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Comment by steve_taylor | Hacker News Reader

Don't tell your employer. Don't incorporate until after you've quit your job. If you want to launch before quitting your job, consider using a merchant of record (e.g. Paddle) so you don't even need to incorporate.

I'm assuming you're not competing with your employer, nor are you building your startup on your employer's time or with your employer's resources, in which case there's nothing wrong with this approach ethically.

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Nearly everyone I know doing side projects from YT channels to ebooks to WP plugins to mobile apps to games has started without being incorporated. None of them use Paddle or ever encountered problem that required them to.

Paypal has supported personal accounts since the 90s. Stripe supports personal accounts. Google/Apple/Amazon/MS/Steam/Gumroad and others will all work individuals as well as businesses.

Depending on the jurisdiction (EU), you may be asked by the tax authorities to open a company after certain transaction volume.

Interesting. I wonder what the motivation for doing that is. It seems like it would be less of an accounting burden to just treat the revenues as personal income (which it is).

In some jurisdictions you won't even be asked, but fined. It's seems wild how much simpler is it for Americans to try out a business idea when you read comments like this - just start selling, and pay your income tax (unless I'm getting the wrong impression).

Where I'm from, you're required to incorporate upfront and deal with the legal, accounting, VAT and social security hassle before selling anything to anyone - few days to a week of stress added.

> It's seems wild how much simpler is it for Americans to try out a business idea when you read comments like this - just start selling, and pay your income tax (unless I'm getting the wrong impression).

This is likely by design and is both a prerequisite and consequence of America's lax attitude towards businesses. It is likely one of the pivotal reasons why America has many more businesspeople (even just counting Silicon Valley companies) than Europe.

FWIW almost all entrepreneurial efforts I’ve started were while living in east Asia.

I did start a house painting business in America when I was 19, though. Due to liability concerns and the fact that I franchised through a chain, I did have to form a company for that. It cost about $150 in fees and took a week.

It was a bit of a pain but ultimately not that hard compared to getting a loan, buying a truck, buying ladders, getting volume deals on paint, marketing and selling to customers, etc.

Online businesses are definitely quicker and simpler to start, but I’ve never felt that big of a difference in terms of jurisdiction-induced hassle. Maybe Europe is an exceptionally difficult place, but I can’t speak to that. I’ve never done business from there.

Another thing to keep in mind is than many, many non-US residents open US LLCs for online businesses. Most my friends in Taiwan starting international-facing tech-related businesses start under their own names and then either transition to US or Singapore-based entities. Mostly this is so they can use Stripe (which isn’t available to TW-based companies).

Unrelated but since you're big into Elixir, any thoughts on Gleam? Personally I like it because I like the concepts of Elixir but I can't do dynamic typing anymore after being burned too many times by it. And I'd much rather have a full statically typed language than something bolted on later like type hints in Ruby or Python.

I’m not that interested in Gleam.

I’d embrace the language for what it is and try to discover why it is so many people who generally prefer typed languages still use Erlang/Elixir. After getting to that point, maybe try Gleam if you still feel the need.

Can you explain a bit about the Paddle thing and not needing to incorporate?

Merchant of Record services mean that when someone "buys" something from you (e.g. subscription or other product) they're actually legally interacting in all ways that matter with the MoR. Effectively you can think of it as a mostly transparent re-seller. The MoR (e.g. Paddle) is buying the subscription from me and selling it to you. Because I'm never actually interacting with the customers for payments I don't need to deal with regional taxes, refunds, etc – that's all handled by Paddle.

In exchange they take a heftier cut than what you'd get if you used a service like Stripe.

Is this like Gumroad as well?

Yea

Don't you still need a company to sell it to Paddle?

Yes, and Paddle will ask you to prove it.

In many countries you can issue invoices without having a company or being a freelancer up to a certain amount. That should be everything Paddle needs.

Also, once upon a time, I checked with FastSpring (another alternative) if they could just withhold payouts until incorporation and they told me they can do that.

Not according to Paddle's signup form: https://vendors.paddle.com/signup

"Business type" options include Individual, Company, Partnership, and Non-Profit.

Don't tell your employer.

This may make it less likely that your employer will take you to court, but if you do this and your employer does choose to pursue a case against you after you leave the court will see it as intentionally deceptive and it definitely won't help your argument.

My reasoning is the opposite. If one tells their employer about their side project, the court is likely to interpret this as an admittance by the employee of potential conflict of interest. Otherwise, employer could defend by stating “Why would I seek approval from my employer? This is clearly outside the scope of my employer's business and of my employment contract.”

Above reasoning is in line with why companies don't search for existing patents when developing new technologies. If they search for prior work and are found guilty of infringement, that's considered willful infringement, in which case damages are tripled.

> Above reasoning is in line with why companies don't search for existing patents when developing new technologies. If they search for prior work and are found guilty of infringement, that's considered willful infringement, in which case damages are tripled.

The (US) patent system is so fucked up (granted you're talking about the US), where if you try to lookup patents, you might be fucked. If you don't try to lookup patents, you might be fucked as well. Damned if you do, damned if you don't

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