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I started a company about 10 years ago. We are making money, but not lots. But that was never the point of the enterprise. Me, and my co-founders, created the

I started a company about 10 years ago. We are making money, but not lots. But that was never the point of the enterprise. Me, and my co-founders, created the company for us to be able to work with great colleagues and to limit the work hours. Our employees, including ourselves, are not allowed to work more than 40h/week. We have parties and trips where we invite all of our friends and family etc. We make sure our employees have 80% of full salary for at least 9 months for parental leave. Work-life balance is core to our values. Our employee turn-over is basically zero. And if someone leaves we go out to dinner to thank them, keep in touch and they are always welcome back to our events and parties (also to come back to work for us of course). I understand the idea of going big with a start-up, make tons of money. But there are other goals one can pursue with a start-up that, at least to some, is just as fulfilling. Great job! You still have control and ownership and might be better off in the long run.

TheSmoke 7y ago
nice try, dhh. :-)
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  What is dhh?
  - keiferski 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson
  - TheSmoke 7y ago
    for clarification: that was meant to be a joke. dhh is David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp. they basically run their company just like you, i'd recommend reading their posts.
- jyriand 7y ago
  That was also my first impression. Sounds like someone from Basecamp.
  - surfsvammel 7y ago
    We are based in Sweden. And no, nothing to do with Basecamp. But I’ll sure read up on how they run the company.
qmmmur 7y ago
This is such a breath of fresh air in the tech world. I dream of working for a people over profits org, where value is placed on your compassion and custodianship as a means of getting things done (and enjoying the journey there).
- sho_hn 7y ago
  Then go work for a non-profit. There's a lot of e.g. human rights NGOs needing IT people and having a hard time finding them. I was at a NGO for a while where we interviewed North Korean refugees about execution and burial sites and collected the information in a PostGIS db with QGIS as a frontend and working towards a custom UI plugin for the interview process, and it was very rewarding. Their operations also had a lot of unique security challenges to deal with.
  - petard 7y ago
    I'm not sure if working for an NGO is necessarily better in terms of culture. It seems to me you can have good or bad culture and management either way, regardless whether the purpose of the organization is making profits or not.
    - sho_hn 7y ago
      Definitely. However, by and large in NGOs you will work with people who are intrinsically motivated, and not by their paycheck.
      - petard 7y ago
        From my interaction with people from NGOs, mostly from foreign aid organizations, there seemed to be as many people genuinely trying to make a difference as the ones that are only interested in their own agenda. I would like to think the smaller an organization the easer it is to maintain certain standards and not the other way around.
    - hinkley 7y ago
      Getting talked into working late because your boss is persuasive and his bonus is on the line happens all the time here. Working late because people are dying is a much better justification, but you will burn out just as fast. People who are too earnest about a cause have difficulty pacing themselves. Every org has people who burn the candle at both ends.
woah 7y ago
These responses are common on here, and in my opinion, unhelpful. A conventional Vc funded businesses is supposed to either get big or fail. That is the model. Everyone working on them and everyone investing in them gets that. Advocating for someone to do something completely different by starting a low-growth business is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation.
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  I’m not so sure. I sometimes meet startups, at meet-ups or conferences. Many that I have spoken to seem to just run their startup according to some kind of start-up template. There is an expected trajectory, just as you said. Maybe that doesn’t apply as much here at HN as many have read stories like this plenty before, like you said. But, I bet many don’t even consider that there are completely different goals one can pursue with a startup.
- rvense 7y ago
  Maybe some kid who wants to go it alone will read it and realize that being your own boss does not require buying into the whole "start-up" package.
- bsaul 7y ago
  Don't understand why you got downvoted, because what you're saying is indeed the conventional wisdom : you can't get big without getting big fast , with a lot of VC infused money, and work insane hours. I think the next (current ?) generation is going to question that : values like "durability" and "long term vision" starts to get fashionable again. The old industries were based on "family businesses" where you would take extreme care before letting someone new have shares of the company, where growing was measured in terms of generations, based on reputation and quality of work, and sustainability. And that gave giants, which lasted for generations. I think it's getting clearer and clearer that there are alternatives to "pump and IPO" models, and that they may even be preferable for everybody (founders, employees and customers) except VCs who needs quick cash rotation. Note: maybe what you meant is just "we're talking about VC funded companies, not other types". Still, i think VC will need to take new aspirations into account when looking for next gen companies to fund.
skrebbel 7y ago
I'm convinced it's possible to create a company that looks and feels like yours and still makes it big. The idea that you can only grow quickly when everybody's being pushed into a burnout feels hopelessly outdated to me. (and I'm putting my money where my mouth is: here at TalkJS.com we're VC funded and on a steep growth curve, and we also have sane working hours and good benefits etc etc)
- y7 7y ago
  Sure, if you have plenty of money flowing in (whether it’s VC funds or paying customers) it’s relatively easy to provide good working conditions and benefits. Is it sustainable though? Investors will push for an exit, and once you get bought it’s out of your control. If the buyer is a publicly traded company, its shareholders will mostly care about short-term profits rather than the conditions you provide for your workers.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    The shenanigans and culture drift happen once you need a layer of “middle management”. Their goals are often focused on their own careers rather than the success of the company as a whole.
