At a guess: computer hardware, office space, recruiting competent people, training them to work together effectively, and a well-organized library of the company’s previous reports so that not every request requires them to reinvent the wheel.
Computer hardware and support adequate for the large-scale implementation is roughly 500k capital and 240K/yr; office space incl utilities should be in the realm of $500k/yr (again, for a large-scale operation) and one hundred competent people should be about $4m/year; with another $1m for management expenses. Total capital+first year’s operating expenses is ~$6m; if they expect to sell a thousand reports per year (over one man-month each) at $5k each, they repay the investors almost in the first year.
I haven’t tried to price the custom software involved, but for such a (in the large business sense) small investment I don’t see why they didn’t start full-scale.
At a guess: computer hardware, office space, recruiting competent people, training them to work together effectively, and a well-organized library of the company’s previous reports so that not every request requires them to reinvent the wheel.
Computer hardware and support adequate for the large-scale implementation is roughly 500k capital and 240K/yr; office space incl utilities should be in the realm of $500k/yr (again, for a large-scale operation) and one hundred competent people should be about $4m/year; with another $1m for management expenses. Total capital+first year’s operating expenses is ~$6m; if they expect to sell a thousand reports per year (over one man-month each) at $5k each, they repay the investors almost in the first year.
I haven’t tried to price the custom software involved, but for such a (in the large business sense) small investment I don’t see why they didn’t start full-scale.
You’re only budgetting $40k per person? That seems low, especially considering overhead, health insurance etc.
I think it’s a reasonable rate for part-time independent contractors putting out one tenth of a report in a month.