If you're a tech startup, your two biggest costs are labor and infrastructure/hardware. I am aware of many companies where advertising, conferences (throwing t

If you're a tech startup, your two biggest costs are labor and infrastructure/hardware. I am aware of many companies where advertising, conferences (throwing their own), laptops/mice/etc, rent, general office overhead, credit card processing, and about five other things I'm forgetting are still higher than infrastructure/hardware, in addition to direct costs of employment. (Obviously, less true if you run Dropbox, but COGS is looooooooooow in most SaaS companies for a reason.)