Entries RSS · A word to Jason on Mahalo's extravagant office
Jason,
You sure don’t know me. I’m one of your anonymous 7,000 Twitter followers (my feed here), your whatever number of blog readers, and I’ve watched a serious number of podcasts featuring you. I think you do a fantastic job at sharing your passion for entrepreneurial adventures & your obvious will to change the world. I think Mahalo is a brilliant Wikipedia-style idea, and I have a lot of respect for your public speech & communication skills.
Same with your recent post on startup cost-killing rather modestly 
entitled 17 Really Good Tips to Save Money. Most of it was compelling, and I had all the office read it – I’m an entrepreneur too, I should’ve added before. We’ve decided on applying a number of them, starting with #3 ‘use lunchtime for meetings’, #2 on second monitors (especially to software developers), &
most of the rest was already implemented but #4 & #12 which I fiercly disagree with.
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Your tip #4 says that startups should spend about 600$ on chairs & 100$ on desks. To me, this looks extravagant. Take a look at the picture right here. The leather-style chair costs 59 USD, and the table in front of it another 59USD. That is about 120 USD per work station at my company Emerald Vision (don’t worry, we’re no competition: we do exciting enterprise software. And sorry, website still in French & workin’ on an English version) vs. 700USD at Mahalo. Are you guys extravagant on the West Coast or what? I should add that my chair is by far the most comfortable chair I’ve ever bought. FYI, & I’m not getting any rebate or commission, it’s all from Ikea.
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Second and last (because, as I said, I loved your post – but a couple little things), tip #12 says startups should buy a 3K-5K USD coffee machine. Come on Jason, no one is making 5K / month in my company as a stipend, and you want me to spend 3 – 5K in a coffee machine? Makes no sense. Here’s our ‘Help Yourself’ space at Emerald Vision. We purchased a 25 bucks American-style coffee machine that’s up and running day & night; a 20USD kettle to drink tea or instant coffee; Xuoan (photo blog here), a web graphic designer & SEO specialist who rents office space from us (see, we had already applied tip #6), brought his good old 130$ espresso-machine that does pretty good coffee, thanks. That’s less than 200 USD overall, & less than 500 USD if you add the fridge & the microwave. 500 USD for a fully equipped ‘Help Yourself’ corner at Emerald Vision vs. 5000 USD for a coffee machine at Mahalo. I think you investors would love working with us.
Before I finish this post, I just wanted to state clearly that there’s nothing either sarcastic or personal in these remarks. These are just 2 plain, sincere feedbacks on your tips (15 of them were just great). For 600$ a chair & 5000$ a coffee machine, I would’ve either tried to quit the digital & Clean Tech business to enter the furniture market in Silicon Valley, or at least tried to buy second-hand Philip Stark design chairs & coffee machine on eBay or so, or most probably provision it for when times get worse on the Web to show how we value cash, or give it out to top performers in the team as a way to show how we care about people working on building the next big thing with us.
I still and more than ever enjoy looking at what you do on an hourly basis on Twitter, reading great startup fish on your blog (like larger monitor = better productivity; or these very interesting thoughts on work-life balance in startups - I needed it bad). I hope you don’t take this post personally, & that we’ll have the chance to meet you some day here or there. Maybe you’re okay for the two of us to sit at a table, discuss treasury management & compare burn rates – all things being equal (we’re a very early startup compared to you). At Le Web 3 (or 4?) in Paris next winter? You may even come to our office at the very center of Paris & try on our wonderful chairs. Keep me posted.
Cheers,
Jeremy Fain
PS1: On #17, come on, do you really need a PR firm? A 15K USD / months one? or even 3 times 15K USD / year one? You, Jason Calacanis? You do more PR than all European startups together (I’m based in Paris, France). Save on this too, or be tough-as-nails bargaining every 6 months or so (tip #15) because they’re definitely not using so much bandwidth with you.
PS2: another French blogger, Hervé Kabla, wrote pretty interesting complementary remarks on his blog here - however it’s in French only, sorry about that.
