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Lessons learnedExperience excerpt · English

I've worked at several startups who never cut costs, meanwhile they're burning through cash faster …

… I've worked at several startups who never cut costs, meanwhile they're burning through cash faster than an incinerator at the local trash company. I had one company CEO who remodeled our entire offices, got sky boxes for all the local sports teams (there were four of those) and made a point to tell all the devs they're the highest paid startup devs in the city. I found out later, our CEO also had a pissing contest with another startup CEO on the same floor of the building we were in. Both companies had over $200M in VC money, and both were trying to outdo each other with the lavish lifestyles they were living on the investors money. The other company put on a massive "release" party to announce their internet software to the local tech new media. Apparently they blew close 10 $2M on it. Limo's for all the employees to the five star hotel ball room, a red carpet VIP entrance for all the employees like you see on those awards show, some 70's rock band played, and it was open bar all night and they reserved an entire floor of rooms in the hotel where the bash was thrown. …

Original discussionWeaveworks is shutting down252 source comments · at import
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PR

I know this isn't the craziest startup shutdown story, but wow. At $10MM of revenue they can afford to keep a staff of 50 at a fully loaded cost per employee of $200,000. Yet, according to Linkedin they peaked at nearly 200 employees. On top of this, they appear to have raised $36 million three years ago - https://www.weave.works/press/releases/weaveworks-raises-36-... In other words they somehow were running at a loss of about 1.5 million a month for three years until their runway "suddenly" ran out today. According to the CEO's linkedin post, they were basically trying to keep up appearances of being a 200 person company until some greater fool bought them out, which appears to have failed. How do you find yourself as Board member or CEO of a company like this and not think to cut expenses a little sooner? Far better to be a growing, profitable 50 person company than a cash-burning Po…

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HE

Seems VC backed start-ups are the real lifestyle companies for their founders, doesn't it?

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DG

> got sky boxes for all the local sports teams What are those? Is it like a video game sky box, something you somehow attach to your ceiling to create a “sky” environment?

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