DO YOU NEED A STARTUP LAWYER? DO YOU NEED TWO? J and I are committed to bringing you the good and the bad, our successes and our failures. Here’s a situation we recently ran into with our choices for legal counsel. When we set out to find legal representation for Mynstein Inc., we sought experience in two specific areas: intellectual property and equity and finance structuring. These are not … [Read more...]
Starting a Business? Plan to Get Out Before You Get In
04/12/2012 By 1 Comment
THE 1ST STEP IN STARTING A BUSINESS Plan an exit strategy. You could say we began preparing for our LLC and C Corp startups at about the same time we were posing for the basketball picture on the About J and Chance page. When we were in grade school, J and I went through the same evacuation and “what-to-do” drills that all kids go through. Our teachers forced us to reflect on what we would … [Read more...]
The Entrepreneur’s Nightmare: I need more time!
04/07/2012 By Leave a Comment
Society as a whole has gotten too busy. Meetings, conference calls, baseball games, princess castles and commutes seem to rob us of precious daylight. Throw in some Facebook time, a few chapters in The Lean Startup, homework with the kids, and it's midnight before you know it. Sound familiar? … [Read more...]
RSPA: Vesting for Founders
03/29/2012 By 1 Comment
Yes, world, I am still alive. It’s just been such a busy week, and quite a bit has happened with mynstein Inc. While continuing to move forward with product development, we are also now in the process of signing the legal documents for employee contracts and RSPAs, or Restricted Stock Purchasing Agreements. It's about to get super dry in here, so please don't forget to hydrate as you … [Read more...]
Entrepreneurs… Why you should Hate your Partner!
03/14/2012 By Leave a Comment
I'm the one in Red by the Way! Sometimes... I really HATE my partner. But not for the reasons that you may think. Let me give you a little back story about the relationship of J and Chance. … [Read more...]
Choosing Between Shares or Salary
03/12/2012 By 2 Comments
PAYING EMPLOYEES OF A STARTUP: SHARES OR SALARY mynstein Inc. is about 70 days old now. We received the employee agreements Friday from the attorney we hired for the startup process. For the past two weeks we have been discussing the details of compensation for the employees. In a more typical arrangement it might be easier to allocate ownership of the company. If each founder put in the same … [Read more...]
Starting a Business: Bizfilings or Legal Zoom?
03/07/2012 By 1 Comment
So you have chosen the type of business you want to form, picked a name and done a name search. Now you're asking yourself, "Do I need a lawyer?" Let me tell you what we did, and why. C-corporation filing: We used bizfilings.com to form the first business. Bizfilings offers a handy bundle of products to help you get started. The cost was $1,000 with rush delivery and filing services. … [Read more...]
Starting A Corporation – Drinking from a Firehose
03/07/2012 By Leave a Comment
Once I had done enough research to know for sure that a C-corp would be the best model for mystery Inc., I needed to complete the filing through Bizfilings. I did research at http://thestartuplawyer.com and a number of books and other websites. Ryan gives quite a bit of free advice on his site. It was sufficiently compelling to get him hired as our attorney, and I have no complaints at all so far. … [Read more...]
Free Small Business Resources
03/03/2012 By Leave a Comment
We have setup a folder in our DropBox account to share forms we are actually using in our businesses, along with lots of other "behind-the-scenes" information. I've just created the folder, but we will continue to add content to the folder as we proceed through the development cycle. Join our subscriber list and rummage around in free business templates we have collected. Just visit our website … [Read more...]
Green Turtle or Creative Genius?
02/26/2012 By 2 Comments
What's in a Name? Chance wrote this blog post... but I felt it necessary to chime in here (this is J) because I have been blessed and cursed with my name for my whole life. I truly mean blessed and cursed. Blessed because NOBODY has my name (unlike Chance, which is extremely common ;)... cursed because NOBODY gets my name right. My parents out there know exactly what I'm talking about. … [Read more...]
The Corporate Structure Maze
02/26/2012 By Leave a Comment
Corporate Business Structure Once you’ve got an idea for a business, the first step will be to form a legal entity. There are ton of articles on this topic. If you search “what kind of business should I start” you’ll come across plenty of information about forming an LLC, LP, S-Corp, C-Corp, etc. I found it useful to look at other companies in our industry and see what they have … [Read more...]
In the beginning
02/25/2012 By 2 Comments
And so it begins….Again. Two young entrepreneurs, teaming up at an early age. That’s J on the left, Chance on the right. We were leaner back then, but that’s not what this site is about. Fast forward a couple of decades to December 31, 2011. We ping-pong an idea between Austin and Mexico, and a startup is born. Leanliness is a diary about how two guys are using the latest … [Read more...]
