a company in real terms cmon) to create things, to change things, to inspire people. To make the world in any kind of topic a better world to life. And therefor people will remember you and know you. That’s your opportunity. It’s a life-style and suits not everybody.

Take as an example any open source project - who pays this people? Nobody! Why they are spending their evenings and weekends on writing code? Gain experience and learn new stuff, connect with like minded people, get inspired and inspire others, build up your CV (it’s not padding).

And to make sacrifices is a done deal which everyone should know when he makes a step into this industry. Welcome into my world, in the real world of tomorrow!

- my 2p,

Michael.