First, I don't think you were treated fairly. No one should find out at the last second that the company is out of funds and unable to keep you. It should be

First, I don't think you were treated fairly. No one should find out at the last second that the company is out of funds and unable to keep you. It should be a dialog that is on-going for a little bit to give you options and time to prepare etc. Their method and motive was selfish, or inexperienced (myself having done this in the past and having learned my lesson). Speaking from running my own company (and from a bootstrapping perspective), it is hard to be 100% transparent. Likely it is easier if you start that way, but it is hard either way. I also think it is likely easier when you are well funded because Cash on Hand goes a long way to keeping people comfortable. But there are so many close calls when you are starting out as a company that a lot of employees would likely have a really hard time with full transparency unless they also knew there was 12-18 months of runway in front of them. Bootstrapping there are months that start and you don't know where the entire payroll will come from, your job is to keep people focused and find the funds. Many times that means not taking much or any money yourself, to make sure employees are paid. Other times it means having to find another small contract or signup another X people etc by a certain date to cover everything. Partners accept this risk, but employees many times are employees because they fairly don't want that risk. So that is why I think more small businesses and startups don't practice a Buffer level of transparency. BTW -- IMO if a company is constantly having this issue then its time to talk to employees and cut back some. And not wait until the last second as what happened to you. Most other aspects of the transparency is pretty easy to do IMO. Publishing the burn rate, churn, revenue stats etc isn't really that difficult. Publishing peoples actual salaries is a little extreme but publishing the bands and cost of living variances is fair game anywhere. I think when you get into cash flow and cash on hand is where things get harder for a bootstrapped business and is the primary reason most don't publish those numbers to employees until they are quite profitable (if ever).