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Comment by codewright | Hacker News Reader

I don't think Pittsburgh has the funding to do it. You're looking at a budget of ~$450mm.

I think the funding, rather than the locale, is the blocker here.

How much money do you think it'll take? I'm thinking single-digit millions per year. First class would be about 28 people. So that's $3.5 million per year.

Salary plus tech budget is $125,000. That's half-decent but not great, and by design. I'm looking for entrepreneurs, not salarymen (who'd command $150-250k at the level I'm looking to hire). It's not the extreme low salary of bootstrapping (negative including business expenses) but it's not cozy either. That's sort of what I'm aiming for: a middle path between might-fuck-up-your-family-life-bootstrapping and not-really-an-entrepreneur-VC-funded-salaryman.

I'm also thinking that it would be useful to find private investment with 1:1 matching. So local governments would only have to kick in half the initial funding requirement

But doesn't it cost more than $125k to pay a $125k salary? I've been told that it's about 1:1 if typical benefits are involved. So a $125k salary costs $250k.

Not sure why you'd think benefits are involved here. And a $125k salary does not cost $250k.

It would be great if an HR director could weigh in on how much a $125K salary might cost in total compensation with a "standard benefit package" range for a technologist/programmer/engineer role.

The only other data point is from the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employer Costs for Employee Compensation (BLS ECEC) where it shows at the bottom that benefits accounted for around 30% of total compensation and 70% going to wages & salary[1]. On average, this means that a $125K salary would cost a company $179K overall.

[1] http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ecec.nr0.htm

It doesn't cost that much either. [1]

[1] Ex-CTO

Those ratios are for average salaries, not $125k salaries.

Assuming total compensation of $200K, 1:1 private/public funds, cohort of 28 gives a yearly burn of $5.6M ($2.3M for the local municipal to raise) for, say, 5 years = $28M (3yrs = ~17M) during (or hopefully after) which they want to see a payout coming directly from the AF's revenues.

You mentioned 37.5% earlier, but the city would probably expect you to model this in such a way that X% will be duds, so their return will most likely be much lower than 37.5%. 10x-100x VC-istan-like hits should not be banked on given the sole purpose of the Autonomy Fund is to create medium-growth companies (10%-40% p.a. growth rates).

Perhaps factor in a legal, HR, accounting, IT and facilities teams for AF-backed individuals (i.e. backend G&A organizational infrastructure) @ 10-15% and your baseline burn rate should be adjusted accordingly. Let's say $6.5M per year, of which $3.25M comes from municipal/state/federal public funding.

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