Pure speculation, but AFAIK they provided benefits like health insurance to their staff, so even if they weren't offering high salaries I bet a sizable % of that monthly cost is personnel and associated costs.
They put their money (and investors' money) where their mouth was and actually ran a co-op instead of relying heavily on freelancers or cheap outsourced labor. It's unfortunate that doing that hampers sustainability, though.
(Roughly $94k annually per employee as detailed in the 2023 financial update—low for Silicon Valley but high for co-ops / small community sites / "small tech")
I think that's the pretax salary number? (they said "pay", and it was CoL adjusted from their starting $80k target salary in ~2021). They estimated their fully loaded cost in the same update as around $108k per employee (gave total payroll expenses as $36k monthly for four full-time employees). They said in a different update they were using a QSEHRA, which seems to have a cap of $11k per employee, so presumably that covers most of the difference? But maybe I'm just interpreting that completely wrong. I remember they posted about their healthcare coverage woes at one point but I don't remember the details.
That all being said, I don't think this is a huge indictment of Cohost—they had a solid 4 years, and in all likelihood they'd have had to close up sooner if their personal financial situations were more precarious. But a situation where making less than $94k is "precarious" is a very tough one to be trying to starta new social media company in.
They put their money (and investors' money) where their mouth was and actually ran a co-op instead of relying heavily on freelancers or cheap outsourced labor. It's unfortunate that doing that hampers sustainability, though.