Your numbers must be off - 80k/month for 30 people means paying <32k; that's an average and assuming hardware and offices are both zero. Good devs cost more than that in Cambridge (and at least twice that in London), and elsewhere you'd struggle to find them at all. Are you relying on hiring fresh grads or something?
Some of our folks earn >50k, others <25k (boils down to skill and experience), and we do hire grads, but also very experienced folks.
Oh - and I am off, but not hugely - has crept up to about £95k with our current headcount of 30, but it's still a gulf apart from the numbers in the article.
I don't think it's fair to make a comparison across geography. There are too many variables, such as cost of living and the employment market that may affect overhead. You can definitely make a case for whether or not starting a company in the Valley is a good idea given high costs, but that's a different argument that's also been done quite a few times over.
For example, it would be similar to me claiming your burn rate of £95k is extremely high because I'm based in India and pay my developers £7 per hour.