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  I agree, but I would expect to that growing fast usually means bringing in lots of people over a short amount of time. I’ve never done something like that, but I imagine keeping the culture of the company might be challenging.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  Its very, very, VERY hard to keep such a company culture when you grow company big time. You would effectively have to have people dedicated simply to this task, with massive managerial powers checking all management decisions and keep reminding all folks to stick to them (I can't imagine any other way). Its not only about things on paper like benefits and working hours, but overall company culture, agility to change and corner cases. If you manage that, kudos to you, but you are rather an exception. I've seen it first hand - an amazing, startup-like company, growing super fast, and culture suffered.
incognito_limey 7y ago
This is what I aspire to. Thanks for showing this is possible! It's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially after reading "A company of one". That it's possible to make a good living with friends and not be the next X or Y hypergrowth company. For some context, I am currently working for one of the hottest startups in the world (not hyperbole, we have the metrics to back it up), and I have been here long enough to remember when we could all fit in a small room. The first 2 years were a dream, this last year has been pretty terrible, and coincidently, is when we started our crazy rapid growth. It went from a place where you felt like you were working with your friends, and could have great conversations/humour and learn, to politics, arguments, poorly defined scopes on projects, process for the sake of process, or no process at all, but not knowing whom to ask, and not being empowered enough to sort it out yourself. I realized, and I think I kind of knew this previously, that my happiest work was when I was working with a small team of smart people who could relate to each other. Basically, going to work with my friends. I think after the IPO, it will be time to leave and find/start something similar to what you are doing.
- short_sells_poo 7y ago
  The thing about success is that it's addictive. Particularly with the mindset that you seem to have currently. I'm not judging, and I don't know you, so this is just the feeling I get from your post. You seem to be ambitious and on the trajectory for massive success. It's easy to justify putting in extra hard work now if you tell yourself that the struggle is only temporary. That once this success materializes, you can relax, take it easy and just "work for fun". Some people pull that off. Ultimately though, we are all human, and one thing humans do is get addicted to the adrenaline. Particularly if we come out having accomplished something after the struggle. Particularly those of us who have this innate drive to push the envelope. You might relax for a little while afterwards and savor the fruits of your labor, but soon you'll get restless. You'll yearn for the feeling of acute focus, that rush of adrenaline and that state of being on top of the world when things come together and you pull off something big. This is what drives many already accomplished people to continue. It is a self fulfilling prophecy as well, because it takes this sort of drive to get there in the first place, and it's the same drive that prevents your from ever stopping. Take Musk for example. He has generational wealth. He could sit back, put his money in some safe assets and neither him nor the following 10 generations would have to ever work in their life again. Bezos could have long ago retired and just enjoyed his wealth. The thing is, once you have FU$, it all becomes a game. You no longer need the money, but you still want the feeling of success and prove to yourself that you can do well. You should take care of that drive. Don't let it consume you. It should be a tool, a means to an end, not the thing that defines you wholly.
nabla9 7y ago
Note on terminology. A new company, or new small tech company is not automatically a startup. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html >A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.
- matt_the_bass 7y ago
  My company has always been under 20 people. We’ve developed some unique tech and are the industry leader in our sector. We’re 18 1/2 years old, yet everyone still calls us a start up. WE’RE NOT A START UP! We’re a small tech business.
- nkassis 7y ago
  That's the definition that PG uses but I don't think it's common to the world at large. Usually the difference is between a first stage company and a self sustaining operation. Once revenue is enough to cover costs and the company can essentially run without outside funding it pretty much stops being a startup. Definition on Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp
devonkim 7y ago
I see that your company managed to become the kind of unicorn we all would actually care about. In a system where growth takes precedence over taking care of people and building employee loyalty, something seems desperately wrong
adamzapasnik 7y ago
Sounds very cool! Something I would like to achieve one day :) Thanks for sharing, good to know there are people with similar values that "made it".
karpodiem 7y ago
If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies. Are you the sole founder of this software company? If there are/were other founders, do they also carry the title 'Senior Consultant and Partner'? I've yet to see executive or founder leadership at a software company carry a similar title. Not that titles matter, but I'm just a bit confused on your claim of founding the company vs. what I've seen in the industry with respect to titles.
- lordlic 7y ago
  My eyebrows are practically in orbit. If you believe that, you're being fooled. There is plenty of money to give employees these kinds of benefits, especially in a high-margin business like software. We don't see it very often because VC funding invariably comes with certain expectations about fiscal discipline when it comes to rewarding the rank and file, and because owners of successful bootstrapped startups prioritize taking profits over investing back into their people. But the money is there.
- kace91 7y ago
  > If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies. the 40h/week, paid leave, etc. are minimums set by law in my home country, so I really doubt that.
msadowski 7y ago
