So almost $40 million in all as of 9 months ago (maybe more since then?)…
“In total, $242,129 has been funded for the development of hifi project”
I’m sure they have a few employees to pay and maybe a building, server space, etc.
HighFidelity funding
Menithal
#2
So probably you are just trolling with the initial title 
but lets dicuss and break that number a bit down .
Lets do the math and theorize what exactly is going on:
- Worklist would be the public stuff. what gone through it is a drop in a bucket in a business expense. Mostly because there aint that many people working on worklist items. Better example would be to gather all the worklist projects related to hifi https://worklist.net/projects: of which is about -360k) Still Drop in a Bucket.
- Currently have 54 people working for them according to linked in. ICT average: 73k year. some engineers, 200k+, but lets go with 20% lower than average numbers: 54 * 73k * 0.8 = -3.1 mil for this year. And that would be with a low ball estimate.
- San Francisco rent is notorious . Using averages and an average small-medium size business so about 150 square feet * average san francisco square. Which in 2016 was 72 usd. 40k a month. for this year it would be -480k. Using Average of course.
- Add maintenance fees for Electrical use, Water, Insurance, Server space for main servers. Guessing around 20% addition to above. so -96k.
- Domain Count = Lets put a over-estimate high count of 1000 placenames sold: thats 20k back per year. Prolly enough for travel fees. Probably a good rounding error corrector.
Then we have to take note that some investments from 2013-2015 probably are hitting or have hit their Payback period. So thats 10+ mil going back to the investors over 2016-2018. Highly likely the 22 mil was used to do this gradually. So that 40 mil would technically be as much as what the current investment is at, as in 22 mil… minus 4 years of development time. Using averages they probably only have 1-2 years of funds left at the rate they are going without profit, until they hit payback period first for that 10mil, then 22mil period hitting up. Periods them selves are no public (even within a company) so the above values are my throw-values having been in a company with venture investment a year before, explaing the concept to me why they were firing coworkers.
That is most likely the reason why they are pushing for HFC release and ramping up optimization and graphics updates: Because 2018 will be the make-it-or-break-it phase of Hifi.
If it succeeds, more investment to pay off existing payback periods, and keep the ball rolling to reach a break-even to not require consistant investment.
Menithal
#4
On the code which we the community bid on. Its not really the code it self as most of that work is done by people bidding on the worklist… but instead hifi employees and contractors. Even the top 5 commiters on github aint worklist people. Top 20, only David is there who frequents worklist. And he made 22% of total worklist reward. thoys is the second, but he is now a contractor too. I wouldnt use it as an indicator of only development work. Its mostly for outsourced work.