How to save money running a startup

To save money running a startup, follow these tips:<p>1. Hire a competent but old programmer who has debt, and a wife and kids. Pay him well.<p>2. Hire a bunch of interns to work on your code. Pay them badly.<p>3. Let the interns do the unimportant stuff, under the control of the old guy.<p>4. When the mission critical parts of your software come, for example design or scaling issues, bring in freelance consultants to help you do this<p>5. Hire lit major students to write a bunch of content for you. They are cheap and good at writing.<p>6. Release upgrades often and publicize each release as much as you can. You don't need PR.<p>7. Fire anyone who believes he is a rockstar, knows the best way of doing something and insists it has to be done that way, or somehow thinks he is owed something<p>8. Get small offices. Make your workers work short hours, so they have time to do stuff at home, and so that they stay with your company because of the amount of freetime available<p>9. Make your team friendly. If there is a socially akward or shy guy who does not relate with the other members of the team, fire him<p>10. Get a guy whose job is to manage outsourced projects. Outsource as much as you can and hold this guy directly responsible for the results<p>11. Don't go to conferences, don't stay in hotels. Spend to promote your product, not to promote yourself.<p>12. Take the money you make and put it back in company development. Keep the teams small and unified as you grow.<p>13. Spend your ad money on measurable ads like adsense etc. No expensive placement ads. You can optmize then<p>14. Hire people on freelancer contracts. You can save on their benefits as well as the management costs for doing their taxes<p>15. Take the guys in the startup to strip clubs. Get them laid.<p>You wanted to save money, right? If you do the above, you don't need aeron chairs to keep your team happy, productive and cheap. However, it's unsexy, and some people will look down on you.

"1. Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department"<p># tail -f /var/log/messages<p>Oct 15 15:45:47 mike-laptop Bullshit detected.

I find the idea of doing meetings over lunch horrible. The point of lunch is to switch off and recharge so that you can get going again in the afternoon.<p>Plus having an hour to recharge is more effective than 30 minutes. You may save 100 hours a year on lunch, but what do you lose in productivity and morale?

If he's trying to save money, why is he using the word "buy" so much?

What I like about these tips is that they are mostly about buying things that are one-time costs, and avoiding the recurring costs.

the list mostly consists of 'spend/buy this and that (mac, 2nd monitor, aeron, espresso machine, etc) to save more money further'<p>those seem to be in direct opposition to the epitome of startup: steve wozniak<p>"All the best things that I did at Apple came from (a) not having money and (b) not having done it before"

I am in grad school and need to live frugally so tomorrow I am buying a $4,000 espresso machine.

I think there are a lot of weak points in the article.<p>- Outsource all HR, he even calls it a no-brainer. To me outsourcing the well-being of your employees, probably the most important asset you've got is downright stupid.<p>- All this talk about saving five minutes by having in-house great coffee instead of lettin gpeople fo to Starbucks, having meetings over lunch, etc. misses an important point and tells me that this guy has no idea how to deal with human beings. Your employees don't go to Starbucks just to get a coffee, they go to get a break, to ponder over a problem, have an informal meeeting, or something else. It's not about the coffe. Same with lunch. People need breaks, particularly people that make their money by thinking. I read a post by Joel Spolsky where he claims that he probably works around 4 hours a day, the rest of the time he just goofs around trying to get his thoughts together, thinking over a problem, etc. And he seems pretty productive. People aren't machines - if you treat them as such expect results thereafter.<p>Jeez...

The last comment shows me how out of touch Calacanis really is:<p>"Outsource to middle America: There are tons of brilliant people living between San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York who don’t live in a $4,000 one bedroom apartment and pay $8 to dry clean a shirt–hire them!"<p>Hardly anyone pays $4,000 for a one-bedroom in SF, and if they are they're not working for a startup (or shouldn't be). For reference, I pay $1k in rent and have my own room and a backyard in SF.<p>Also, you _need_ to be in the same locale as your colleagues. especially in an early stage startup. You need to see people's facial expressions during brainstorming sessions and after idea pitches. You need to read their moods and work with them on a personal, in-person level.<p>I've worked with outsourced teams in India and the Ukraine, despite the talents of my foreign colleagues things NEVER went as smoothly / quickly as they would have locally. Especially with a fast moving early stage startup, that's of the essence.

Disagree on the phones. Buy a pc, a digium card and a few lines and spend a weekend setting up asterisk. It does not instill me with a lot of confidence when I call a business and get some guys garbled sounding cell phone voicemail instead of "Thanks for calling X...." and being able to dial a real extension. (Even if said extension just forwards to his cell.)

Billions of dollars could be saved by businesses everywhere if they were to migrate away from Microsoft products. It is a fact that Individuals and Businesses alike pay Billions of dollars in Microsoft Software Licensing and Computer Security alone. Clear and viable alternatives exist today in what is termed "Open Source Software". A number of viable alternatives exist under the generic name "linux" in which the expense is optional or "Free". For those individual users requiring additional assistance the optional support License average around $80 U.S. currency. Linux is an extremely "User Friendly" Operating System which by itself is not only easy to install, use and Update, it comes complete with "Open Source" Microsoft Compatible Desktop Utilities to replace those commonly used and relatively expensive applications such as MSWord and MSExcel Word Processing and Spreadsheet applications. In addition to these, a complete array (literally thousands)of readily available, easy to locate, install, use, update or even un-install just by selecting / de-selecting a check box!And most are equally functional to their commercial counterparts!. Applications such as Games, Educational Applications, highly useful Computer Utilities and Internet Applications exist TODAY. Not only is Linux easy to use, is well known as being invulnerable to attack by Computer Viruses. The fact that additional Billions of dollars are spent on System Security as a result of these omnipresent and dangerous Computer Viruses should be enough for the average PC user and business owner alike to see the value at hand. In just minutes, any computer system can be converted to the Linux Operating System by even the least savvy Computer user. As if we need any additional reasons to switch, Linux will outperform Windows which is like going out and buying a faster computer, without actually going anywhere! Do yourself and your pocketbook a huge favor by converting to any of the number of Open-Source Linux Operating Systems. I personally recommend "UBUNTU Linux" for any user. Not only will you have a Desktop Operating System that is much faster and easy to use, you will have removed that "Virus Target" from your PC as well....

I feel like this taints his motives. Prior to this post employees might have felt that Calcanis really cared about them.<p>"Working at Mahalo is sweet. We get Aeron chairs, 2 monitors, free food, free coffee, and free sodas."<p>It's still a sweet deal, but it just doesn't feel as nice when you learn that he was doing these things more for the bottom line.

Most of these make sense, but I don't really see how a 2nd monitor can save half hour a day. Also the $3000 espresso machine might be a little expensive when you can get one for $500 that's pretty decent.

Don’t buy a phone system. Savings? At least $500 a year per person..<p>Uh, maybe if you've never heard of VOIP. $39.95/mo for an entire company plus $0.03/minute.

I know 95% of what Calacanis writes is garbage or just promoting himself/Mahahlo, but these were some great tips.

Yea, I'm curious as to what he would add to this list for running a startup in a recession