5 ms·

Almost certainly not. 200k uniques per month (from Compete.com). Call it 3 page views per person (average). 600k page views. They charge $3/CPM for ads (that

Almost certainly not. 200k uniques per month (from Compete.com). Call it 3 page views per person (average). 600k page views. They charge $3/CPM for ads (that's $3/1000 views). Say they average showing 2 ads on every page view (I doubt they have that much paid inventory, but pretend they do). That's $6 earned for every 1000 page views, or $3600 per month. Double or triple any of the numbers in the formula and I still think you aren't in the ballpark. These are pure wag #s, of course. On the cost side, say that 1 fully loaded dev on starvation wages in the Valley costs $10k/mo (taxes, benefits, costs on top of an $80k/yr salary). Hard to tell with their about page, but it looks like they have 3ish FTEs. Add in office (dunno), servers (?), contract folks (legal, accounting, etc), and I bet you have a burn rate of $30k-70k/mo. If they are getting paid market rate, on the high side of that.

jamiequint 18y ago
What are you calculating as dev costs? I've found that good healthcare + FICA + SECA + 401k costs about 15%-20% overhead on salary, not anywhere near 50%. ($120k/$80k = 1.5) In any case, I agree with the general analysis.
- webwright 18y ago
  Yaw I was rolling in stuff like phone costs, parking costs, etc. Really, you ought to include every single expense associated with that employee for a proper analysis, but yaw-- it's probably a touch heavy.
petercooper 18y ago
The male median income in Santa Clara County is $56,240. 42% above median is "starvation wages"? Even the median income in Palo Alto is only about $90k.
- webwright 18y ago
  Yaw, that was hyperbole-- starvation wages for a dev (i.e. way below market value) was what I meant. Generally you calculate a FTE at 1.5 - 2.5x their salary in terms of fully loaded cost (taxes, benefits, minimal overhead). In this cast, I was thinking $80. Do you think that team (or any funded startup team) earns less in San Francisco?

jamiequint 18y ago

What are you calculating as dev costs? I've found that good healthcare + FICA + SECA + 401k costs about 15%-20% overhead on salary, not anywhere near 50%. ($120k/$80k = 1.5) In any case, I agree with the general analysis.

webwright 18y ago
Yaw I was rolling in stuff like phone costs, parking costs, etc. Really, you ought to include every single expense associated with that employee for a proper analysis, but yaw-- it's probably a touch heavy.

petercooper 18y ago

The male median income in Santa Clara County is $56,240. 42% above median is "starvation wages"? Even the median income in Palo Alto is only about $90k.

webwright 18y ago
Yaw, that was hyperbole-- starvation wages for a dev (i.e. way below market value) was what I meant. Generally you calculate a FTE at 1.5 - 2.5x their salary in terms of fully loaded cost (taxes, benefits, minimal overhead). In this cast, I was thinking $80. Do you think that team (or any funded startup team) earns less in San Francisco?