So you’ve written all your plans, you’ve got any financing you need, and you’re all ready to set up your company. Uh, wait a minute… how do you do that?
The Basics.
A company is an entity, separate from you, that you need to create before you can do business. You decide what type of company it will be, you give it a name, and then you send off all the relevant papers to your government and pay any fees that need to be paid. Even for a one-person home business, it’s good to form a company — it keeps the finances apart, and means that you can sell your company to someone else if you want to. Besides, it might be a legal requirement where you live anyway.
Before you do anything else, you should send off for the forms you need to start a company — in the US, for example, you would talk to the SBA (Small Business Administration), while in the UK you would need to get in touch with Companies House. If you’re not sure, your local Chamber of Commerce or your lawyer should be able to advise you.
Types of Company.
The chances are that you will want your company to be ‘limited’, which means that...