[buug] links to sites for forming your own corporation

[Mark Hedges]

But you probably read all this stuff.  You can do the whole
thing yourself if you have the right forms; you can even buy
boiler-plate bylaws.  You should do the work yourself as far as
you feel comfortable that you understand what you're doing, then
hire a paralegal for the rest.  Then hire me and teach me stuff.

I'd recommend Nolo's notebook, something like "How to start your
own California Corporation" that they update every year.  It
comes with the forms in the smaller kit.  Think carefully about
your potentials and your expansion plans before you incorporate.
The structure you take at different points in the corporate
life-cycle affects the possible exit strategies.  But we learned
from the dumb-ass.com bubble that IPO doesn't mean sustainable,
and that most companies will never go IPO and don't need to
plan for that as an option.

Many people incorporate but then are unwilling to accept what a
corporation means when it gets down to sharing control of their
ideas. They want the tax and liability benefit, but they don't
want to give up the pie or the scepter to the board of directors
or have to cope with shared power to stay with the game.  Boards
can oust founding CEO's.  That would be a let-down.  Consider
the S corporation for smaller groups of shareholder-employees,
or an LLC.

If you want real tax benefit (for now) and you aren't
scrupulous, patriotic, or a progressive Californian, incorporate
in Delaware or hire one of these Cayman Islands companies who
act as your ghost officers for an anonymous holding company.

(I may or may not have worked for a company like that.  Then I
went back to college and studied ethics etc.  Since then I've
found that workers who rationally express their conscience annoy
most managers to no end.  ;-)

--mark--



On Thu, 15 Aug 2002, Aaron T Porter wrote:

> Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 15:30:23 -0700
> From: Aaron T Porter <atporter at primate.net>
> To: Bob Read <unixjavabob at yahoo.com>
> Cc: buug at weak.org
> Subject: Re: [buug] links to sites for forming your own corporation
>
> On Thu, Aug 15, 2002 at 01:44:24PM -0700, Bob Read wrote:
> > Aaron T. Porter sent me NoLo...it rules for legal
> > definitions, but starting a business is really much
> > more than just legal stuff:
> >
> > http://www.nolo.com/lawcenter/ency/article.cfm/objectID/A30CE890-BBAA-4B8A-AD66A33FA038988B
>
> 	I was thinking more of some of their books... the small business
> track with titles like "Small Business Startup Kit - California"
>
> http://www.nolo.com/lawstore/products/allCatProducts.cfm/catID/34ECCFD8-192F-48BF-A243449A2AADBBC6
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