Money saving guide for startup
More useful tips on startup from industry veterans. original post
Here’s a quick recap of THE list with a little Hong Kong/Chinese flair:
- Buy Macs. Genius Bar & Applecare is your IT department
- 2nd monitor for everyone. Time-saver= money-saver. A $300 Dell monitor rotated vertical is a programmer’s best friend
- Buy everyone lunch four days a week and have a no-meeting policy. Lunch meetings save time. (Comment: )
- Get cheap tables but expensive $500 chairs . Workstations are over-rated but comfy chairs make workers happy.
- No phone system except admin staff. IM is the thing
- Rent out all the extra office space. (Comment: Probably irrelevant in HK because of tiny offices )
- Outsource HR and account dept.
- Microsoft Office is expensive so install only on a few and use Google Doc for the rest
- GMail is your email server. It’s free
- Give a home computer to workaholics so that they can work from home. (Comment: What about MacBook pro for them?)
- “Fire people who are not workaholics don’t love their work” (Comment: Can’t phrase it better that. But he is right. People are expensive so you need the most passionate people)
- Get expensive espresso machine. Starbucks at the office saves valuable resource time
- Stock sodas for everybody. Again, make them happy and you save time
- Flexible work hours. Commute is energy wasting and time consuming.
- Go to your vendor every 6-9 months and ask for discount.
- HR with linkedin and Facebook
- Get PR consultant based on projects instead of contract-based
- Outsource to middle America (Comment: for HK, Outsource to China, we have 11 billion talented people that cost half as much up North. Use them!)
More HK specific Ideas
- Cheap locations are everywhere. Tons of old aging industrial areas are cheap and huge
- Use Mainland staff. Just to make sure they are actually helpful. Talents in China can be sketchy sometimes and work culture is very different.
Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 2:16 pmand is filed under Business, Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.