Yes! I like your attitude and I think that many companies could use it. I was inspired into thinking along these lines after reading "Let my People Go Surfing" and if I ever start a proper company then I'd love to hold similar values to yours. Right now I'm working as a consultant, early on I decided that I'm going to donate 1% of my revenue to 1% For The Planet. One other value that I chose to follow was that health > work and having this attitude I visit the gym 3 times a week, no matter how things are at my consultancy. I hope that I can keep these values as I move to setting up a proper company out of my activity.
saiya-jin 7y ago
This is something corporations like banking don't fully get (yet) - there is only so much you can achieve with money as reward for work done. Yes if you underpay severely most brilliant people will go elsewhere because mortgages or whatnot. But there is so much more to life than work, and if we spend most of our waking time there, the better and more supportive the environment is, the better for all involved. Things like parental leave support, work from home in reasonable cases/amount (not fan of 100% remote from receiving side in general but there might be exceptions), more informal approach, management that reasonably listens to its employees and so on. Suddenly, motivation to join and work hard is much better.
- agota 7y ago
  I'd question whether a person who values work/life balance, family, empathetic management, etc. would do well on Wall Street. It might be that people who do best in these kinds of occupations are cutthroat sociopaths obsessed with money and power. This means that if you want to attract and retain them, you need to offer them money and power.
- maximente 7y ago
  what i've found working in tech in financial institutions are just more up front and "ruthless" with the reality that you aren't going to have a cushy 10-year type "career" where your output ebbs and flows between, say, 0-20% (new kid, divorce) or 80-100% (new title, new project). obviously one has to be OK with that coming in, but it was made abundantly clear to me that it's not a lifestyle gig. getting laid off in a finance job typically comes with severance and an understanding that it's not your fault, necessarily, just that the project didn't meet expectations, or the bank had a bad quarter, or whatever else. it was made clear up front that in exchange, you get to work on very interesting stuff, have long (9hour M-F) but reasonable and well-planned days (no on-call stuff typically), and an understanding that you share in the profits of the institution (typically via bonuses instead of equity a la google at one point), so have incentive to keep working hard. when compared to startup model that i read about on here a lot (work hella hard then get shafted by equity games), it's honestly refreshing to just get the bottom line up front vs. game playing, loyalty/honor manipulation to work uncompensated, etc. when compared to what i consider a "normal" office job, where you probably work about 4 solidly productive hours per day over the life of your career, it's just more honest about the value of your labor and that it's sort of ridiculous that we have this charade that knowledge workers are consistently doing 8 hours of deep knowledge work every day they are in front of their computer.
not_a_moth 7y ago
I would imagine your zero employee turn-over is more about employee selection. Your company won't get the "I'm going to change the world" hustlers, it will get lifestyle employees. The latter can be good of course, but you won't get access to the really relentless innovators who could totally transform your startup/ create value you didn't think was there.
- meheleventyone 7y ago
  What's the supporting evidence to suggest that's the case?
  - not_a_moth 7y ago
    Well to start, for most of the relentless innovators and world changers, their life is what they work on. Would you disagree with that?
    - meheleventyone 7y ago
      I definitely think that most people who describe themselves that way probably subscribe to the idea that unhealthy working hours are the only way to be innovative. But this isn't so much evidence that your claim about the OPs employees is true as an attempted definition of "relentless innovators and world changers". We could equally baselessly argue relentless innovators who are trying to find the next big thing would prefer a sane working environment so that they can have enough of a life to actually pursue their passion.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  The really relentless innovators would never work for your startup. They’d have their own.
skadamat 7y ago
I'm surprised nobody in this thread has called out StarterStory/IndieHackers as a place to read about stories like this! https://indiehackers.com https://indiehackers.com https://www.starterstory.com/ https://www.starterstory.com/
- patwalls 7y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout! (Starter Story founder)
- sellingwebsite 7y ago
  or https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm
levosmetalo 7y ago
When reading such comment, I'm glad I decided to stay in Europe. Here you don't need to do anything special to have 40 h work weeks, paid parental leave and other benefits mentioned by the poster. The fact that it's not normal, but something to praise is very unfortunate description of many peoples reality.
- Kiro 7y ago
  I agree but it's actually a Swedish company so the comment is a bit misleading. Parental leave with 80% salary is paid for by the government up to 1.5 years.
  - surfsvammel 7y ago
    That’s not the complete picture though. The government pay you in parental leave up to a limit. The most anyone can get is more or less about 2900USD/month for full parental leave. All of our employees make more than that limit, most a lot more. We pay them the difference between what they can get from the government insurance policy up to 80% of their normal salary. We also keep paying for their pension. There we also pay about 80% of what we would otherwise.
- ageyfman 7y ago
  Starting something from nothing and running it yourself, this agency, is a reason in itself to start something. I think it shouldn't be understated that many of us start things because we want to, not because we want to become billionaires of have convenient lifestyles.
- cc81 7y ago
  I don't think many who starts a company stops at 40h though.
  - ska 7y ago
    I think there is a lot of confirmation bias on these sorts of discussions on places like HN. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the number of companies started as lifestyle businesses, freelancing, etc. far outweigh what we think of as "startups" here. Many of them are very explicitly targeting number of hours - I know a bunch of people who went freelance mostly because they can target 30h/wk that way a lot more easily than in traditional employment.
Shinchy 7y ago
That's a great comment, it's very refreshing to hear someone write about a different reason for starting a business and how beneficial it can be.

