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What baffles me is how they have $41k in expenses monthly for so few users. I'd love to see a breakdown of what in their infrastructure is eating up so much mon

What baffles me is how they have $41k in expenses monthly for so few users. I'd love to see a breakdown of what in their infrastructure is eating up so much money.

lfkdev 2y ago
presumably unclassifiable aws costs
jkap 2y ago
salary for four employees working well under market rate
kevingadd 2y ago
Pure speculation, but AFAIK they provided benefits like health insurance to their staff, so even if they weren't offering high salaries I bet a sizable % of that monthly cost is personnel and associated costs. They put their money (and investors' money) where their mouth was and actually ran a co-op instead of relying heavily on freelancers or cheap outsourced labor. It's unfortunate that doing that hampers sustainability, though.
- tptacek 2y ago
  At $41k/mo burn they couldn't have been offering high salaries.
  - jkap 2y ago
    we were not. all of us made exactly the same amount, and it was well under market rate
    - nightpool 2y ago
      (Roughly $94k annually per employee as detailed in the 2023 financial update—low for Silicon Valley but high for co-ops / small community sites / "small tech")
      - tptacek 2y ago
        That's the fully loaded cost, right, not the comp number?
        nightpool 2y ago
        I think that's the pretax salary number? (they said "pay", and it was CoL adjusted from their starting $80k target salary in ~2021). They estimated their fully loaded cost in the same update as around $108k per employee (gave total payroll expenses as $36k monthly for four full-time employees). They said in a different update they were using a QSEHRA, which seems to have a cap of $11k per employee, so presumably that covers most of the difference? But maybe I'm just interpreting that completely wrong. I remember they posted about their healthcare coverage woes at one point but I don't remember the details. That all being said, I don't think this is a huge indictment of Cohost—they had a solid 4 years, and in all likelihood they'd have had to close up sooner if their personal financial situations were more precarious. But a situation where making less than $94k is "precarious" is a very tough one to be trying to starta new social media company in.
nightpool 2y ago
Expenses also includes salary and accounting fees, AIUI
martinky24 2y ago
Software devs ain't cheap
- Hamuko 2y ago
  Depends from where you hire them.
aseipp 2y ago
Payroll. It turns out that when you actually pay money to people for their work, it is expensive. That is because the value provided by the labor of humans is, in fact, valuable. However, if you instead just exploit people and take advantage of them, lots of things can be really, really cheap. In fact, they can be so cheap it'd be insane not to take advantage of, some might say...

What baffles me is how they have $41k in expenses monthly for so few users. I'd love to see a breakdown of what in their infrastructure is eating up so much money.

lfkdev 2y ago

presumably unclassifiable aws costs

jkap 2y ago

salary for four employees working well under market rate

kevingadd 2y ago

Pure speculation, but AFAIK they provided benefits like health insurance to their staff, so even if they weren't offering high salaries I bet a sizable % of that monthly cost is personnel and associated costs. They put their money (and investors' money) where their mouth was and actually ran a co-op instead of relying heavily on freelancers or cheap outsourced labor. It's unfortunate that doing that hampers sustainability, though.

tptacek 2y ago
At $41k/mo burn they couldn't have been offering high salaries.
- jkap 2y ago
  we were not. all of us made exactly the same amount, and it was well under market rate
  - nightpool 2y ago
    (Roughly $94k annually per employee as detailed in the 2023 financial update—low for Silicon Valley but high for co-ops / small community sites / "small tech")
    - tptacek 2y ago
      That's the fully loaded cost, right, not the comp number?
      - nightpool 2y ago
        I think that's the pretax salary number? (they said "pay", and it was CoL adjusted from their starting $80k target salary in ~2021). They estimated their fully loaded cost in the same update as around $108k per employee (gave total payroll expenses as $36k monthly for four full-time employees). They said in a different update they were using a QSEHRA, which seems to have a cap of $11k per employee, so presumably that covers most of the difference? But maybe I'm just interpreting that completely wrong. I remember they posted about their healthcare coverage woes at one point but I don't remember the details. That all being said, I don't think this is a huge indictment of Cohost—they had a solid 4 years, and in all likelihood they'd have had to close up sooner if their personal financial situations were more precarious. But a situation where making less than $94k is "precarious" is a very tough one to be trying to starta new social media company in.

nightpool 2y ago

Expenses also includes salary and accounting fees, AIUI

martinky24 2y ago

Software devs ain't cheap

Hamuko 2y ago
Depends from where you hire them.

aseipp 2y ago

Payroll. It turns out that when you actually pay money to people for their work, it is expensive. That is because the value provided by the labor of humans is, in fact, valuable. However, if you instead just exploit people and take advantage of them, lots of things can be really, really cheap. In fact, they can be so cheap it'd be insane not to take advantage of, some might say...