Mowser => Mowser Inc.

I ended up finding a great set of stuff online. Part of it might be that I’ve been around the environment for a while now so I have enough background that this stuff makes sense, but I think there are some good ground-up sites in here as well. Here are some of the resources I found particularly useful:

http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/2007/04/26/whats-on-this-site/
http://www.businesscreditcards.com/bootstrapper/the-100-daily-must-reads-for-entrepreneurs/

And I read through the stuff at venturehacks.com from post one on through and following up on all the links (not understanding all of it completely, but I at least understood more of what I didn’t yet know and how to ask about it).

Then I called a few friends who have been involved in startups as founders and asked them to fill me in on the stuff I didn’t understand. I also got involved with the folks that run an entrepreneurship program at a local law firm that all of my contacts spoke very highly of (I’m working with the folks at Carr & Ferrell (http://www.carrferrell.com/). They had existing forms and worksheets for incorporating, laying down all the questions that needed to be answered so that Russ and I could work through them.

Ultimately we ended up settling on C corp in Delaware. So why C corp and why Delaware? The C corp part because we expect the company to be profitable or close to it pretty soon in it’s operation. Even just the site as it is generates a pretty decent amount of advertising revenue. Other forms of corporation make more sense if you expect to be running at a loss for a while. And we went with corporation instead of LLC so that in case the worst happens both Russ and I are legally protected. It’s also just sets everything up appropriately so that if we need some venture money down the line we have the right structure for that.

And Delaware for two major reasons for me, the tax law in Delaware is much more flexible. Which probably won’t make much of a difference directly for me. But also because almost everyone I get advice from has run a Delaware corporation, they can give me concrete advice about what needs to be done when you’re incorporated there. They may or may not know how things work in California. So it just makes things easier for me personally in running the day to day business end.