101–110 of 120 posts
I have an LLC. I took funding from Mark Cuban, based on a product I created that took about three months to put together. I hadn't intended to raise venture capital, but in a spur-of-the-moment type action I emailed him about what I was doing. I didn't even have a number in mind when he replied, so I just came up with something off the top of my head in about five minutes (I tried to be reasonable, and aim a bit lowe…
Am I reading that right?
The pressure to create your own company in the tech world is insane. Even during college, I remember one instructor saying that he expected everyone to start a company or two. The problem is that I'm idea bankrupt. Everything I've thought about has been done already. That feeds into the negative feedback/lazyness cycle I'm stuck in.
> The pressure to create your own company in the tech world is insane It's not as negative as you make it seem, having your own company has many benefits and few disadvantages. Most of us probably wouldn't consider working 50-60 hours/week for someone else who can ruin everything with a few bad decisions and reaps most of the profits. Find out what works best for you and your ideas and don't be afraid.
I do electronics & firmware consulting work as well as my small industrial electronics manufacturing business through an LLC. But it really wasn't primarily for liability protection (as if!). I was filling out a Vendor Qualification form to do business with a large corporation and one of the checkboxes was business type. I was checking off Sole Proprietor and then it occurred to me that being a sole prop. might make…
I voted twice. I run a startup company that provides consulting services and acts as an incubator for in-house ideas. If one of the side projects grows large enough that it starts making "real" money, it will get its own LLC and DBAs to separate the liability from parent's core business of consulting. I'm in NY, which is home to one to publication requirements, so I only form LLCs for projects when the potential for…
Why so US centric? In my country the corporate forms are completely different.
I have an LLC. I took funding from Mark Cuban, based on a product I created that took about three months to put together. I hadn't intended to raise venture capital, but in a spur-of-the-moment type action I emailed him about what I was doing. I didn't even have a number in mind when he replied, so I just came up with something off the top of my head in about five minutes (I tried to be reasonable, and aim a bit lowe…
Observation: Just yesterday on HN there was a discussion about the relative merits of forming a Delaware C corp, as the majority of startup-focused lawyers consistently recommend. Countering that are the number of accountants who would recommend forming an LLC in your own state, then electing S-corp taxation or conversion to a C corp in the future upon demonstrated growth/success. One of the primary reasons for the D…
What worked for me was using Clerky to setup our corporation and various corporate documents and then when we did take some investment the review of our corporation papers took a few days till we got the money whereas other people who had a non standard business entity (LLC in another state) recieved their money 3-4 months later due to the time and lawyer fees it took.
Yes - I "had" an LLC for engineering consulting work. I let it lapse though as it wasn't worth renewing it with the state every year if I wasn't doing much business. I'd have to quit my day job to do real work or else be fired & sued by my employer. We hired nanny for one year when my wife went back to work. The tax and paperwork nightmare of having even a single employee for a small business makes me never want to d…
You touch on a very unusual aspect of corporate law... Dissolution I will not provide any legal advice here, but the concept of letting "it lapse" verse filing articles of dissolution with the State to wind down the business can have significant impact on liabilities/legal rights of the owner/directors/officers/entity. I have seen very bizarre situations where each was the right thing to do under a given set of facts…
I am considering dissolving my single person LLC. Could you help me point to sources on web where I can read more about it? Especially scenarios where letting it lapse is the right thing to do.
By now have had plenty of time to conceptualize a superior structure over simple INC or LLC but it would have to be a funded joint venture and I'm not where the money is. Yet.
I primarily write Java/J2EE code and the demand seems to be very high for that type of work. I have been on my current contract for over 2 years, and keep getting significant raises every 6 months when they renew my contract because they know I have domain knowledge and finding competent people is hard and expensive. My advice is to leverage your connections so that you can bill directly as possible. This is sometimes hard to do with vendor management systems at big companies, but if you're able to talk to the hiring manager directly, you can avoid the recruiter middle man and get $15 - $30 + more on your rate, which is huge.
In my opinion, if you really like to code and can produce quality stuff efficiently, you owe it to yourself to look into it. Times are good, you should get paid what the market will bear for your skills. In my case, I was able to triple my income in about 2 years. I was scared a bit at first, but the way the job market is right now at the very worst someone will pay you to do something . You can always go be an employee again. I have had 0 gaps in work thus far.
Trying to get to a point where there is not a linear correlation with my time and money, which will obviously require a different approach . But in the meantime it's a good situation to be in for someone who likes to write code.