TheSmoke 7y ago

nice try, dhh. :-)

surfsvammel 7y ago
What is dhh?
- keiferski 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Heinemeier_Hansson
- TheSmoke 7y ago
  for clarification: that was meant to be a joke. dhh is David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder of Basecamp. they basically run their company just like you, i'd recommend reading their posts.
jyriand 7y ago
That was also my first impression. Sounds like someone from Basecamp.
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  We are based in Sweden. And no, nothing to do with Basecamp. But I’ll sure read up on how they run the company.

qmmmur 7y ago

This is such a breath of fresh air in the tech world. I dream of working for a people over profits org, where value is placed on your compassion and custodianship as a means of getting things done (and enjoying the journey there).

sho_hn 7y ago
Then go work for a non-profit. There's a lot of e.g. human rights NGOs needing IT people and having a hard time finding them. I was at a NGO for a while where we interviewed North Korean refugees about execution and burial sites and collected the information in a PostGIS db with QGIS as a frontend and working towards a custom UI plugin for the interview process, and it was very rewarding. Their operations also had a lot of unique security challenges to deal with.
- petard 7y ago
  I'm not sure if working for an NGO is necessarily better in terms of culture. It seems to me you can have good or bad culture and management either way, regardless whether the purpose of the organization is making profits or not.
  - sho_hn 7y ago
    Definitely. However, by and large in NGOs you will work with people who are intrinsically motivated, and not by their paycheck.
    - petard 7y ago
      From my interaction with people from NGOs, mostly from foreign aid organizations, there seemed to be as many people genuinely trying to make a difference as the ones that are only interested in their own agenda. I would like to think the smaller an organization the easer it is to maintain certain standards and not the other way around.
  - hinkley 7y ago
    Getting talked into working late because your boss is persuasive and his bonus is on the line happens all the time here. Working late because people are dying is a much better justification, but you will burn out just as fast. People who are too earnest about a cause have difficulty pacing themselves. Every org has people who burn the candle at both ends.

