I rather enjoy the much lower administrative overhead that comes with sole proprietorship (in the UK, this may differ elsewhere) compared to setting up a company and try to cling to it for as long as reasonable.
Poll: Do you have your own company?
51–60 of 120 posts
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#52Am moving from No to Yes (side projects), but in order to fund them, I desperately need higher income and more freedom.
So, yes, I'm for hire. :)
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#53I have two business and both have legal protection. I have ownership in our IT Services company (S-Corp) and have an LLC for a Food Truck/BBQ business. (Although our CPA has advised us we may want to convert the LLC to a S-Corp).
Unless it is just the occasional side project there isn't much reason to NOT form some sort of legal entity to protect yourself.
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#54Founded 14 years ago (profitable since 2002, ~$8M EBIT in 2013), sold most of it in the past 6 months (in 2 steps) and will be retiring soon. Does that count?
Heck yeah. I thought I might be the oldest at 10 years but you got me beat.
Congrats on the long haul success.
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#55Why so US centric? In my country the corporate forms are completely different.
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#56Yes - I have an INC or LLC for my consulting or independent contractor work and side projects - including http://HockeyBias.com .
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#57i own http://binceipt.com
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#58Why so US centric? In my country the corporate forms are completely different.
How would you generalize the poll to work for many countries?
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#59I'm considering making the transition from sole proprietor to LLC for my on-the-side consulting... Advice from friends range from "it's a no-brainer!" to "it's more trouble than it's worth". I don't make a lot doing my side-work (under $10k), but the amount has grown year-over-year. Any advice on incorporating?
LLC makes sense if you're worried about potential downside from your consulting arrangements -- e.g. how much are you on the hook for if you fail to deliver? LegalZoom or RocketLawyer is probably fine for getting set up initially -- talk to an actual lawyer if you end up hiring someone or subcontracting work out to people. Talk to accountant about tax hassles with LLCs.
Sadly though, for us Canadians there is no LegalZoom or RocketLawyer (although I might be totally wrong on this one!)
So its either like a few thousand to setup an INC (LLC's don't exist here) or go the cheap but high liability route with a sole proprietorship.
Re: Poll: Do you have your own company?
#60At the time of writing this 262 responses and 0 "life style" business. That seems pretty nutty to me. Maybe "high growth" captures more than how I read the poll author's intent, but 91 of you are chasing funding/VC/big exit and 0 of you are building a profitable business that can fund its own growth that you enjoy and want to keep control over? FWIW I'm 7 years in on my fully bootstrapped, profitable, strongly growin…
Maybe "high growth" captures more than how I read the poll author's intent, but 91 of you are chasing funding/VC/big exit and 0 of you are building a profitable business that can fund its own growth that you enjoy and want to keep control over?
I interpreted the options such that "high growth" includes any company that's intended to eventually IPO - regardless of how long it takes to get there. In that model, these two options are really blurry.
We're bootstrapping, haven't raised any outside funding yet, and it's an open question if/when we will. We definitely want to rely on organic growth as much as possible, but we also intend to build a Really Big Company. We just intend to do it our way, on our timeframe.
I picked the first option. shrug