This is a really bad idea from a tax and legal perspective. As a CPA, I don't deal with silicon valley startups. However, I do deal with people who want to start small businesses fairly frequently as well as their needs for legal advice (which varies). For most of America, a Delaware C-Corp is a horrible idea for any person starting a business.<p>Paying Delaware state fees (which are likely not necessary) at best are just another administrative and cost burden to a new startup and at worse, are just another function you have to hire out to an advisor, which will then cost you even more money.<p>Fun story, I had a client starting a new business (whom I had partially advised) take a few extra steps we had not discussed. One being going down to a bank to open a checking account. The client was attempting to do step 5 before step 2 (proverbially speaking) The client did not have an EIN yet and the bank of course, could not open the business a checking account without an EIN.<p>The BANK applied for the client's EIN at the branch and effectively advised the client on entity structure by choosing their entity type for them during the EIN selection process. I'm sure the bank has some sort of BS policy where they can disclaim liability in that they made the client chose the entity type. I can tell you with 100% certainty, this client did not have any idea what the entity type was.<p>And to top it all off, after the bank account was setup. The bank provided no documents letting the client know what entity choice "the client" (ha!) had chosen.<p>Business is complex, I understand people are hesitant to pay (what seem to be) exorbitant fees to start a business. However, I've found that (nearly) 100% of the time when you start a business and ask the wrong questions you will always get the wrong answer, which is always more expensive to fix at a later date (if its possibly without severe tax or legal issues).
This is awesome! Some of the partners they have selected are pretty intense for the starting a business stage. We use a boutique law firm (aka one dude and a desk) and we use a small CFO as a service consultancy here in Manhattan ($250/mth-ish) for the financial/book keeping. Justworks seems fine for HR stuff.
This guide is a very good introduction to get an idea of what running a business involves. Great job patio11.<p>Since running a business is incredibly complicated and involves so much that founders generally would like to outsource, is there any startup that takes care of all book keeping, taxes, contracts, insurance and filing for IP,trademarks? This will resonate with the early tech startups (among others), who want to spend all their time building a product and talking to users.
>Services, on the other hand, almost always are governed by contracts, and the contracts get very extensive.<p>I try to have extremely light contracts. I'd rather have the payment structure reflect the work and the value over time. If we don't agree, we part ways, this is cheaper than arguing with lawyers.<p>Also: trust & repeat clients. Little need for contracts anymore. Then yes, I can get screwed, but that's the cost of doing business, and they can only screw me once, protecting my downside. Still cheaper than lawyers.
I particularly like the discussion of LOIs in <a href="https://stripe.com/atlas/guide#transactions-and-agreements" rel="nofollow">https://stripe.com/atlas/guide#transactions-and-agreements</a>. Should be very useful to new companies, and is rarely discussed.
It looks like this PDF is the Orrick Legal Guide that is available to Stripe Atlas members: <a href="https://stripe.com/files/atlas/orrick-legal-guide.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://stripe.com/files/atlas/orrick-legal-guide.pdf</a>.
<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284879" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13284879</a> - previous discussion with insight regarding creation of this guide.
This should have been a series of posts, compiled into a guide. It should be easy to cut this up into digestible pieces, but it's sort of a massive throw up right now.<p>(edit) Ah - now i see- it is a guide. But it's a single page layout, with navigation on the right. So I guess it just violated a few of my assumptions. I think I also assumed it was a blog post since the h1 title doesn't call it a guide (though the html title does).