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there are 2 things that puzzles me on this

1. currently their spending amount totals to $33mm, with $14 million on infrastructure and $19 million on staff cost - per year. But they only have 50 full time staffs. That either means each employees take home salary is $30k per month, which is really high, or there is a huge allocation going else.

2. This idea of "non-profit" - doesn't mean, its non-revenue generating business. You can generate very high revenue - but you have to expense out all your earnings/profits back into the business - hence zero-profit. Allbirds, Patagonia are B-Corps who are 100% public benefit company. I am not too sure what's the restriction Signal has in generating revenue.

I also think the focus hasn't been much on business strategy, business growth nor user adoption as it has been putting in engineering and R&D effort into creating stories, altcoin.

I think more business expansion focus is needed - ie like being able to transfer bitcoin/fiat through it would expand purpose and hence more users.

I might be wrong here, but I have always found Signal's budget allocation a little odd but i might be completely wrong. cc nostr:npub1wmr34t36fy03m8hvgl96zl3znndyzyaqhwmwdtshwmtkg03fetaqhjg240 as I saw this post through his repost, and nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m who is a major funder and would have better clarity

rabble 2y ago

A couple things. If you’re pulling away engineers, product people, etc from FANG companies who’ve been at the scale signal needs to grow then 30k a month for fully encumbered cost it’s that unbelievable. Remember a lot of the cost of an employee doesn’t end up in that employees bank account. Remember you qualify for public housing in San Francisco if you make less than $150k a year, essentially that’s the real poverty / living wage line.

Also American non-profits are MUCH more restricted than benefit corps. Essentially they aren’t legally allowed to do the things which a normal business would do to be profitable.

Running large tech platforms is very expensive. Scaling is expensive. And Moxie told me one of the hardest parts of building and growing signal was the way non-profit rules limited their options, essentially crippling them.

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pam 2y ago

Interesting, thanks for sharing, Rabble. I think it's super cool that I get to ask you and nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m these questions here - Nostr is awesome for this and more =)

On Signal, it seems like it's at the upper end of Series A scenario—50 employees, tens of millions raised, with a focus on market penetration.

With federal tax exemption (for nonprofits) and assuming allocations for state tax, 401(k), matching, social security, and various benefits total a generous 40%, the remaining 60% still represents the upper-end salary for a Silicon Valley software engineer.

The median salary, split across maintenance, development, administration would typically be in between low and high. Another irony is the absence of an allocation for user adoption, which is a significant budget component at this stage.

With regards to non-profit, they can make revenue through their offerings. Oftentimes funders would ask what's their sustainable funding model / solid revenue strategy which includes earned income strategy. However, they have to expense it out to zero profit. This differs significantly with a for-profit B-corp.

With regards to growth, if the emphasis has been to defend instead of building, then Signal will crumble. They have to focus on building.

I think the largest wave of user adoption happened when Jack and Elon tweeted about Signal - that’s when my circle of friends who are top level working crowd picked it up. These groups do not care for stories, but they have large influence among their peers. Perhaps the user adoption strategy can be through high level working crowds. That’s Apple’s strategy, and All Birds strategy too.

Another option is to incorporate lightning, provide free sats to encourage wallet setup, and once this currency is normalized, it would be easier to ask for a donation.

I have worked with startups around the world with extreme diff opportunities. Some want everything on a silver platter, some have nothing, and even if they have something, their government takes it away and they start on a negative. Some go through even worse than that. They still try to find ways to make it work.

If you have 33 million dollars a year, and really popular people using it, for goodness sake, figure out a way to make it work.

Startups hustle. Would be good if Signal complaints less and builds more. I don’t know who Moxie is but if he reads this, I think there are a lot of opportunities to grow Signal and I hope that will soon be the focus.