HN Explorer

Ask HN: When to register an LLC company as an Indie Hacker?

5 points by stefanos82 ↗ HN
I want to start doing something for myself, because I have had enough with the current market.

Let's assume I build yet another jobs posting website; when will be the right time to register a company for this website?

Any suggestions by experienced indie hackers?

10 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 31.9 ms ] thread
blinded
id do this as soon as you have something to deduct on your taxes or something with any potential liability.
__d
First up: talk to a lawyer, not HN.

But ... as the name suggests, the primary function of an LLC is to make the company subject to liability, not the owner. So if the company is sued and loses, you don't personally have to go through bankruptcy, lose your house, etc.

For any sort of significant online activity, it's definitely worth considering what you might be exposed to. If you can afford it, do it up front. IANAL, etc.

stefanos82
I have talked with a couple of lawyers, but were not clear enough whether should I go with a company first and then build my MVP.

Half of them told me to go for it and later to worry about registering a company and the other half told me to register a company first and then build my service.

I'm totally confused right now...

lmarcos
Put it this way. Let's say you build this job board of yours. You are just scraping the web and copying job offers into your website to gain content. What if your site gets hacked? Well, no big deal... All you got in your site was pure public data no one cares about. So, having an LLC or not wouldn't make a difference.

Now, imagine your website allows companies to register themselves and post job offers. Perhaps you even allows then to pay for posting job offers. What if you site gets hacked? Data leaks? You may get sued. LLC may come in handy.

stefanos82
I haven't thought of that scenario to be honest with you...you make a very persuasive point!
matt_s
Maybe make $1000 in revenue to prove you’ve got something worth the time/cost of filing LLC paperwork and then talk to a lawyer. I believe for the most part taxes are the same here in the US since it’s pass thru, but same thing, consult a professional.
lmarcos
But how can one make revenue without having formally establish first some sort of legal entity? It's the chicken and egg problem: I don't setup an LLC because I don't know yet if it's worth it. I don't know if it's worth it if I don't setup an LLC first.
teledyn
This may differ in other countries or may have changed in the twenty years since, but after a decade consulting on research projects that paid $30k, I was suddenly contractor to a big national ISP making three times that. Yes, we went a little nuts with buying things, we were young, etc. What I didn't expect was the tax bill! Taxman wanted nearly half!

As a LLC, your personal tax is only on what you pay yourself, your corporation pays way less on the rest.

There are formalities of course, AGM, official seal etc, but in a one-person LLC, these are mostly a joke.

stefanos82
Yeah, dealing with tax department is no joke, no matter what country you are from!
newusertoday
when you want to take the payments until than operate without it. Discalimer: IANAL