MetaStartup

September 28, 2005 4:08 PM

After much soul searching, and a few good quotes on the green, I have decided to start nurturing a small web 2.0 company serving a small niche on the longtail. I have serendipitously stumbled upon an idea that I can't stop thinking about, am confident about, and am truly passionate about! I would like to think I am a saavy developer, marketer, and communicator. Unfortunately I am plain ole' dum when it comes to legal frameworks, financial structures, and graphic design. I am in the middle of the ocean, and quality services here are prohibitively expensive. Where can I find a good onshore lawyer, accountant, insurer, and graphic designer to solve my Rubik's cube? Are there soup-to-nuts consultancies that incubate small software startups like this? I need a wide array of advice and help concering: Advantages of onshore vs. offshore physical incorporation and data hosting, choosing a beneficial incorporation structure ( LLC, Partnership, etc. ), understanding my obligations and liabilities to subscribing customers, painless financial management, beautiful multiple-themed CSS templates for pre-existing XHTML pages, and stylish custom icon sets. I have devoted a bit of capital to this and would like to wisely invest in cool people that will complement my inadequacies. Can anyone steer me towards any quality sites, services, or partners to clear these important functions off my entreprenurial plate? In the spirit of Open-source, upon incorporation, I will issue an equity position in my company to the best lead.
posted by jasondigitized to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Jason, let me start by noting that I'm a business consultant -- I just wanted to get that out of the way. What country are you in? You may be able to enroll in a small business program, a start-up mentorship program, or even a government-sponsored entrepreneurship program, depending on where you live. You can certainly find lawyers, accountants and other people to help you along the way. But given the questions you've asked, I sincerely think you'd benefit from an entrepreneurship program -- even a part-time one. The program would break down these questions into steps, so that you can piece the puzzle together. Once you've gone through a process like that, you'll be positioned to look at legal frameworks, finance and other things. And that's when you'd want to start talking to lawyers, accountants and, dare I say it, business consultants.

If I've misunderstood your point in the process, let me know. I can give you some other ideas.
posted by acoutu at 4:24 PM on September 28, 2005

legal frameworks & financial structures-- I think you are over-worried about this. What I always say about this is to meet with four or five lawyers and ask them what they would suggest were you to hire them to incorporate your business. After you hear the options four or five times, you'll understand it and know what to do, and it will only cost a couple thousand dollars if you hire a normal lawyer. Honestly, there aren't really a lot of options, and the penalties should you choose sub-optimaly are not great. You will almost definitely go LLC or Sub-S (provided you incorporate in a place governed by US law) and if you go LLC, you'll probably use the standard forms the lawyers have lying around. As to finding a decent lawyer from your watery local, I have no advice, but I'll tell you what lawyers will tell you: go someplace where there are a lot of lawyers (NY, LA, SF) and meet with a bunch over a multi-day period. You don't actually need to be physically close to your lawyers, they'll tell you. I think this isn't the best idea, but if local legal expertise is really hard to come by, there's certainly nothing to keep you from doing this. Seriously, though, try to sit down with a lawyer for an hour. They will have the answers to almost all of your questions, and they will give them to you for free (they'll make up their costs later by charging someone else $10 for a stamp).

graphic design-- CSS for pre-existing XHTML (and fixing your busted 'x'html and actually making it clear and standards-compliant): we love Dave Shea (brightcreative.com). Custom icon sets that are super slick: we love Josh and the rest of Firewheel Design (firewheeldesign.com).

Email's in profile, btw. I could talk about this for hours.
posted by jeb at 4:51 PM on September 28, 2005

Here's a national association of "business incubators" with chapters in every US state and most territories, and many foreign countries. Quite a few of them are explicitly set up to work with high-tech startups.

I know you're in the middle of the ocean, but unless you're out on Kwajalein Atoll or something, there probably actually is a business incubator reasonably near you, often affiliated with a university or business school. (If "middle of the ocean" = Hawaii, there are three in your state, two of them in Honolulu.)

Failing that, I bet you could find an onshore incubator that would work with you.

Also, one tip - if there is a chapter of SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) accessible to you, don't neglect them as a resource. They were invaluable to me when I was setting up a consulting business, as most of these retired men and women had already forgotten more about business than I had yet learned.
posted by enrevanche at 4:29 AM on September 29, 2005

Get a proven business partner who is willing to let you run the creative and tech end of things. Let he or she have a big part of the profits as incentive. Then just go crazy developing and forget this tedious business stuff. Let your partner find the answers to all of your business questions.

Then the problem is reduced to finding one person. Go down to the Chamber of Commerce, tell them your story, and let them introduce you to people.
posted by pracowity at 4:52 AM on September 29, 2005