[extropy-chat] Virtual companies

[Dan Clemmensen]

Gregory L. Cartwright wrote:

>Dan,
>
>    I've been thinking about your post for the last couple of days.
>
>    I am not quite sure why you would deem this set up as a "virtual
>company."  It's a company being run out of your house or an executive suite,
>much (if not all) of it being done by yourself.  Nonetheless,  the company
>exists, is registered as a corporation with some US state, presumably has an
>EIN, pays taxes, has at least one employee, and is providing some sort of
>service or product.
>
>    I am an attorney and one of the major areas of my practice is helping
>people with start ups.  Over the years, I've notice a trend especially among
>computer programmer types (if they are, in fact, a "type").  They seem to
>have more than the usual dose of DIY in them than the other entrepeneurs I
>deal with.  I suspect that this is because so many have learned their skills
>more or less on their own.  Most all them (even those with degrees in CS or
>a related field) learned most everything from a combination of hacking,
>reading manuals, dissecting someone else's code or from other programmers.
>The danger, of course, is that they then try to apply this same DIY
>philosphy to their businesses, often with bad outcomes.
>
>  
>
I agree completely. I do not pretend to be a lawyer or an accountant, 
and I will (and do) seek competent professional help in these areas. I 
have done this twice before, in 1983 and 1985. I would not even consider 
doing the incorporation myself without the prior experience, nor will I 
negotiate any but the most basic contracts without legal review. I also 
know from (other people's) experience that it is very easy to make 
expensive mistakes, especially in the "trivial details" of incorporation.

You are also correct that it's not a "virtual" company. It's a real 
company with very little in the way of physical existence. The thrust of 
my post is about ease of bringing the company into existence in areas 
other than the act of incorporation. This change (since 1985) is 
astonishing, and is entirely due to the web.
If you look at the total man hours needed to  become "real" you will see 
that the corporate paperwork is a relatively small part of the total effort.

It's all about the increasing ease of finding information. I believe 
this trend will continue and that it is in fact at the heart of 
acceleration toward the singularity.

As software becomes more sophisticated, it will eventually replace more 
and more of the information manipulation tasks now done by humans. 
Telephone operators went first, then clerks, typists, and secretaries. 
now ticket agents and travel agents are feeling the heat. Eventually we 
will get to programmers and lawyers, but we have a way to go yet.