woah 7y ago

These responses are common on here, and in my opinion, unhelpful. A conventional Vc funded businesses is supposed to either get big or fail. That is the model. Everyone working on them and everyone investing in them gets that. Advocating for someone to do something completely different by starting a low-growth business is somewhat irrelevant to the conversation.

surfsvammel 7y ago
I’m not so sure. I sometimes meet startups, at meet-ups or conferences. Many that I have spoken to seem to just run their startup according to some kind of start-up template. There is an expected trajectory, just as you said. Maybe that doesn’t apply as much here at HN as many have read stories like this plenty before, like you said. But, I bet many don’t even consider that there are completely different goals one can pursue with a startup.
rvense 7y ago
Maybe some kid who wants to go it alone will read it and realize that being your own boss does not require buying into the whole "start-up" package.
bsaul 7y ago
Don't understand why you got downvoted, because what you're saying is indeed the conventional wisdom : you can't get big without getting big fast , with a lot of VC infused money, and work insane hours. I think the next (current ?) generation is going to question that : values like "durability" and "long term vision" starts to get fashionable again. The old industries were based on "family businesses" where you would take extreme care before letting someone new have shares of the company, where growing was measured in terms of generations, based on reputation and quality of work, and sustainability. And that gave giants, which lasted for generations. I think it's getting clearer and clearer that there are alternatives to "pump and IPO" models, and that they may even be preferable for everybody (founders, employees and customers) except VCs who needs quick cash rotation. Note: maybe what you meant is just "we're talking about VC funded companies, not other types". Still, i think VC will need to take new aspirations into account when looking for next gen companies to fund.

skrebbel 7y ago

I'm convinced it's possible to create a company that looks and feels like yours and still makes it big. The idea that you can only grow quickly when everybody's being pushed into a burnout feels hopelessly outdated to me. (and I'm putting my money where my mouth is: here at TalkJS.com we're VC funded and on a steep growth curve, and we also have sane working hours and good benefits etc etc)

y7 7y ago
Sure, if you have plenty of money flowing in (whether it’s VC funds or paying customers) it’s relatively easy to provide good working conditions and benefits. Is it sustainable though? Investors will push for an exit, and once you get bought it’s out of your control. If the buyer is a publicly traded company, its shareholders will mostly care about short-term profits rather than the conditions you provide for your workers.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  The shenanigans and culture drift happen once you need a layer of “middle management”. Their goals are often focused on their own careers rather than the success of the company as a whole.
surfsvammel 7y ago
I agree, but I would expect to that growing fast usually means bringing in lots of people over a short amount of time. I’ve never done something like that, but I imagine keeping the culture of the company might be challenging.
saiya-jin 7y ago
Its very, very, VERY hard to keep such a company culture when you grow company big time. You would effectively have to have people dedicated simply to this task, with massive managerial powers checking all management decisions and keep reminding all folks to stick to them (I can't imagine any other way). Its not only about things on paper like benefits and working hours, but overall company culture, agility to change and corner cases. If you manage that, kudos to you, but you are rather an exception. I've seen it first hand - an amazing, startup-like company, growing super fast, and culture suffered.

incognito_limey 7y ago

This is what I aspire to. Thanks for showing this is possible! It's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, especially after reading "A company of one". That it's possible to make a good living with friends and not be the next X or Y hypergrowth company. For some context, I am currently working for one of the hottest startups in the world (not hyperbole, we have the metrics to back it up), and I have been here long enough to remember when we could all fit in a small room. The first 2 years were a dream, this last year has been pretty terrible, and coincidently, is when we started our crazy rapid growth. It went from a place where you felt like you were working with your friends, and could have great conversations/humour and learn, to politics, arguments, poorly defined scopes on projects, process for the sake of process, or no process at all, but not knowing whom to ask, and not being empowered enough to sort it out yourself. I realized, and I think I kind of knew this previously, that my happiest work was when I was working with a small team of smart people who could relate to each other. Basically, going to work with my friends. I think after the IPO, it will be time to leave and find/start something similar to what you are doing.