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Of all the blogpost-responses surrounding Jason’s post, I found that this one had the best tips: Every piece of start-up advice is a lie
I think that everyone has a different perspective on this, based on their situation, focus, and experiences. Jason’s 40, you’re not ; he’s serial, you’re not (yet); he’s B2C, you’re B2B; he’s not a consultant, you are; etc. etc. All of which translates onto different attitudes at work, and which is why everyone, from Jason Fried to Mark Cuban to you, had a different opinion on this.
As far as chairs and coffee go, I, for instance, favour the good stuff, probably because I’m a few years older than you, however I can live frugally if need be.
Rationally speaking, you should of course increase the return on assets, by decreasing their cost or increasing productivity. Where that balance lies is really up to hundreds of variables.
Interesting link Vince, thanks. However, you write that “I’m a consultant”. I’m what?
I’ve never been a consultant and I’m definitely not a consultant. There’s no way I’m a consultant. I’m an entrepreneur. I do things, I don’t consult on things.
And we have some very good fairtrade tea too… (as Mr Calacanis likes to help cheap workers in emerging markets, tip #18)
My mistake, Jeremy. But technically, you did not disagree with me when I called you a consultant in your logo-post, you just called me a smart-ass
. If you’re not going to translate your site, I’d love an English write-up about what your firm does.
Vince, I understand now. I called you a smart ass because you overall picked up the idea pretty well just elaborating from my logo.
The company builds corporate social responsibility software solutions: we deliver it all for enterprises willing to be in charge of their environmental & social performances & share their corporate sustainable responsibility strategy with their employees.
The website will be translated in the forecoming 6 weeks or so.
@Jeremy. Thanks, I love to see referals of french post in english ones
My additional advices are about IT and use of Freebox, a device specific to the french ISP amrket, that startupers should not ignore.
@Vince: I disagree, advices are welcome both for C-level startupers and young employees that need to be educated.
@Herve: first of all, I love the “translate into English button” on your site; every site should have such a thing.
Second of all, I’m not sure what we disagree on. All I’m saying that reality differs depending on the type of business you run. I, for instance, have 0 use for the Wiki you recommend in your post and equally think that people should be careful about blindly following advice if it doesn’t suit the stage/type of their organisation.
Nice post! An I am very impressed how Jason made such a buzz with 5 “controversial” words in a single post!
And I’ll add some nice ice creams in the freezer too, so developers get enough sugar for coding. You know which brand…
woops – it looks like there have been some arguments on the worldwide internet regarding item #11.
On this one I fully agree with
David Heinemeier Hansson from the 37Signals Mob.
Well actually looking twice into it there only are a couple I would buy into : 8, 15 and maybe 16.
It seems that the coffee machine recommendation might not be that innocent…
@Seb: that Calicanis is trying to make money from his advice, doesn’t surprise me 1 bit.
However, what people (Europeans) should also realise is that the USA’s coffee-culture was in many ways started by expensive coffee-retailers like Starbucks and Peets. While we, Europeans, are used to good coffee, so much so that spending a lot of money on it seems a waste to many of us, let alone buying an expensive coffee-machine. I imagine that the cultural perception of coffee-prices in the US is very different: they associate good coffee with expensive coffee.
Hence for them this advice maybe makes sense, and which is why I’m also saying that people should carefully evaluate whether this advice is meant for them, before implementing it.
heard someone mention my startup post
i think these lists are great clickbait and if someone should find one that they can really connect with— that’s great– but for the most part you know if you’re doing it wrong.
Jeremy Fain, your coffee area looks perfectly fit for a small scrappy company— however it’s a little on the rustic side for a venture funded startup— even the investors would tell you to not come back until you’ve spent more than 40 USD on a coffee maker. The one in the picture looks like something you might take camping
I agree that you dont need to spend 600 to get a comfortable office chair. JC must be getting kickbacks from Herman Miller also.
Nice site you have here.
[...] setup, furniture-wise, for the productivity centre that is a startup. Jeremy wrote a response here, as well. I’m sure, things have changed, with the recession and all, but my mantra about that [...]