[shafqat]

Very helpful benchmarks. Anyone know why there should be a premium per employee for a platform as a service company? Why is PaaS any different from any other startup with regards to a per employee burn rate?

[JoachimSchipper]

The article says:

> The thinking here is that SaaS/PaaS companies require more infrastructure, better/higher quality infrastructure, more bandwidth, and more senior/seasoned engineers.

[fleitz]

It's less cool therefore it costs you extra money. That's why engineers in finance cost more than non-finance engineers.

[meterplech]

I would imagine part of it is that SaaS and PaaS startups have an easier path to revenue. For most of them, a single user means revenue, which means you have more wiggle room for salary. It's also easier to do long term planning if you have recurring revenue streams and possibly multi-year contracts.

[hkarthik]

Higher up front infrastructure costs would be my guess.