short_sells_poo 7y ago
The thing about success is that it's addictive. Particularly with the mindset that you seem to have currently. I'm not judging, and I don't know you, so this is just the feeling I get from your post. You seem to be ambitious and on the trajectory for massive success. It's easy to justify putting in extra hard work now if you tell yourself that the struggle is only temporary. That once this success materializes, you can relax, take it easy and just "work for fun". Some people pull that off. Ultimately though, we are all human, and one thing humans do is get addicted to the adrenaline. Particularly if we come out having accomplished something after the struggle. Particularly those of us who have this innate drive to push the envelope. You might relax for a little while afterwards and savor the fruits of your labor, but soon you'll get restless. You'll yearn for the feeling of acute focus, that rush of adrenaline and that state of being on top of the world when things come together and you pull off something big. This is what drives many already accomplished people to continue. It is a self fulfilling prophecy as well, because it takes this sort of drive to get there in the first place, and it's the same drive that prevents your from ever stopping. Take Musk for example. He has generational wealth. He could sit back, put his money in some safe assets and neither him nor the following 10 generations would have to ever work in their life again. Bezos could have long ago retired and just enjoyed his wealth. The thing is, once you have FU$, it all becomes a game. You no longer need the money, but you still want the feeling of success and prove to yourself that you can do well. You should take care of that drive. Don't let it consume you. It should be a tool, a means to an end, not the thing that defines you wholly.

nabla9 7y ago

Note on terminology. A new company, or new small tech company is not automatically a startup. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html >A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

matt_the_bass 7y ago
My company has always been under 20 people. We’ve developed some unique tech and are the industry leader in our sector. We’re 18 1/2 years old, yet everyone still calls us a start up. WE’RE NOT A START UP! We’re a small tech business.
nkassis 7y ago
That's the definition that PG uses but I don't think it's common to the world at large. Usually the difference is between a first stage company and a self sustaining operation. Once revenue is enough to cover costs and the company can essentially run without outside funding it pretty much stops being a startup. Definition on Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp

devonkim 7y ago

I see that your company managed to become the kind of unicorn we all would actually care about. In a system where growth takes precedence over taking care of people and building employee loyalty, something seems desperately wrong

adamzapasnik 7y ago

Sounds very cool! Something I would like to achieve one day :) Thanks for sharing, good to know there are people with similar values that "made it".

karpodiem 7y ago

If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies. Are you the sole founder of this software company? If there are/were other founders, do they also carry the title 'Senior Consultant and Partner'? I've yet to see executive or founder leadership at a software company carry a similar title. Not that titles matter, but I'm just a bit confused on your claim of founding the company vs. what I've seen in the industry with respect to titles.

lordlic 7y ago
My eyebrows are practically in orbit. If you believe that, you're being fooled. There is plenty of money to give employees these kinds of benefits, especially in a high-margin business like software. We don't see it very often because VC funding invariably comes with certain expectations about fiscal discipline when it comes to rewarding the rank and file, and because owners of successful bootstrapped startups prioritize taking profits over investing back into their people. But the money is there.
kace91 7y ago
> If you can afford to give your employees these benefits your profit margins are vastly larger than most software companies. the 40h/week, paid leave, etc. are minimums set by law in my home country, so I really doubt that.

msadowski 7y ago

Yes! I like your attitude and I think that many companies could use it. I was inspired into thinking along these lines after reading "Let my People Go Surfing" and if I ever start a proper company then I'd love to hold similar values to yours. Right now I'm working as a consultant, early on I decided that I'm going to donate 1% of my revenue to 1% For The Planet. One other value that I chose to follow was that health > work and having this attitude I visit the gym 3 times a week, no matter how things are at my consultancy. I hope that I can keep these values as I move to setting up a proper company out of my activity.

saiya-jin 7y ago

This is something corporations like banking don't fully get (yet) - there is only so much you can achieve with money as reward for work done. Yes if you underpay severely most brilliant people will go elsewhere because mortgages or whatnot. But there is so much more to life than work, and if we spend most of our waking time there, the better and more supportive the environment is, the better for all involved. Things like parental leave support, work from home in reasonable cases/amount (not fan of 100% remote from receiving side in general but there might be exceptions), more informal approach, management that reasonably listens to its employees and so on. Suddenly, motivation to join and work hard is much better.

