When to set up a company?
I'm still in the early stages of my project, but was setting up a mailing list on Substack and as part of that, started thinking about when I should actually incorporate a proper business. I'm in the UK, so setting up a company is fairly straight-forward, but I'm wondering if I should do that now, before I have any customers (let alone paying ones), or sort it out once there's money coming in. Part of me feels like it'd be easier to get out the way, before I have to disentangle my own finances from my company's, but I have no real idea.
I'd love to hear your thoughts/experiences!
#ask-ih
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When you start making money. As you're in the UK, incorporating, maintaining and if it fails dissolving a company is way cheaper and easier than pretty much elsewhere. No need to hold your horses for as long as someone in let's say Germany or Slovenia. You can and you should use separate accounts and cards and email addresses from inception.
That makes a lot of sense. It's a good call on the separate accounts too, I've been using separate emails, but I'll get a separate bank account as well once I start taking payments, to keep things simpler.
Yup, and it takes little effort.
Hello, I am in a similar position. I have been working as an indie game developer full-time since september 2018. I live in Turkey. I have been asking the same question to the bussiness owners recently, in conclusion people told me that postponing it as much as you could do is the best way. If you are not having a lot of customers it might destroy your setup so fast. Owning a company will give you boring tasks, bills to fill, pages of writings etc. In the end you might have to spare your time to doing those kind of things instead of trying to do usefull stuff for your dream company. I would suggest you to stay away as much as possible until you need to build it. Thats all I know. In the end I guess I could say “How much you spend is more important than how much you earn”. 😄
Yeah, even in the UK, where setting up a business is fairly simple, I think your advice still holds - I think 'don't do something until you need it' is really solid advice for everything!
so traction and hype first?
Yes. It looks logical to me isn’t it?
I asked this because I am planning to get a publisher specifically Paradox Interactive to help me out and for that, I need to set up either an S or C - Corp to sign some documents.
Can you contact directly to Paradox? Maybe you can ask them? You can contract individually with publishers without having a company. (If they are ok with that). It would be best If you can ask someone related to that topic in the Paradox they might help you out. But I am not really sure if that is professional or not.
Luckily, in Britain it's way easier and cheaper. So, no need to be that hesitant. The advice is valid though.
Wait - Minimum Viable Company FTW.
Beware - even though UK Ltd company is cheap as chips, it does come with some responsibilities in terms of declarations and filings including accounts once per year. I do these myself but it takes non-zero time and a bit of learning.
Yep, this definitely sounds like something I'd be better off putting off until I really need to. Thanks!