> The lesson should be buy whatever the hell people want, just stop buying people until you need them. They're the expensive bit.
Absolutely. We were frugal, but not to the point of self-sabotage. Our biggest expense was payroll, followed by the Cadence/Synopsys EDA software licenses.
So, for example, no catered lunches or breakfasts, but if there was a customer or investor dinner, it would be expensed.
We had good health insurance, but we didn't have gym memberships or (gasp!) an onsite gym.
The workstations were powerful, but we shaved costs by buying "gamer rigs" instead of the more expensive "engineer workstations". We bought prosumer equipment (Netgear) instead of enterprise equipment (Cisco).
If someone needed, say, a Wacom tablet to accommodate a wrist injury, we made that happen.
We had a well-stocked lab, but some of the electrostatic benches we got at a good price secondhand.
Our office was near the train station to accommodate the engineers who commuted from the city, but it wasn't expensive space (all glass & chrome); it was a "B" office. We shared a bathroom with the other tenants. It was a little run-down, but it was clean.
We didn't have offices or cubes, just desks, and the CEO & President sat next to each other in the big room we all shared.
Absolutely. We were frugal, but not to the point of self-sabotage. Our biggest expense was payroll, followed by the Cadence/Synopsys EDA software licenses.
So, for example, no catered lunches or breakfasts, but if there was a customer or investor dinner, it would be expensed.
We had good health insurance, but we didn't have gym memberships or (gasp!) an onsite gym.
The workstations were powerful, but we shaved costs by buying "gamer rigs" instead of the more expensive "engineer workstations". We bought prosumer equipment (Netgear) instead of enterprise equipment (Cisco).
If someone needed, say, a Wacom tablet to accommodate a wrist injury, we made that happen.
We had a well-stocked lab, but some of the electrostatic benches we got at a good price secondhand.
Our office was near the train station to accommodate the engineers who commuted from the city, but it wasn't expensive space (all glass & chrome); it was a "B" office. We shared a bathroom with the other tenants. It was a little run-down, but it was clean.
We didn't have offices or cubes, just desks, and the CEO & President sat next to each other in the big room we all shared.