Backyard Brains Opens Up the Books
Finances are on our collective minds as we all hurry to send in our taxes to the IRS this week, therefore we think this is a great time to announce somefinancialnews of our own. Starting with this year’s tax filing, we are making Backyard Brains open books, meaning that all employees (both of us) and the public are free to pour over our finances in detail and see how much money we take in, and where the money goes.We have set up a page on our website to allows you to see how we are doing on a day-to-day basis: http://finance.backyardbrains.com
Above is our total revenue since we started taking sales. In 2010 we took in $25,000 in sales of SpikerBoxes (and another $3,850 in grants/awards). Where did this money go? Were we good stewards of our new-found wealth? Or did we give cash bankruptcy bonuses to our top execs? It’s up to you to judge. Below you will find the top 10 expenses for all of 2010. Note that a majority of our expenses were directly related to the procurement and distribution of our SpikerBoxes.
| Vendor Name | Amount Spent | Why? |
|---|---|---|
| DigiKey | $5,557.38 | SpikerBox Components |
| FedEx | $2,242.08 | Shipping and Printing |
| K & F Electronics | $1,617.56 | PCB Foundry |
| Delta Airlines | $1,417.00 | Flights to SfN |
| Doubletree Hotels | $1,035.82 | San Diego is Expensive… |
| Alex W. | $600.00 | iPhone Code Monkey |
| Society for Neuroscience | $515.00 | Pay it forward. |
| Radio Shack | $350.39 | No, not cell phones. Real Parts. |
| Newark | $346.55 | More Parts |
| IX Web Hosting | $273.41 | Our web server |
We did have an expensive trip to San Diego for SfN, but fortunately this was graciously covered by the Anuradha Rao Memorial Travel Award and SFN Next Generation Award. A clever reader may be wondering where our payroll expenses are on this report. It’s not there, because in 2010 we had no payroll. One of our owners (Tim) was reimbursed for personal loans made to the business in 2010, but it wasn’t until this year that he actually started to earn the extravagant full-time salary of $1,500 a month!
We look forward to growing our business in 2011 and offering more products and experiments to feed your hungry brain (RoboRoach available now, and some opto thing-a-ma-genetic-jig may be on the horizon). Stay tuned, and don’t forget to check in on us from time-to-time to see how we are doing. Our minds recollect an old lolcatz cartoon…
