With some good words of encouragement from a friend, I'm starting a business.
I've been doing consulting work for Falafel Software, helping them implement a large ASP.NET intranet application at Earthbound Farm. Lino Tadros is the president and a friend. Two years ago, while helping start ComponentScience, he was kind enough to take me on as a contractor instead of a full time employee.
Now that he's read my blog, he probably prefers to keep it that way :)
Eleven years ago, I had started Surehand Software as a sole proprietorship for the purpose of selling a version control product. That's dead and gone. Now it's time to aim for something bigger. The first hurdle, albeit a low one, was figuring out whether to be a Limited Liability Company (LLC), C Corporation, or S Corporation. There's some good information about this on the web. After digging around, I purchased and downloaded an e-book from Nolo.com named Legal Guide for Starting & Running a Small Business. It was helpful because it gave me a clear picture of the benefits and drawbacks to the various kinds of U.S. business entities.
After reading the relevant chapters, I decided to go with a C Corporation. That appealed to me more so than the LLC or S Corpoation options. I'd like to keep a distinct line between personal and business finances, especially when it comes to taxes. A nice benefit of a C Corporation is that I can implement a benefit plan for myself. Having the corporation pay for my medical expenses means they become an expense for the corporation and are no longer taken out of my taxable income.
Looking to the future, I'd also prefer to have a structure in place where I could hire employees and give them stock.
Assuming everything works as planned, the corporation will be named Surehand Inc with www.surehand.com as its home. Nothing there right now other than a link back to this blog.
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Sean Winstead
Tags: Business, Life