As Payoff.com becomes more of a reality they are ever increasing their presence on the interweb. This blog should have some great content about personal finances and the financial health of our country. They are also on Twitter as well.
A good friend is putting together a company for those of us that like to drink and would like to know more about what we are drinking; it’s called Vice Advisor. He’s just getting started and would love your feedback to help shape the future product. Getting feedback from your customers early is something that all start ups should do.
One of our startups Payoff.com has an updated splash page along with a customer survey and links to their Twitter and Facebook accounts. This obviously isn’t a full product launch, but startups have to start somewhere. It’s a good practice to start collecting customer emails and information as early as possible; it will help you guide your product feature prioritization discussions. Take a look at the www.payoff.com site and let me know what you think.
You can always use a company like LegalZoom that will help you with all the paperwork etc, (I think it’ll cost about $200-300) or go through your Accountant. I hit quite a few obstacles doing this on my own but hopefully with these steps, it will be easier for you.
1. Find a company name that is not already being used. If you’re filing in Nevada, make sure your company name has ‘LLC’ at the end of it, i.e. Tadlock Enterprises, LLC. If it doesn’t, you’ll get rejected and that’s always fun. http://nvsos.gov/sosentitysearch/
2. Download the application form for Articles of Organization. I would recommend mailing the form to the Resident Agent (i.e. MailLink), getting it signed and have them mail back (Nevada Secretary of State rejected my faxed copy). http://secretaryofstate.biz/business/forms/llc.asp
Link with more information: http://secretaryofstate.biz/business/forms/corporations.asp
3. Find a Resident Agent and have the Resident Agent sign the 1583 form (available on the Mail Link site) I am using Mail Link LLC as my Resident Agent and rent a small mail box for $100/year. Their website is www.maillinkplus.com. You can Google Nevada Resident Agent to find others.
4. File the Articles of Organization and send that and the Resident Acceptance Form (1583) to Nevada Secretary of State Office.
5. When you receive the certificate of your corporation from the Nevada Secretary of State office, go to IRS site to get your Employer Federal ID (EIN number). http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html
6. Once you have your EIN (and everything else is setup i.e. Articles, Sec of State approval etc), you can setup your business bank account (it’s recommended to setup the account in the same state you’ve setup your LLC in).
NOTE: I obtained my EIN first and then did everything else because my recruiting company needed that right away but if it’s not required, you can do it in the above order.
Hope this helps!
Naverus is a pretty cool technology company that uses very complex software to produces far more accurate and detailed flight plans for airline routes. It’s amazing mow much effort goes into producing a flight route, and it previously was all done by hand. The efficiency of a flight route is in part determined by the # of waypoints on the route. Think back to calculus, the more points in a polygon the more accurately it represented a curve. The # of waypoints correlates to the work it takes to produce the route; so the more efficient a route is the more expensive it is. Unless you build a software system to do all the work for you. Therefore by using Naverus’s software to produce flight routes, the flight are more efficient which can save the airlines a TON of money of fuel. I know this because at a previous employer Naverus was a big client of ours. I always believed in the idea and am really glad to see them get bought. Great job guys!
Finally Malibu is live… Go team! I still think it’s funny they could never come up with a better name.
A good article on why a start-up should consider using a CTO consultant. I would take this a step further beyond just bringing on a CTO consultant to bringing on a small expert-level engineering team to quickly setup proper processes, practices and tools and even build an initial prototype. It’s much better to start your company off on a good foot then to hack something together and spend the next year dealing with the resultant issues. Then you can have time to properly recruit and bring on your full time resources. Focus on your business 1st!
http://rapidrollout.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/startup-advice-when-to-use-a-consulting-cto/