> Am I the only one here that finds it odd
1) In the US, for a pre-employee startup, you actually don't need to do anything at all to start a company initially. Especially if you're a solo founder (sole proprietor.) Just register your domain, develop your prototype and start marketing and selling.
Your bank will let you deposit one or 2 checks into your personal account regardless if it's to your company name.
2) If you later want a bank account with a company name, you need to:
- first register a DBA (doing business as) name locally
- create a bank account in that name.
Note that banks generally don't enforce 2-owner accounts, so if any founder has a check, they can draw on the company account themself. (The bank officialese is, "that should be defined in your articles of incorporation.") Also, I haven't seen any advantages with SVB, so just use a bank you're familiar with.
3) For taxes, as a sole proprietor, if you want to add a Schedule C for that company name on your personal tax forms, you can do that (just use separate personal and company receipts and ensure revenue is greater than expenses if you want to deduct the expenses.) But I'd recommend just keeping expense spending to a minimal amount and not bothering with the Schedule C for the first year or two.
4) If you want to incorporate, use Stripe. There's no reason to do so before you get investors, so don't. They will probably make you change your paperwork anyway later. You're not shielded from liability except under strict conditions.
5) For your first "employees", make them contractors. You will have to 1099 them if over $600/year. So for small stuff, keep that under $600/year.
Some clients will require a DUNS number.
Some clients will ask for permission to debit your account to clawback invoice payments. Don't allow that.
If you want to hire employees, that's more complicated, but you can use Gusto or whatever HR/Payroll cloud service these days. However, it's unlikely an early startup can afford even one employee. (YC likes multiple founders because they're free staff.) The only thing you can do very wrong legally is to fail to pay employee witholding deductions.
6) The parent poster mentioned a lot of overhead activities. If you're a new businessperson and don't see red flags with that, have somebody explain what "overhead" means.
7) If you have recvenue and want to hire a CPA or bookkeeper, the one question you can ask to see how competent they are is, "So how do R&D tax credits work with software development?"
8) I discussed US, and Canada is similar. Europe is very different and requires things like advance pension payments of around a million euros, so YMMV.
9) If you need affordable web design or QA, let me know and I'll share my contacts.