[extropy-chat] Virtual companies

[Dan Clemmensen]

You can very nearly exist on completely on the Internet.

I got laid off from a dying core router startup in February '04.
Instead of looking for a job, I spent March-July trying to start
a company. I gave up, but in the process, I learned how to create
a virtual company. This turned out to be massively simpler, cheaper,
and faster than the last time I started a company back in 1983,
even though a credible company needs more presence today than
it did back then.

For fun, I decided from the outset to use free software unless
there was a compelling business reason to do otherwise, and to
virtualize rather than capitalize.

It was an interesting experience, and setting up the company
was inexpensive.

For a legitimate-looking business card, you need the following:
Company name
Your name
your title
business address
email address
URL
phone number
Fax number
and of  course the business card itself.

Name: Crystre corporation. Rather than pay for a trademark search,
I did a set of Google search until I found a name I liked that had no Google
hits.

Phone number: My very own toll-free phone number and human answering 
service.
found on the web and comparison shopped in less than one hour.

Fax Number: My very own toll-free fax-to/from e-mail gateway, found
on the web and comparison shopped in less than 30 minutes

My name (from my parents, but take your choice.)
My title: Pick one.

Email: This is slightly more complex. I decided that I wanted serious
control of my web presence, but for cheap. I elected to rent a virtual 
server
to which I have root access and complete control. I then installed a web 
server and
a mail server.

URL: I shopped around on the web for a name registrar, and registered 
five domain names:
crystre.com, .org, .biz., .info. and ,net. I found a free DNS service 
and pointed the
domains at my virtual server.

Business address: I found the nearest UPS store on the web.

Business card: searched the web, found a small-volume printer with a web 
interface,
designed a card on my Linux machine using Gimp, and sent them the image.

Incorporation: searched the web for help. found multiple incorporation 
services, picked one,
filled in the forms on the web.

Accounting: Do not even think about starting a business unless you have 
accounting training or
you are willing to pay a competent accountant. Pick an accountant you 
trust, and do what your
accountant tells you to do. In my case, I've done it before and I have a 
friend who is a CPA and
likes to help new starts. He is retired and a Windows guy, but was 
willing to work with me
"for fun" and experimented. I installed SQLedger. (open source)

Banking: Web bank.

Corporate credit card: Web.

Billing for all of the above: I started using my personal credit card 
with automatic (web) billing.
After I activated the corporate credit card I shifted the accounts to 
it, still with automatic billing.

Conclusion. The web has radically simplified the creation of a 
Corporation, even as it raised the
expectations of the people the corporation must interact with. A 
Corporation is a "legal person"
so in some sense I was creating a new "life form."

Lessons learned:

If I were to try this again, I would do a few things differently:

First, the incorporator did not add a lot of value. Having done this 
once, I now know how to
incorporate without help by finding the correct forms, etc., on  the 
state government sites.

I would use a different domain name service. the one I picked is horrible.

I have abandoned my answering service. It was the largest monthly 
expense, and it was
awkward. I have shifted to a Vonage account with voice mail. This choice 
depends critically
on what your customers expect.  I would now re-examine the combined 
"office presence"
companies with a view to finding one that provides fax, phone answering, 
and physical mail
forwarding.

My running costs are below $100.00 per month.

Why is this Extropian??!
two reasons: practical and theoretical.

Practical: You might want to create a company. It's not hard any more.

Theoretical:  I created a new legal person with considerable power. 
Although I've nearly abandoned
it, it lives on in a manner that would have been unthinkable 20 years 
ago. With a tiny bit more effort
this corporate person would be a lot more active, with e-mail 
responders, blogs, wikis, etc.