commentary on Calacanis and Cuban

http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips

Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department
- repurpose your old computers and run linux.

Buy second monitors for everyone, they will save at least 30 minutes a day, which is 100 hours a year... which is at least $2,000 a year.... which is $6,000 over three years. A second monitor cost $300-500 depending on which one you get. That means you're getting 10-20x return on your investment... and you've got a happy team member.
- good advice, i can attest to using dual monitors adding leagues of productivity - if it's excel spreadsheets across monitors or code/trace/webpage across the board.

Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy. Going out for food or ording in takes at least 20-60 minutes more than walking up to the buffet and eating. If you do meetings over lunch you also save that time. So, 30 minutes a day across say four days a week is two hours a week... which is 100 hours a year. You get the idea.
-yeah definitely no need to have meetings - you should be in a semi-meeting - always synched anyways

Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs. Tables are a complete rip off. We buy stainless steel restaurant tables that are $100 and $600 Areon chairs. Total cost per workstation? $700. Compare that to buying a $500-$1,500 cube/designer workstation. The chair is the only thing that matters... invest in it.
-amen - in our case it's a dining table. good chairs a must- they take emphasis off your discomfort and allow emphasis on getting stuff done.

Don't buy a phone system. No one will use it. No one at Mahalo has a desk phone except the admin folks. Everyone else is on IRC, chat, and their cell phone. Everyone has a cell phone, folks would rather get calls on it, and 99% of communication is NOT on the phone. Savings? At least $500 a year per person... 50 people over three years? $75-100k
- phone systems are so 1980.

Rent out your extra space. Many folks have extra space in their office. If you rent 5-10 desks for $500 each you can cut your burn $2,500 to $5,000 a month, or $30-60,000 a year. That's big money.
- work out of my house - so the wife might be pissed at this one.

Outsource accounting and HR---such a no brainer.
- if you're too busy working at real value creating business opportunities, you won't have time anyways.

Don't buy everyone Microsoft Office--it's too much money. Put Office on three or four common computers and use Google Docs.
- YARP thank you google.

Use Google hosted email. $50 or free per user.... how can you beat that?!?! Why screw with an exchange server!?!?
- Free is yum!

Buy your hardest working folks computers for home. If you have folks who are willing to work an extra hour a day a week you should get them a computer for home. Once you get to three hours of work a week from home you're at 150 hours a year and that's a no brainer. Invest in equipment *if* the person is a workaholic.
- laptop = computer from work and from home, with codebase on it is another way to subtly say "you have your code in front of you, and you can't sleep at 5am. shouldn't you be working?" But handing out free laptops to people is just a dumb idea too- they should be a badge of honor for those who have productivity patterns you want to encourage others to aspire to.

Fire people who are not workaholics. don't love their work... come on folks, this is startup life, it's not a game. don't work at a startup if you're not into it--go work at the post office or stabucks if you're not into it you want balance in your life. For realz.
-this note got a lot of flak on techcrunch, but it's definitely true. Jesus didn't spend half of his last 3 years twiddling His thumbs - He was out pounding the pavement till the day they hung Him up. This is your life's passion, if it's not then why are you doing it? If you're not waking up to do this every day of your life then why are you doing it? If you just want to be in it for the money, go work for Microsoft (gasp) or GE or something.

Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office. Going to starbucks twice a day cost $4 each time, but more importantly it costs 20 minutes. Buy a $3-5,000 Jura industrial, get the good beans, and supply the coffee room with soy, low fat, etc. 50 people making one trip a day is 20 hours of wasted time for the company, and $150 in coffee costs for the employees. Makes no sense.
- yeah that is a bit out of our price range, but this makes sense. Me- I just work at mcdonalds - free refills, GoogleWifi.

Stock the fridge with sodas---same drill as above.
- costco.

Allow folks to work off hours. Commuting sucks and is a waste of time for everyone. Let folks start at 6am or 11am and you'll cut their commute in half (at least in LA).
- allowing them to work off hours lets you work off hours too.

Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off. If half of them say yes you'll save 5-15% on fixed costs. People will give you a discount if they think they are going to lose the business.
- vendors? what vendors? everything's free! well except hosting.

Don't waste money on recruiters. Get inside of linkedin and Facebook and start looking for people--it works better anyway.
- if you have to ask someone to join your company and pay them to join, they're probably in the wrong spot to begin with.

Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm. Perhaps you can get a PR consultant to work on 2-3 projects a year for $10-15k each and save 75%. More PR firms are wasted half the year while you build up your product anyway.{I'm going to add a couple more of mine as I remember them }
- not at this stage, but will remember this advice.

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!
- dont' know anyone there, but will keep an eye open.

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http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/03/09/my-rules-for-startups/

1. Don't start a company unless its an obsession and something you love.
- this goes back to the Jesus point. If you're not all in, willing to lay your life down for it, then you shouldn't be doing it, and you owe yourself, your family, and friends and relationships you'll be sacrificing for this venture to make darn sure you're all in, bought and sold out for this idea.

2. If you have an exit strategy, its not an obsession.
- never thought about this, but it seems to make sense. KaZuum is definitely one of those things I want to work on for the rest of my life.

3. Hire people who you think will love working there.
- Ah but how to tell if they will love working here?

4. Sales Cures All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.
- sales is the STFU for anyone who has questions about marketing plans.

5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but are cheap
- here's a hint - ours is not web design.

6. An expresso machine ? Are you kidding me ? Shoot yourself before you spend money on an expresso machine. Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.
- I disagree on this one- one cup of coffee is like 3 of soda. Coffee stains your teeth, soda eats them away. Plus saying "i'll buy you a cup of coffee" and walking over to the machine sounds so much better than "I'll buy you a soda". Lunch is a perfect time for people to get together and eat and hang out and talk about work.

7. No offices. Open offices keeps everyone in tune with what is going on and keeps the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show them how to use the lock on the john. There is nothing private in a start up. This is also a good way to keep from hiring execs who can not operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over their secretary, run away. If an exec wont go on salescalls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.
- yeah agreed - if you're here to build an empire, go DIAF.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the cheapest way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista... ask yourself why, then use it. Its a startup, there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know.
- actually you should hire people who are firmly rooted in their own technologies - forcing them to play together is something any deeply religious OSX / linux / windows / BeOS person would know how to do anyways. And if you're using distributed apps like googleapps or smb or ftp even then you don't have to worry.

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.
- middle management is the heel that stamps on the neck of your startup. You're either doing work or you're dead weight. There's no one that should be "making sure it gets done", only "making it done".

10. NEVER EVER EVER buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, its ok to buy for your own folks, but if you really think someone is going to wear your Yobaby.com polo you sent them in public, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money
- Personally I think you should get swag depending on your business and target audience. Like graffiti is cool- skateboarder stickers, pens, and of course, an orange elephant with a Kz logo.

11. NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm. A PR firm will call or email people in the publications, shows and websites you already watch, listen to and read. Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them an email introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communications with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you.
- yes yes heard you guys the first time

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out 100 dollar bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or 10 for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party :0
- this is a really hard task but really important - if you don't validate peoples' hard work, reward them in obvious and visible ways, it can really crimp your morale. When people are always charging up the hill, you have to let them take in the view.

thanks guys for the inspiring advice. now back to work, you scalawags!