Hyper-Practical Tips on Starting Your Own Company | Hacker News Reader

Hyper-Practical Tips on Starting Your Own Company

blogs.hbr.org

61 pointsslapshot17 comments

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Here are the highlights:

* Use Quickbooks.

* Make it a Delaware C-Corporation.

* Put 100% of expenditures on a single credit card.

* Practice interviewing.

* Let the law firm handle your cap table

* Print long emails. You'll actually read them.

* Get Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance early.

* Buy a computer and chair you like.

* Pay yourself something.

* Always get Proprietary Inventions Agreements from every employee and contractor.

* Never ask for an NDA from third parties, (with three exceptions)

* ... decide when your company's "day" starts

* Rent month to month.

* Get good t-shirts.

* Pick a company name based on URL availability.

Now if you care, go read the article.

> Print long emails. You'll actually read them.

It is working ?

It does, big time for me. But then it would depend from person to person. I can be a restless person sometimes, to say it lightly. So I need to print out a long email to read it, and then I usually read it while walking and that works perfectly fine for me.

Why are you asking me? I'm just summarising the article to help save people time.

other people will read that question too..

I can't parse that. What question will other people read?

I summarised the article - if you want to know more, go read it - the justifications are there. I don't understand why people should ask me the questions.

OK, color me deeply confused. I provided a summary so people could decide whether they wanted to go and read the article. Then I get asked a question:

  Article> Print long emails. You'll actually read them.
  Pella> It is working ?

Why ask me? I didn't write the article, I just read it and provided the bullet points. If you want to know more, go to the original. For one thing, I personally don't print long emails because I don't usually get long emails. For another, I'm not the original author.

So when I asked why I'm being asked the question, the reply comes:

  fgf>  other people will read that question too..

Well, I don't understand that comment. People will read what question?

So I say that, asking for clarification. And both comments get down-voted?

I just don't understand. Please, if someone can enlighten me on this issue I'd appreciate it.

We need more posts like this. The nuts and bolts of bootstrapping. Too many articles talking about what to do at step 43, need more about steps 2-5.

Speaking of, has anybody had success with rather than dumping the 9-5 and jumping straight into your startup, tried going contractor for a while and use the down time to work on the start-up?

I'm trying that approach, with a little more incrementalism thrown in for good measure. Too soon to tell if it'll work, but at least contracting is paying the bills (plus padding), and still leaving me some time to build out a couple projects on the side.

I started contracting in March when my last startup ran past its runway and focused exclusively on that for four months. In July, I had some free time, so I started writing a handful of very simple iPhone apps to learn a few things:

- Can I build an iOS app in a single day that will make money? (A: maybe, but too soon to tell)

- What are the most effective strategies for monetizing an iOS app with advertising?

- How do some of the new iOS 4.0 frameworks work? (especially SMS and iAd)

Demand for my contracting services has grown sufficiently over the past five months that I'm planning on raising my rates this Fall, with the intention of taking on fewer clients while maintaining my same level of income.

The free time I have will be spent on building out a suite of web and mobile applications. I don't expect to strike it rich on any of them, but with a couple moderate successes and maybe one home run I'll be able to further ratchet up my consulting rates, ratchet down the hours, and make up any discrepancy with quasi-passive income from the apps I've built.

The final goal, of course, is to be able to transition entirely to living off income from products already in-market so I can focus on bigger and bigger projects.

We'll see what happens, but—regardless—it's better than getting a salary.

I didn't find the article particularly helpful actually. Didn't learn anything new. But maybe in the sense of the author pushing his own opinion/bias it was useful: if you trust him, it makes decisionmaking earier. Things like "Use Quickbooks", "Do the Delaware Dance" are just opinion.

I agree. He makes it sound like a Delaware C corp a no-brainer, but it's a lot more complex than that. Delaware is geared toward larger companies but and is great if you plan to get acquired. the legal system in Delaware is very favorable to corporations. I don't think it's right for every business, or every businessperson.

If Quickbooks really is the best thing going then somebody should invent a better Quickbooks. It really is a terrible piece of software with terrible support.

This link already submitted. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1612299

Quite insightful compared to your run-of-the-mill checklists. I guess it wouldn't have come up on hbr.org otherwise. Its nice it covers some really diverse aspects of a business.

I am glad I have followed some of them which I was already aware of and gotta agree, definitely got some new things to think about from this list.

what do you need to make it a delaware C-Corporation? any source or url?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware_General_Corporation_La...

I understand the benefits of incorporating in Delaware, but why a C-corp instead of an S-corp?

Doesn't a C-corp have a substantially higher tax burden?

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