17 Startup Tips Start A Blog Fight

A recent post by internet entrepreneur Jason Calacanis suggested 17 tips for startups to use to save money and maximize productivity. These included everything from a fridge full of coke and an expensive espresso machine to outsourcing IT and firing people "who are not workaholics".

The firing workaholics tip generated so much controversy that it has been softened to "fire people who don't love their work..." , which appeared to be partly a response to a TechCrunch post titled: Calacanis Fires People Who Have A Life.

What I found very interesting though was how positively many successful startup folks received the piece. Mark Cuban for example, praised it and added his own startup nuggets including "NEVER EVER EVER buy schwag" and "NEVER EVER EVER hire a PR firm".

Are startups taking us back to the sensibilities of the early industrial revolution when workers were expected to give their life to the company or die trying? Those companies provided free lunches too. Yet free espresso was hardly a perk back then, or stock options. To my mind equity distribution is an excellent measure of how a company feels about employees and vice versa. Companies should honor their employees with a stake tied to hard work, and employees should honor the company with the hard work needed to make that stake have value.