redguava

There's an important thing that is not covered here. Currency fluctuations.

Assuming you pay people in their own currency (which is useful to make sure they don't pay unnecessary fees, and also that they get a consistent pay each month). How do you keep salaries consistent globally?

Do you adjust them each month to compensate fluctuations? Sucks for those that just got a pay cut.

I don't know the answer, I think the way Buffer does it is the best of the options I've come across so far. I'd like a better solution.

This is great. Well done!

To be successful, you can do nothing poorly. That's the trickiest bit.

If you do any of these poorly, you don't have much chance:

- Product Usefulness

- Usability

- Customer Support

- Pricing

- Advertising/Marketing

- Reliability (eg. uptime)

Just one of those being bad is enough to sink you. I think the hardest part is needing to not drop the ball on any of these things.

Don't just perfect one of them and hope it compensates the others. Our tendency is to work on the ones we're best at, but you just can't afford to neglect anything.

If you want to play the VC/Funding game, don't do it from Australia. I'm okay with that.

That doesn't mean being a Australian startup sucks, my experience is that it's awesome. I wouldn't have it anywhere else.

Just do that crazy thing of getting customers to pay you money and earn more than you spend.

An article on reasons to raise venture capital would be more appropriate. The default should be bootstrapping.

Demo doesn't imply fake features. For me demo would be not my data, perhaps a sample set in there.

I'd have no problem if it said "there's a bunch of features not yet implemented, we have the buttons there to gauge interest and we'll work on the most needed ones".

Are you sure the value you got from the metrics exceeds the bad will generated by annoying your potential customers?

To me it's a lack of respect for your users and their time.

If they are working in your office and they don't have their own laptop, then yes.

Otherwise, it's up to you. It's a nice thing to do, but not necessary.

@macournoyer, reading the comments here, it sounds like your value proposition isn't articulated clearly enough. There's a bunch of mentions of the price and not knowing what they are getting.

In your comments here, you mention the importance of your instruction and teaching, which I think is great. Perhaps make that clearer on the website?

Looks like a good idea to me.

I wonder how much that is just http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring.

If it was set at $20... would $10/$15 have felt right?

Setting up a pay scheme now to handle thousands of employees would be very premature optimization.

Sadly it's more probable to make smoking harmless than expect governments to prohibit it. I guess your suggestion is more feasible.

I want smoking to be illegal. At a minimum in public places and around children.

Of course it can't be calculated objectively.

Only the employee knows the amount that is right for them.

You make an incorrect assumption that causes an incorrect conclusion.

Not all employers want to pay as little as the candidate will accept. I can state this as fact as I am an employer and I do not do that.

As an employer, I want a happy and loyal staff member. Negotiating them down on price doesn't achieve that. I have never offered less than someones initial asking price, and sometimes paid more.

I think it's wrong to assume the employer and employee have differing objectives. We hopefully both want a successful relationship/partnership. Achieving a salary that both are happy with is part of that.

As for your example, again you assume that the employer makes an offer or the employee demands something. Can't it just be a discussion to find the most appropriate salary? That's how I do it.

It's a really complicated thing. I agree the salary should be relative to the amount of value you add. But what a "good salary" is, depends on where you live.

If you do an amazing job, and I pay you an amazing amount. That amazing amount could vary depending on your cost of living.

I agree in a perfect world that you should get paid the same no matter where you are, and globalisation will probably head in that direction. But so will cost of living balancing out too (if people in lower cost of living countries are earning lots more money, the price of things will go up.... supply/demand).

I guess ultimately, when comparing what you pay people, why use the dollar amount as opposed to the benefit to their lives. Shouldn't you be paying everyone an amount that equally benefits them? Why should one person be far greater benefited from their salary? Ultimately it's what you do with the money that matters, not the number on the note.

I'd be fine with that. It's used as a discussion point to arrive at a salary the person is happy with. If your original salary isn't one you want to base it off, that's ok.

As a hirer, I'll always ask what they make now. But I'll also ask are they happy with that salary.

There's no point using it as a basis if they are not, but if they are, it's a good starting point.

It's very hard to do for remote jobs. An appropriate salary is relative to the country you live in.

There are a few complaints here about remote jobs not really being remote (eg. contrained within US borders).

We're looking for a remote Growth Hacker, and we really do mean remote... https://weworkremotely.com/jobs/142.

You can be anywhere in the world, you can work whenever you want. We even just expect 30 hours p/week, with full-time pay.

I know this comment is self-promoting, but we're a small bootstrapped and profitable startup from Australia. It's not easy to get the word out... so am taking the opportunity here.

Thanks!

If I build it myself, it will cost me a lot more and be a lot worse product.

This is their area of expertise, their passion and their business. They'll make a better status page than I would.

If there were defined steps that would always lead to success then we'd know about it and everyone would follow them.

There are so many variables that this will never be the case.

You can only read these types of guides and hope to pick out something that might inspire you or help you realise something that you're doing that you could do better.

Don't underestimate the costs of running any SaaS application. You'll still have decent expenses for:

- Fees to receive payments

- Hosting

- Support services (github, zendesk, etc.)

- Your own salary

I'll bet that not much of that $5k is profit.

Any SaaS company that is making $500k/mo was earning 5k/mo at some point.

Just because they've decided to share their story so far, doesn't mean they think they've hit the jackpot already and are finished.

Taking VC means you need to look for an out. In my mind that's the biggest difference. They don't want to invest in a company to take a portion of profit, they want you to sell your company or go public so they can cash out.

Why try to build two apps at once? One is hard enough.

I disagree with having developers do tech support. In fact I think it's insulting to those that are great at tech support. Tech support is a skill in itself, not just a place to let developers play.

If you really care about support, you'll have people with that expertise doing it.

Also, developing is really something where being in the zone gets the most productivity, and support is usually an intermittent and sporadic distraction, it can be a real productivity killer.

I see why people say this in pricinple, I just don't think it's a good idea in practice.

Fantastic openness. Thanks.

Integrity is a handy thing in business. Just hide the "X amount shown" until it's greater than 10. Don't put a false number there.

When someone asks what your competitive advantage is... and your answer is "all our marketing has been aviation themed"... you're in trouble.

You need to find a real competitive advantage if this is going to succeed.