Startup Stash - Fool's Frenzy, Dimes & Slack Groups 🃏

Kruze Consulting, an accounting firm that works with more than 600 venture-backed startups, says its clients now have $5.42 million on average in cash, as compared to $3.27 million in 2018. But the same clients now expect their cash to last them 26 months as compared to the 12-month average in 2018. 

So while the bank balances have ballooned, spending has trimmed.

The primary expense for early-stage startups is people, and people have become a lot more expensive, thanks to inflation. 

Startups are paying 20% more for engineers than they were a year ago. In the current hiring climate, mid-career software engineers expect a salary of $200,000 or more. Experienced engineers receive more than $400,000 cash, plus equity—often more than $1 million in total compensation.

It’s almost becoming capital-intensive just to hire talent.

Slack’s networking channels are the new job search engines for tech startups and employees, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In the past two years, Slack-based networking groups have grown, providing a way for people to swap career advice and tips. The app has become a hotbed of B2B communities.

Reasons:

• Cost: Using just the free version of Slack, communities and founders can get in touch with potential employees and thus trim expenses.
• Direct Communication: Workers can connect directly with managers and founders of companies, bypassing the traditional HR process. One worker claims that within a week of joining a cybersecurity marketing community on Slack, he had ~20 interviews scheduled.

People are interacting with industry leaders and employees from different fields. They can be located anywhere and still have conversations and connect. Job matches often come about from employees sharing opportunities at their companies.

For instance, Maria Velasquez, met her future boss, last fall when he asked for advice on data translation on a Slack group and she told him about a tool she had used. Later that year, when he posted a job opening to the group, Mrs. Velasquez responded quickly—and got hired.

Here's a list of some great Slack communities. 

• Designerhangout.co - a community for UX

• https://ios-developers.io/ - a community for iOS developers ​

• https://hashtagnomads.com/ - a global community for digital nomads

• http://techlondon.io/ - a community for tech movers and shakers

This startup is re-engineering the tampon. 

Tampons can leak at inopportune times. That’s why Greta Meyer and Amanda Calabrese founded Sequel.

How does Sequel work?

Most tampons have vertical channels that allow them to expand from the core to the outside as they fill with liquid. Because of this the tampons absorbed unevenly and leaked before they were full.

Sequel’s grooves are spiral, lengthening the flow path and slowing the flow. Absorption is more even, reducing leaks as well as discomfort caused by dry spots during removal. As a result, a higher percentage of each tampon is used

Why hasn’t anyone ‘re-engineered’ the tampon before?

There are newer D2C brands offering tampons made from organic cotton or infused with CBD, but the U.S. tampon industry isn’t easy to break into because tampons are a medical device that must be FDA-approved.

More than a third of Americans earning at least $250,000 annually are living paycheck to paycheck, underscoring how inflation is taking a bigger bite out of Americans’ budgets.

According to a survey by Pymnts.com and LendingClub Corp.

• 36% of households earning nearly four times the median US salary devote nearly all of their income to household expenses.
• 61.3% reported living paycheck to paycheck in April.
• Millennials were more likely to report running out of money by the end of the month. 
• One in nine respondents said that they wouldn’t be able to cover a $400 emergency expense by any means, including credit cards, borrowing from family or friends or by selling an asset

But even these top earners struggling to pay the bills, are much better off than the rest of the nation, which is facing soaring prices for everything from food to gas and electricity.