Hourly or Salary? Advantages/Disadvantages on Financials & company culture?

It's great that this employee has been transparent about the fact another company wants him. The problem is that this employee is ambivalent about his connection to your Company. Really, under 100 employees at least, this is unacceptable. I would first reflect on why you think he's looking elsewhere. Then, I'd ask him that, admitting that you have failed to create an environment in which he has stayed engaged and motivated on what he's working on. If his answers seem reasonable and you can commit to making the changes necessary, then you won't need an employment contract, he'll stay on his own desire, because you listened to him and improved his situation. If his requests seem unreasonable or you know you won't be able to make those changes, fire him *today.* This situation can contaminate your entire company quickly. Yes, swapping someone out will always be a bit of a setback, but you want *everyone* on your team, feeling motivated and excited by what they're doing. It sounds like you're making your decision out of fear (having to find and hire another engineer) versus what's best for the Company, long term. Happy to talk to you in a call. Problems like this are within the sweet spot of my skills and passion.

Generally, the transfer of tangible personal property is the trigger for a sales tax event. In this case, it may be necessary to review the various aspects of a typical transaction to determine if any portion thereof would be subject to sales tax. However, generally speaking, receipts from the sale “Marketing”, "Media Placement Services" and "Web Site Networks" are not subject to State or local sales and compensating use taxes provided your organization does not sell or otherwise transfer any tangible personal property to its clients in conjunction with these activities or perform any services otherwise taxable under Section 1105(c) of the Tax Law in conjunction with these activities. (See, Advertising Agencies, Technical Services Bureau Memorandum, June 10, 1983, TSB-M-83(16)S. For additional guidance, you may also want to refer to Publication 750, A Guide to Sales Tax in New York State http://www.tax.ny.gov/pdf/publications/sales/pub750.pdf. I hope that you find this information useful. Shawn Powell Joseph Reference TSB-A-97(43)s

"What was the best part of you day?" Ideally you could ask in the afternoon .. but it sets a positive intention. I ask this to all my friends + wife everyday when I see them.

This is a great question. The world of accounting/bookkeeping can be a confusing array of options for non accountants. Let's address the software question first. Let me start by saying that my firm is relatively agnostic to software, we work with dozens. I'm familiar with Xero and my firm has worked with it, and if someone comes to us already on it, we stay with it. It's a solid piece of software, certainly works. And it's a very fashionable choice right now due to inroads their marketing has made with the startup community. The big dog in the market is QuickBooks On-Line (QBO), and when I say big dog, various version of QuickBooks have easily 10x the number of current customers that Xero has. Why does this matter? The usability of the software from a user experience is about the same, but Xero is still trying to play catch up to QuickBooks On-Line in terms of features. For instance, they have payroll rolled out for "a few states and are adding more each month". Anything innovative that Xero comes out with QuickBooks is going to quickly copy and add to their product, because they are huge and have the resources to quickly adapt. This is not a situation of the iPhone putting Blackberry out of business, QuickBooks isn't going anywhere. Likely end game is that at some point QuickBooks acquires Xero and moves everyone over to QBO. Lastly, every bookkeeper knows QuickBooks, some know Xero, and there are hundreds of developers developing software that integrates with QuickBooks. So, while Xero is a perfectly adequate piece of software, we’re talking the platform for your accounting, go with QuickBooks On-line. The subject of a bookkeeper is tricker. Do you go with a person or a process solution? Full disclosure here, my firm does outsourced bookkeeping for a living, so you have to take that into account when viewing my answer. I haven’t worked with Bench.co, but it looks very intriguing, and pricing is quite aggressive. They also look very easy to engage with. The down side is that is appears to be a person based solution. You get assigned a bookkeeper, and then good luck. The skill of individual bookkeepers varies widely from damn good to truly awful. They often hook up with several services like this, so their loyalties are divided. Additionally, they are often working with up to a dozen clients, and what typically happens is one of their clients starts growing quickly. All other clients get pushed aside while they focus on their largest client because they can’t afford to lose them. A couple of other disadvantages are that, because they are on their own, you are limited to just their skill set, they have no one else to check with in sticky situations, and when they go on vacation, your accounting goes on vacation, too. These are all things that may be fine for you if you’ve got a relatively small business that doesn’t need daily attention to its accounting. The other alternative is a firm that specialized in outsourced accounting. There are several firms out there, you can find them (and us of course) with a simple search of the internet. The advantage to the better firms in this space is that they typically will assign you a team of bookkeepers/accountants so that you have backup in case one member of the team is on vacation or leaves to take a full time job somewhere. These solutions also will typically come wrapped with software they would suggest for your business. Finally, you aren’t limited to knowledge base of the one person working on your account. You have a team, and really the knowledge base of the entire firm at your fingertips. Of course you pay a little more for this, but the hourly rates are often not that much more than individual bookkeepers. And in the long run you may end up spending a lot less by not having to come behind a bookkeeper that maybe wasn’t so good and clean up the mess. So if you plan on scaling your business beyond a few $200k a year, it may be best to start out with a firm based solution rather than an individual solution. Side note on Bench.co: I can’t tell what software platform they are on. If they are using a proprietary platform, you will find it very hard to move your accounting to another solution if you’re not satisfied with their solution. Something to ask if you go with them. So, I think that about covers it. I’ve probably told you way more than you wanted to know, but I’m always available to schedule a call if you want to dive in a little deeper. Just let me know.

Some of this is stage dependent and all of it is highly dependent on the team above the product manager. The simplest answer of course is to find PM's from companies who have had exemplary success where the Product Manager candidate either led prior success or was exposed to it in a meaningful way. A simple starting point is to ask them to give you examples of conflicting opinions on a feature and how they evaluated the conflicting opinions and made a decision and tracked the success or failure of that decision. AirBnb actually gives PM's homework as part of the interview process where they have to actually present a unique idea (from scratch) to the interviewing team. Happy to talk to you about best process based on your stage and existing team.