agota 7y ago
I'd question whether a person who values work/life balance, family, empathetic management, etc. would do well on Wall Street. It might be that people who do best in these kinds of occupations are cutthroat sociopaths obsessed with money and power. This means that if you want to attract and retain them, you need to offer them money and power.
maximente 7y ago
what i've found working in tech in financial institutions are just more up front and "ruthless" with the reality that you aren't going to have a cushy 10-year type "career" where your output ebbs and flows between, say, 0-20% (new kid, divorce) or 80-100% (new title, new project). obviously one has to be OK with that coming in, but it was made abundantly clear to me that it's not a lifestyle gig. getting laid off in a finance job typically comes with severance and an understanding that it's not your fault, necessarily, just that the project didn't meet expectations, or the bank had a bad quarter, or whatever else. it was made clear up front that in exchange, you get to work on very interesting stuff, have long (9hour M-F) but reasonable and well-planned days (no on-call stuff typically), and an understanding that you share in the profits of the institution (typically via bonuses instead of equity a la google at one point), so have incentive to keep working hard. when compared to startup model that i read about on here a lot (work hella hard then get shafted by equity games), it's honestly refreshing to just get the bottom line up front vs. game playing, loyalty/honor manipulation to work uncompensated, etc. when compared to what i consider a "normal" office job, where you probably work about 4 solidly productive hours per day over the life of your career, it's just more honest about the value of your labor and that it's sort of ridiculous that we have this charade that knowledge workers are consistently doing 8 hours of deep knowledge work every day they are in front of their computer.

not_a_moth 7y ago

I would imagine your zero employee turn-over is more about employee selection. Your company won't get the "I'm going to change the world" hustlers, it will get lifestyle employees. The latter can be good of course, but you won't get access to the really relentless innovators who could totally transform your startup/ create value you didn't think was there.

meheleventyone 7y ago
What's the supporting evidence to suggest that's the case?
- not_a_moth 7y ago
  Well to start, for most of the relentless innovators and world changers, their life is what they work on. Would you disagree with that?
  - meheleventyone 7y ago
    I definitely think that most people who describe themselves that way probably subscribe to the idea that unhealthy working hours are the only way to be innovative. But this isn't so much evidence that your claim about the OPs employees is true as an attempted definition of "relentless innovators and world changers". We could equally baselessly argue relentless innovators who are trying to find the next big thing would prefer a sane working environment so that they can have enough of a life to actually pursue their passion.
Aeolun 7y ago
The really relentless innovators would never work for your startup. They’d have their own.

skadamat 7y ago

I'm surprised nobody in this thread has called out StarterStory/IndieHackers as a place to read about stories like this! https://indiehackers.com https://indiehackers.com https://www.starterstory.com/ https://www.starterstory.com/

patwalls 7y ago
Thanks for the shoutout! (Starter Story founder)
sellingwebsite 7y ago
or https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm https://discuss.bootstrapped.fm

levosmetalo 7y ago

When reading such comment, I'm glad I decided to stay in Europe. Here you don't need to do anything special to have 40 h work weeks, paid parental leave and other benefits mentioned by the poster. The fact that it's not normal, but something to praise is very unfortunate description of many peoples reality.

Kiro 7y ago
I agree but it's actually a Swedish company so the comment is a bit misleading. Parental leave with 80% salary is paid for by the government up to 1.5 years.
- surfsvammel 7y ago
  That’s not the complete picture though. The government pay you in parental leave up to a limit. The most anyone can get is more or less about 2900USD/month for full parental leave. All of our employees make more than that limit, most a lot more. We pay them the difference between what they can get from the government insurance policy up to 80% of their normal salary. We also keep paying for their pension. There we also pay about 80% of what we would otherwise.
ageyfman 7y ago
Starting something from nothing and running it yourself, this agency, is a reason in itself to start something. I think it shouldn't be understated that many of us start things because we want to, not because we want to become billionaires of have convenient lifestyles.
cc81 7y ago
I don't think many who starts a company stops at 40h though.
- ska 7y ago
  I think there is a lot of confirmation bias on these sorts of discussions on places like HN. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that the number of companies started as lifestyle businesses, freelancing, etc. far outweigh what we think of as "startups" here. Many of them are very explicitly targeting number of hours - I know a bunch of people who went freelance mostly because they can target 30h/wk that way a lot more easily than in traditional employment.

Shinchy 7y ago

That's a great comment, it's very refreshing to hear someone write about a different reason for starting a business and how beneficial it can be.