mikemac

When the company raises an additional round, the new investors build in provisions that allow the founders to take money off the table.

One example of this is IVP leading a round in Snapchat, and the two co-founders splitting $10M in exchange for some amount of personal stock.

I'd look at it from a different angle - you spend a lot ton of time and energy on your company and don't want to have to deal with issues that come with home ownership - it's easier to just call the landlord with any problem that pops up.

Plus, if you decided to relocate to a different place there is a significant cost of selling, which would wipe out any modest gains in appreciation.

HSA contributions are arguably better considering they are not subject to FICA.

Boston police (or transit police) does this randomly on the MBTA train system.

The company administrator for paid accounts would need to enable it.

Didn't Sacks make a ton of money from the Yammer deal though? I'm surprised he even took another job; thought he'd go the mostly full time angel/VC route. A COO for any company is not a cakewalk.

A large part of the insurance industry does not like the Zenefits business model (free software to be your broker), so I'd bet regulators are presumably getting a lot of pressure from the insurance lobby to do something quick.

strike gold would be a good brand to start with. they're available in the US but you definitely pay a premium

I actually am an ADP user/administrator. As crappy as their system is (I could go on for days), their domain expertise is unmatched.

I wish a payroll startup would put resources into a nice UI and having some really season support too. Just doesn't seem to be there yet, unfortunately.

> a free product that performs the most important function of their very expensive product line

There is zero chance I'd subject employees to a hacked together payroll system. Building one is far from trivial, considering the complexities of tax and employment law in 50 different states.

This is the worst part in using Uber for a company. They won't consolidate on a monthly invoice (like most B2B vendors) so you end up with hundreds of Uber transactions on your credit card statement. It's a real pain to manage.

how many units do you manage? what would you guess you spend, time wise, managing the property per month?

I'm also ignorant of how the legal and insurance system works in India, but that seems like far too large of a liability if someone is injured while using your equipment.

Seems like once you rent and move enough beds, linens, tables, chairs, etc you'd have cut into your profit margin significantly.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7233730

To his credit, it looks like he was there from the beginning as a co-founder. Being a sub 30 CFO seems to be the exception rather than the norm. I, too, am jealous though.

Planet Money did an excellent piece on just this - Cars Direct attempted something similar (and failed) in the late 90's.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/19/172402376/why-buyi...

Paying a use tax is often overlooked, especially when a significant amount of hardware purchases are made through Amazon which does not charge sales tax in MA (yet). If you are a controller, it is relatively easy to keep track of these purchases throughout the quarter and pay 4 times per year.

You should generally file some amount each quarter (even zero), if only to keep the MA DOR off your back.

It's amazing that you can walk through Boston, pass dozens of cupcake and frozen yogurt businesses in high rent areas, but finding a baguette from a local merchant is near impossible. It must not be profitable or the demand just isn't there.

It's great to see a solution to using larger payroll companies, the experience is generally terrible and their massive market share gives them no reason to improve.

I'm more concerned with being able to integrate payroll with Expensify and Quickbooks. Typically the biggest headaches come from having to move this data from one application to the other.

The flip side of that is you would decimate small market teams who don't have the funds to compete with much larger markets. That means "buying" power for salaries would be centralized to a handful of teams, while the rest of the league would be less and less competitive until they would have to fold.

Good read, a few things to add:

- Even when you think you are getting a great deal by buying something on Amazon and not paying taxes, you still owe the state those taxes. Your accountant will know more, but you should be filing a Use tax at least every quarter. Easy to get burned if you are buying tons of equipment for new hires and the state anything on it.

-Vacation policy: The 'take it when you need it' method works great. If you don't think it will work, be ready to keep track of all employees used days (it's a huge hassle) because it is a liability and you will owe them some cash on unused days if they split ways with the company.

-If you are going to fire someone, talk to your lawyer or HR connection first. The law can be strict on making sure that the employee is paid on the day you fire them through that time period. It's good to have a check ready for this before you sit them down.

I believe it's referring to this: http://bit.ly/IHTk05.