quarterly update including appendix , page-10

Interesting point salaries...

A tech start up expert's angle:

http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/08/peter-thiel-best-predictor-of-startup-success-is-low-ceo-pay/

Then again I do not see any graduate program for IPR to bring down the average. And from my own experience I do find it hard to hire someone good for less than 6 figures - add experience/track record and it just keeps heading north.

They have not been able to develop talent yet so they can only get staff externally which makes things expensive. There is a reason why new footy teams have the salary cap waived.

And this is not the classic US start up model that Peter is talking about - 5 geeks in a room get an idea together and then a VC comes in with 300 million, just to kick things off. If it was it wouldn't be listed yet and we would not be even having this conversation.

All that though still leaves a bit of a gap in the numbers. If anyone is earning over 300k (I am looking at you Simon) i start to go errrr... what? earning a bigger salary than Warren Buffet and we are not even turning a profit yet!

My general opinion on the topic - I hate an account's take on these things, get the right people and make sure they have right incentives and in a few years time the salaries you forked out will look irrelevant... so long as you have deep enough pockets.

Age old balancing acts comes up though...

Do you pay peanuts and get monkeys? Or burn cash like an american car burns gas?

Oppies or cash?

R