Welcoming a new shareholder to the company is a lot like getting married. You’re not only getting a new partner; you’re also inheriting your partner’s family. And as any married person can tell you, in-laws are always a sticky subject. You’d like to assume the people that brought your beloved into this life will also get along with you, but that’s just not always the case.

The same holds true in the context of your company. You’ve vetted your investor — now shareholder or member — and crafted an agreement specifying the shareholder’s rights, which protects your company in case the shareholder dies or tries to sell his or her shares. You also know your new shareholder is married and you’ve heard about the spouse, who you assume is great based on how much you like the shareholder. However, you’ve never actually met the spouse and you definitely are not sure you’d like the spouse to be a shareholder.

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Unlike most states, New York offers free registered agent services provided by the Secretary of State. Private RAs are left to convince businesses that their services are superior to the Secretary of State’s.

The primary difference between the Secretary of State and a good private RA is speed. The Secretary of State’s office notifies you of service of process by mail. A private RA may offer more immediate notification methods, such as by phone or email. Other services may include electronic record keeping and customer support.

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Banks are not always easy to deal with, but at least they’re predictable. I’ve set up small business bank accounts in +5 countries and although requirements differ, there are certain fundamental rules of thumb I try to follow each time.

1. Don’t Be a Stranger

If you already have a personal account with the bank, the set-up process will be much smoother and quicker. Their system knows you and that goes a long way for the banks. In addition, if it is your existing bank, you will be familiar with how they work (or do not work) and know how to navigate their internal bureaucracy and online banking systems. Banks have lots of packages and offerings for small businesses, but at the end of the day they are very similar. If any of the rules of thumb below hugely favor another bank, then switch.

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Your company hires a registered agent to be the bearer of bad news. It’s strange, but true. Mail from your RA can only mean a few things, none of which you’re looking forward to. The mail could be an annual report notice, which means paperwork. Or it could be tax forms. In rare cases, it could be notice that you’re getting sued.

There is good news. Your RA is actually a friend. When you get mail from your RA you know it’s something that deserves immediate attention. Your RA won’t be sending you any junk mail. Imagine missing a tax filing, or even worse, failing to respond to a lawsuit. Those mistakes have real financial teeth. An agent dedicated to making sure you get notice of those types of things can only be a good thing.

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When setting up a new company it can be surprisingly difficult to get an overview of what fees you will be paying, who you will be paying them to and when you will be paying them.

Even though the fee system in the U.S. varies between service providers and states, there are many similarities between them. Fees can generally be classified in two categories: (i) set-up fees and (ii) maintenance fees. Set-up fees are one-off fees which you incur when setting up your company and maintenance fees are fees which you will be paying each year.

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Back when John Hancock signed the US Declaration of Independence in 1776, contracts were drafted by hand and signed by hand. Now, over 200 years later, lawyers usually draft contracts on a word processor and then print them out to sign. They may use spell checking, cut and paste templates, but the process is still lawyer creates contract, paper version printed and then signed by hand.

Our goal is to change this. As a legal product, “declaring independence” is not common, while another product, Incorporation, is quite common with thousands of companies incorporating every day. The legal contract creation involved is repetitive, making this an ideal process for us to automate.

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“Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist.”

Andy Warhol recognized the undercurrent of business running through the New York art world long before his contemporaries. Even as the banner of Abstract Expressionism was raised high by artists and the US establishment alike, Warhol envisioned a cool, detached idiom wholly alien to the passionate spontaneity of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Barnett Newman. In 1957, less than a year after Pollock’s death, Warhol incorporated Andy Warhol Enterprises, Inc., and went on to single-handedly create an artistic philosophy that would influence generations of “business artists.”

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The first day of work at Google holds so much promise. I planned an upstart 20% project that would redesign the search results page and raise the collective IQ of the world. I imagined Gmail groupies, playing foosball with geo-location savants and creating custom agents for auto-bidding in auctions. I wondered if I should do laps in a McDonald’s ball pit to prepare myself for my new Willy Wonka life.

But mostly I just wanted to work with the best technology people in the world. Day one did not disappoint. In orientation I found myself sitting across from Paul Rademacher. Paul freakin Rademacher!

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Two years ago, when the Nintendo Wii was consistently sold out in retail stores, anxious parents looked to websites like eBay and Amazon to buy this popular video game system for the holiday season. eBay sellers and resellers who somehow had access to a fresh supply of Wiis enjoyed a healthy stream of arbitrage-based profit by marking up prices. Upon the goading, nagging, and begging of their kids, these moms and dads were willing to pay through the roof for this coveted toy, in many cases over 200% the retail price. The average Wii selling price on eBay was $500 and in several cases of desperation broke $1000.

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Times are tough right now for newspapers across North America. For instance, the Toronto Star recently cut a fifth of its staff, consisting of 78 jobs in total, and plans on replacing the lost production content through outsourcing. Papers also continue to shift more resources to online content, as the traditional newspaper publication model is proving to be too costly.

Much to the dismay of many entrepreneurs starting an LLC in New York, a New York law mandates that such newly formed LLCs subsidize local publications by forcing the LLCs to publish notices of their recent formation. All newly formed LLCs (domestic and foreign) must post notices in two authorized publications within 120 days of forming the LLC. The notice must be published in the county of the LLC’s principal office at least one day of every week for six weeks in two publications, one weekly and one daily.

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We are building software to make all manner of business administration easier – particularly for people who have never done it before.

To do this, we study volumes of legal material, model scores of existing companies and hunt down business anomalies wherever we can find them. We then distill the rules and best practices across hundreds of jurisdictions and industries into simple building blocks.

In our research we come across many topics and issues that could use better explanation and examples. The web has plenty of sources for the definitions of concepts like S-Corp and option pools but they are usually painful for the novice or useless for the expert.

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