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Ask HN: How to found a company with foreign (i.e. living abroad) partners

1 points by martimoose ↗ HN
I am in the process of founding a company with someone with whom I collaborated in the past few years. I am a canadian citizen, living in Canada, and the partner is French. We'd like to launch a product together, but we need to establish some sort of legal basis for that. We also need to have a bank account for the payments.

The company will pay its taxes in the country where we will register it, but I don't know if a foreigner can possess a share of a company established here in Canada for example. If so, I don't know if it's still possible if the partner in question cannot be physically present in the country to sing whatever papers are needed.

I also don't want to invest too much in legal fees, as we don't know yet if the project will be profitable, and to what extent. Still, I prefer things to be clear, so any advice from people who have experience is welcome!

Does anybody have experience with such ventures?

1 comment

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elmalto
I actually built a company in a similar situation. I live in Vancouver while my cofounders live in Berlin. It meant a lot of early mornings for all founders, same as late nights to maximize communication. I am German and only moved here a few years ago, so I was comfortable with incorporating in Germany. Canada offers a lot of amazing opportunities for startups (IRAP / SRED) that we missed out of because of it. Ownership in Canada for foreigners is easily possible though. One other thing to look into is the lifetime exemption on capital gains. If you don't incorporate in Canada you should consider talking to a specialist to set it up so that you can still take advantage of it in case you end up selling the company