4 ms·

£30K a year, tax etc. on top of it. Do you do tech business or something else? Office costs, extra overhead, insurance etc. It's really hard to run a company th

£30K a year, tax etc. on top of it. Do you do tech business or something else? Office costs, extra overhead, insurance etc. It's really hard to run a company that cheap. This is not about "offices in manhattan". Even one office in the UK around a decent place for 30 people will be quite expensive to run. I'm just curious, is this is tech company, how many of those people are developers / designers (high skill required tech workers)? How is it really possibly to run a company that cheap in the UK? I would love to hear the things that you do for lowering the costs.

madaxe_again 12y ago
Tech. 22 technical. 8 management. Wouldn't be hanging out here if I made coat-hangers for a living. :) We accrued cash and bought a commercial lease with a decade to run from a bankrupt company - prime real estate in the centre of a creative city. Before here, we based ourselves out of a squat, and after we left agreed a retroactive amount of rates to pay the council to turn a blind eye to our having been there. It really pays to shirk estate agents and to instead do "huh, that building is suddenly empty - let's call the owner". Insurance is also surprisingly cheap, so long as you indemnify yourself against consequential loss, which in our business is a must. "Extra overhead" runs to not much - maybe a few £k a month. Oh, and this isn't included in my figure, but is something EVERYBODY WHO RUNS A TECH BUSINESS IN THE UK SHOULD BE AWARE OF - R&D Tax Credits! HMRC cut us a cheque every April. I'd actually rather we spend a bit more and perhaps become unprofitable for a while, as I want to invest in growth more heavily, but my partner, the loveable tightwad that he is, needs deep justification for every penny spent. And that's the crux of it. Go into business with the tightest person you know, and spend forever fighting about it, and end up with pretty optimal budgetary decisions, as everything has to be thought/fought about.
- Keats 12y ago
  Do you have an example of a project where you got R&D Tax Credits?
  - twic 12y ago
    My previous employer would claim credits on all development of new products. Not maintenance of existing products, not operations costs, and not features that a customer had asked for specifically. But over half of our technical staff were building new apps to expand our reach into new markets, and the management put all of that in for credits. They'd also claim on new features added to existing apps. There was an annual exercise where a couple of poor managers dumped the whole year's stories from the project management tool and classified them all as creditable or not. Not a lot of fun, but the CFO was always happy with the results!

madaxe_again 12y ago

Tech. 22 technical. 8 management. Wouldn't be hanging out here if I made coat-hangers for a living. :) We accrued cash and bought a commercial lease with a decade to run from a bankrupt company - prime real estate in the centre of a creative city. Before here, we based ourselves out of a squat, and after we left agreed a retroactive amount of rates to pay the council to turn a blind eye to our having been there. It really pays to shirk estate agents and to instead do "huh, that building is suddenly empty - let's call the owner". Insurance is also surprisingly cheap, so long as you indemnify yourself against consequential loss, which in our business is a must. "Extra overhead" runs to not much - maybe a few £k a month. Oh, and this isn't included in my figure, but is something EVERYBODY WHO RUNS A TECH BUSINESS IN THE UK SHOULD BE AWARE OF - R&D Tax Credits! HMRC cut us a cheque every April. I'd actually rather we spend a bit more and perhaps become unprofitable for a while, as I want to invest in growth more heavily, but my partner, the loveable tightwad that he is, needs deep justification for every penny spent. And that's the crux of it. Go into business with the tightest person you know, and spend forever fighting about it, and end up with pretty optimal budgetary decisions, as everything has to be thought/fought about.

Keats 12y ago
Do you have an example of a project where you got R&D Tax Credits?
- twic 12y ago
  My previous employer would claim credits on all development of new products. Not maintenance of existing products, not operations costs, and not features that a customer had asked for specifically. But over half of our technical staff were building new apps to expand our reach into new markets, and the management put all of that in for credits. They'd also claim on new features added to existing apps. There was an annual exercise where a couple of poor managers dumped the whole year's stories from the project management tool and classified them all as creditable or not. Not a lot of fun, but the CFO was always happy with the results!