4 ms·

Sounds like these guys kind of flailed around for almost a decade and then jumped on the AI bandwagon. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just surprised someone decid

Sounds like these guys kind of flailed around for almost a decade and then jumped on the AI bandwagon. Nothing wrong with that, I’m just surprised someone decided to bankroll them for so long. Also not sure how successful they’ll be long term, since they’re presumably a wrapper around one of the big three in a highly competitive space.

mcherm 1y ago
> I’m just surprised someone decided to bankroll them for so long. When you are PROFITABLE (but not as profitable as your investors would like) you can run FOREVER without anyone "bankrolling" you. It's a foreign concept in the AI world (and sometimes it feels like it's foreign to the tech startup world) but quite effective.
- maxbond 1y ago
  Even if you are profitable your investors could pressure you to exit to some other company so that they can recoup their investment. But I doubt they were profitable. Going by the article they had about 100 employees and about $2M in revenue before they downsized. Assuming a median salary of $100k that would put their payroll alone at $10M. But the napkin math is kinda beside the point because they did keep raising money [1]. [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/113831-02 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/113831-02
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - LudwigNagasena 1y ago
    Maybe $100k gets you one fresh grad in Bay Area but outside of OECD countries it may get you several middle engineers. I bet most startups outsource their development after the first few core developers.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - maxbond 1y ago
      What do you think would be a better estimate for average salary if we assume heavy offshoring?
      - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
        Depends from country to country. I live in India so I can chip in on the situation I suppose and give my/(India's?) perspective on this. So firstly, it would depend if they are doing remote-job/offshoring directly to a dev or if they are contacting a consultancy instead. A consultancy can seriously bloat the amount of cost but usually non tech are the ones going to a consultancy but in a consultancy very few (like 5%-10%) goes to the actual workers and they are paid from a fresh dev very low amount of money and I would be going on the high end if I said that they paid something like 16k usd for a complete junior and 40k usd would actually put you at a seriously senior level Though even the 16k can make a very decent living in India. My brother works at a company (he freelances as well but parents want security so doesn't do it full time) and he earns around 16k usd from the company but 4x the amount of money through freelancing directly My cousin works at a company and he's working for 4 years now and he could be considered as maybe senior in just a few years and his salary is 30k USD my brother actually works at one such consultancy and he mentions that most of the companies are actually non-tech which go to consultancies so I am assuming that since replit is a tech company they are doing remote-job Now I know that my brother has been approached by companies to do full time but its just risky to work in a startup with the current hiring freeze and he manages to do both somehow I would consider that something like 40-60k (60k as an higher end for a great developer), as always things can even reach 70k sometimes but I am talking on a more average basis of sorts. Off topic but as someone genuinely interested in this craft, (well I am not sure about coding itself, I have coded but I like golang and sys-admin right now, I want to do so much in this software craft and sometimes I am overwhelmed but its so exciting but I genuinely like tinkering/using linux and making software like alternative frontends for some website which blocked me (doubtnut -> doubt.nanotimestamps.org for my own usecase, I code / use LLM's to solve problems I am facing right now or I am curious about and also recently built a custom liveiso for cachy) Gotta go hand copy some papers oof. Have a nice day!

mcherm 1y ago

> I’m just surprised someone decided to bankroll them for so long. When you are PROFITABLE (but not as profitable as your investors would like) you can run FOREVER without anyone "bankrolling" you. It's a foreign concept in the AI world (and sometimes it feels like it's foreign to the tech startup world) but quite effective.

maxbond 1y ago
Even if you are profitable your investors could pressure you to exit to some other company so that they can recoup their investment. But I doubt they were profitable. Going by the article they had about 100 employees and about $2M in revenue before they downsized. Assuming a median salary of $100k that would put their payroll alone at $10M. But the napkin math is kinda beside the point because they did keep raising money [1]. [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/113831-02 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/113831-02
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- LudwigNagasena 1y ago
  Maybe $100k gets you one fresh grad in Bay Area but outside of OECD countries it may get you several middle engineers. I bet most startups outsource their development after the first few core developers.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - maxbond 1y ago
    What do you think would be a better estimate for average salary if we assume heavy offshoring?
    - Imustaskforhelp 1y ago
      Depends from country to country. I live in India so I can chip in on the situation I suppose and give my/(India's?) perspective on this. So firstly, it would depend if they are doing remote-job/offshoring directly to a dev or if they are contacting a consultancy instead. A consultancy can seriously bloat the amount of cost but usually non tech are the ones going to a consultancy but in a consultancy very few (like 5%-10%) goes to the actual workers and they are paid from a fresh dev very low amount of money and I would be going on the high end if I said that they paid something like 16k usd for a complete junior and 40k usd would actually put you at a seriously senior level Though even the 16k can make a very decent living in India. My brother works at a company (he freelances as well but parents want security so doesn't do it full time) and he earns around 16k usd from the company but 4x the amount of money through freelancing directly My cousin works at a company and he's working for 4 years now and he could be considered as maybe senior in just a few years and his salary is 30k USD my brother actually works at one such consultancy and he mentions that most of the companies are actually non-tech which go to consultancies so I am assuming that since replit is a tech company they are doing remote-job Now I know that my brother has been approached by companies to do full time but its just risky to work in a startup with the current hiring freeze and he manages to do both somehow I would consider that something like 40-60k (60k as an higher end for a great developer), as always things can even reach 70k sometimes but I am talking on a more average basis of sorts. Off topic but as someone genuinely interested in this craft, (well I am not sure about coding itself, I have coded but I like golang and sys-admin right now, I want to do so much in this software craft and sometimes I am overwhelmed but its so exciting but I genuinely like tinkering/using linux and making software like alternative frontends for some website which blocked me (doubtnut -> doubt.nanotimestamps.org for my own usecase, I code / use LLM's to solve problems I am facing right now or I am curious about and also recently built a custom liveiso for cachy) Gotta go hand copy some papers oof. Have a nice day!