Offer HN: Help on Incorporation
cameronkeng.com
cameronkeng.com
(Side note: A lawyer once told me that he would "never use language on a website which he wouldn't use in court" -- I think this is probably a good guideline to follow.)
I'd also be careful suggesting that people create S-Corps and book most of their personal income from the corp as 'distributions' - sure it's possible to save on payroll tax, but it's a risky proposition unless you book a reasonable (i.e. around what someone else would pay you for the work) amount as wages.
But, I will definitely take your advice into consideration and try my best to adjust the pdocast to fit the audience.
How are you picking this knowledge up yourself? Also, I may have missed this in the podcast but: when and why did you decide that incorporation was right for your business?
The decision making behind the business came from the fact that I wasn't willing to spend more than my business would generate. So, I was always re-evaluating expenses to make sure that they were directly contributing to the bottom line.
Incorporation is not a factor thats vital until you're generating significant revenues because it's always going to increase your costs.
As a personal note, I invested $500 dollars into a business initially and waited until I was making over $30,000 in net profits until I even considered incorporating because my profits would increase by incorporating with the proper tax planning.
PS, I still plan on contacting you for advice per your offer on my submission about business filing (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1946503). Just waiting until I'm actually ready to move my feet :)
Also, my next series of podcasts is going to be on outsourcing and offshoring. I've spent over 6 months and tons of cash on contractors from india, eastern europe and asia. I'm about to leave for asia for a month to interview/hire developers in person. I think that everyone wonders what's the best way to hire great talent and leverage their resources.
If you have any questions, let me know and I'll do my best to help! I'm available on hn office hours as well if you need to find me.
Contrary to one of the other posters here, I didn't find the tone obnoxious. I found it made for a more interesting podcast because the guy is obviously opinionated, but for a reason - he's knowledgable.
Keep it up, I say. You might even want to have a bit of fun branding the podcast - angrytaxaccountant.com could turn into something big!
I'm definitely going to keep podcasting new content on a weekly basis as long as my schedule permits and I'm able to find content that's pertinent everyone here.
Hopefully, I can be of help to someone. Thanks, again!
Sorry to be negative but I'm not sure a podcast counts as an offer.
Disclaimer: Haven't listened to the whole podcast. Not based in the US so not interested in US specific law knowledge.
Most people feel obligated to incorporate to have a "real business" when it's usually unnecessary. If you still have questions after listening to the podcast, I'm offer my help to answer those questions and to provide further guidance in the process.
I think trademarks have their place, but it's something that's really only useful when you're a larger competitor in your industry.
Ex: The crocodile or american alligator is a keystone species that allows an entire ecology to survive and thrive. Twitter's "trademark" is a keystone because it has allowed numerous companies develop through it's trademark such as tweetdeck and etc. The term tweet has become a dictionary term at this point so their trademark is very valuable. But, it's only valuable now because they've reached critical mass.
The irony is that if you don't trademark your name early, then someone else will steal it before you do. I think that it's a decision that needs to be examined thoroughly because it is somewhat expensive. I will definitely start another podcast series on trademarks specifically to address this issue!
Thanks!
Technically, the word 'tweet' has been in dictionaries since long before Twitter came along...
The word "windows "was in dictionaries long before Microsoft, yet Microsoft has a trademark on "Windows" when used in certain circumstances.
Edit: I just realized that I misspelled your name. I'd like to blame the spellchecker, but it might have been me. Sorry!
This is more like a summary or a set of lecture notes than a proper transcript, but I thought it might be useful to someone else. Camz is free to make any use of this he wants to, including commercial use, given that I derived it from his talk.
I did a lot of editing and I hope this is easier to read. That includes getting rid of the swearing, which so many people complained about. I tried to stay true to the original, but I also rewrote a few parts for clarity, removed parts where he repeated himself and moved a few things around to better organize his ideas.
Also, in one part, he was talking about business plans and business models, and said one when he meant the other, so I corrected that.
Finally, I added some headings so you can find the part of the talk you want and see how the talk was organized.
Edit: Made a fixed version where I spell his name correctly (King -> Keng).