270M per year in revenue on ~12M in expenses (assumes $200k/employee) certainly isn't "normal". That's a huge hit.
And of course it won't last for the whole year. These are spikey products, and sampling the biggest hit at any moment tells you very little about the value of the company behind it. You don't have to look any farther than Zynga for proof of that.
Whether 60 employees constitutes a "startup" or not I guess is a semantic thing. Back in the 90's, that was routine. Now the YC model has downsized the concept such that you stop being a "startup" (in the hipster sense, anyway) once you land funding for real employees.
The problem with a 60 person team in a volatile market is that they're going to have a hard time weathering the spikeyness. It's not like two guys in a garage who can leave and come back to it. These people are buying houses on the presumption that they'll be employed in 12 months, when the revenue stream dries up it's going to be trouble.
I wonder how these social game companies get so big in the first place. I thought it was all but proven that consistently being successful in this space is almost impossible. If it's VC funding, what's the exit? They all seem to run into the ground. In this case it seems like the founders had enough capital from the last time they shipped this game. Personally, I would seek a more stable space after hitting it big once.
If they have sense saving money from the few weeks of 6 figure sales to weather the inevitable slump while they iterate or find the next big thing. Giving every employee an equal share of the revenue would be equally short sighted.
And of course it won't last for the whole year. These are spikey products, and sampling the biggest hit at any moment tells you very little about the value of the company behind it. You don't have to look any farther than Zynga for proof of that.
Whether 60 employees constitutes a "startup" or not I guess is a semantic thing. Back in the 90's, that was routine. Now the YC model has downsized the concept such that you stop being a "startup" (in the hipster sense, anyway) once you land funding for real employees.