This is pretty damn spot on. My company raised $700k, and just hired the fourth person for our four-person team. I've had a lot of people ask me about how our expenses work out, so I figure I'll be a little bit transparent in hopes of helping newer folks out.
Person 1: Business/operations/marketing/CEO stuff (but still likes to get hands dirty in code when possible). 60k/yr, lots of stock.
Person 2: Brilliant programmer, mostly back-end. 115k/yr, lots of stock (family + student loans).
Person 3: Good programmer, mostly front-end. 120k/yr, a little stock.
Person 4: Great designer/product/UX. Can write HTML/CSS/JS, but it's usually faster for him to pass it off to #3. $100k/yr, a little stock.
The salaries are, of course, dependent on our needs and personal circumstances. The person who makes 60k has practically no expenses, at least relative to some of the other members of the team. We're also distributed geographically, so the salaries will change slightly in SF vs. middle-of-nowhere, but that's the gist of what I consider the classic team.
After taxes, office space, etc. Our burn will last us just more than 18 months (we're frugal on this stuff - didn't need new computers or many monitors or other stuff). We also spend about $500/month on various types of software. If something slows us down even a couple days, it's cheaper for us to buy a software solution than to pay salaries while everyone works through it manually.
Everyone has to be a generalist to a certain extent, but we all naturally gravitate to what we're good at. It took us a long time to hire person #3 - we thought we would be able to get away without him/her, but adding him/her feels like it's doubled the rate at which we can ship product. We formerly compensated for it by having #1 and #4 do his job, and that really slowed things down.
Now we have every opportunity to do what we need to do. It's all up to us.
Hope that is helpful to someone.
Person 1: Business/operations/marketing/CEO stuff (but still likes to get hands dirty in code when possible). 60k/yr, lots of stock.
Person 2: Brilliant programmer, mostly back-end. 115k/yr, lots of stock (family + student loans).
Person 3: Good programmer, mostly front-end. 120k/yr, a little stock.
Person 4: Great designer/product/UX. Can write HTML/CSS/JS, but it's usually faster for him to pass it off to #3. $100k/yr, a little stock.
The salaries are, of course, dependent on our needs and personal circumstances. The person who makes 60k has practically no expenses, at least relative to some of the other members of the team. We're also distributed geographically, so the salaries will change slightly in SF vs. middle-of-nowhere, but that's the gist of what I consider the classic team.
After taxes, office space, etc. Our burn will last us just more than 18 months (we're frugal on this stuff - didn't need new computers or many monitors or other stuff). We also spend about $500/month on various types of software. If something slows us down even a couple days, it's cheaper for us to buy a software solution than to pay salaries while everyone works through it manually.
Everyone has to be a generalist to a certain extent, but we all naturally gravitate to what we're good at. It took us a long time to hire person #3 - we thought we would be able to get away without him/her, but adding him/her feels like it's doubled the rate at which we can ship product. We formerly compensated for it by having #1 and #4 do his job, and that really slowed things down.
Now we have every opportunity to do what we need to do. It's all up to us.
Hope that is helpful to someone.