There's an important thing that is not covered here. Currency fluctuations.

Assuming you pay people in their own currency (which is useful to make sure they don't pay unnecessary fees, and also that they get a consistent pay each month). How do you keep salaries consistent globally?

Do you adjust them each month to compensate fluctuations? Sucks for those that just got a pay cut.

I don't know the answer, I think the way Buffer does it is the best of the options I've come across so far. I'd like a better solution.

This is great. Well done!

To be successful, you can do nothing poorly. That's the trickiest bit.

If you do any of these poorly, you don't have much chance:

- Product Usefulness

- Usability

- Customer Support

- Pricing

- Advertising/Marketing

- Reliability (eg. uptime)

Just one of those being bad is enough to sink you. I think the hardest part is needing to not drop the ball on any of these things.

Don't just perfect one of them and hope it compensates the others. Our tendency is to work on the ones we're best at, but you just can't afford to neglect anything.

If you want to play the VC/Funding game, don't do it from Australia. I'm okay with that.

That doesn't mean being a Australian startup sucks, my experience is that it's awesome. I wouldn't have it anywhere else.

Just do that crazy thing of getting customers to pay you money and earn more than you spend.

An article on reasons to raise venture capital would be more appropriate. The default should be bootstrapping.

Oh, the article's definitely appropriate, because right now there are a lot of people for whom raising money is basically the point.

I mentor sometimes at startup events, and there's a big difference between the people there to build a business and the people who have been freebasing startup propaganda. I never thought I'd be nostalgic for the post-bubble period when startups were unfashionable.

Are you sure the value you got from the metrics exceeds the bad will generated by annoying your potential customers?

To me it's a lack of respect for your users and their time.

Demo doesn't imply fake features. For me demo would be not my data, perhaps a sample set in there.

I'd have no problem if it said "there's a bunch of features not yet implemented, we have the buttons there to gauge interest and we'll work on the most needed ones".

If they are working in your office and they don't have their own laptop, then yes.

Otherwise, it's up to you. It's a nice thing to do, but not necessary.

@macournoyer, reading the comments here, it sounds like your value proposition isn't articulated clearly enough. There's a bunch of mentions of the price and not knowing what they are getting.

In your comments here, you mention the importance of your instruction and teaching, which I think is great. Perhaps make that clearer on the website?

Looks like a good idea to me.

I wonder how much that is just http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring.

If it was set at $20... would $10/$15 have felt right?

Good point. I also think it's slightly psychological as I'd be more likely to pay if it was $29.

Setting up a pay scheme now to handle thousands of employees would be very premature optimization.

But how do you deal with the newcomers? As you grow you keep getting more and more and that system they have will be harder to implement and eventually may end up just like other companies. It isn't something they shouldn't be thinking right now. It does make the current employee happy, but will this work when 10 more people are joining, 20, 30?

They can adjust when it doesn't make sense for the company. Those unhappy with the changes can choose to stay or leave.

> Those unhappy with the changes can choose to stay or leave.

That's harsh. I am arguing that fantasying the success of this payscale doesn't mean the company is not responsible for the welfare of the employees as the company scales and grows.