Originally published January 30, 2021

Congratulations! You’ve taken your passion and launched an exciting new venture. But to build something spectacular, you’ll need to construct a firm administrative foundation. This becomes especially critical if you expect to take venture funding.

Obtain your domain.

Before you order personalized stationary and business cards, confirm your preferred domain is available. Once you’ve found the perfect domain, consider registering multiple domains to protect your online presence. It’s good practice to buy multiple extensions to your domain (.org, .net etc.) as well as common misspellings or company nicknames.

Hire an attorney.

Find a trustworthy attorney who can guide you through the unexpected legal issues that may arise. Ask respected friends for recommendations and take your time finding the right fit for your organization.

Keep in mind a key tradeoff: brand name firms (Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick & West) are super expensive, but they provide VC’s comfort that you’re well-protected from a legal perspective. Also evaluate firms like Silicon Legal Counsel that have partners that used to be at those brand name firms

Talk to your counsel about using an equity management service such as Captable.io (it’s free!) or Carta (widely adopted by startups & law firms alike & comprehensive) to manage your cap table. This makes it super easy to track ownership, understand how many options you have to offer your employees, and even to model your next round of financing

Check your compliance.

This includes a few key steps that will protect you & minimize future federal, state & local, and institutional fundraising challenges. Consult your new corporate attorney!:

Register for your federal tax ID, also known as a Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN). This is like your personal social security number & confirms you exist. It’s required.

Incorporate as a C Corp in Delaware. Investors find it hard to invest in LLC’s from a tax perspective. And Delaware legal & tax laws are the most favorable for corporations.

Open a bank account.

Whether your company will be accepting funding or pulling from an internal source, it’s important to build a relationship with a reputable bank.

Begin by opening a checking account with a bank like First Republic or Silicon Valley Bank. They’ve done the most to support the startup community, they have great relationships with VC’s & other institutional investors, and their online portals are the most user-friendly.

Next, look into a no collateral credit card at a company like Brex. They will allow you to have credit based on your cash balance without a personal guarantee. Very few, if any, other credit cards will allow this for early stage startups

Set up payroll & benefits.

You can’t pay employees without a payroll system, and it will be nearly impossible to attract talent if you don’t offer benefits. There are lots of awful payroll & benefits systems out there. Choosing the wrong one will create a significant drain on your limited time. Gusto has done quite a good job of automating a lot of the time-consuming activities surrounding payroll & benefits. From onboarding, to compliance, to completely automated payroll, and a user friendly benefits portal, it offers a pretty comprehensive package. Also check out Zenefits, Rippling, or JustWorks (a PEO)

Set up Gmail & document storage.

Google’s suite of products are invaluable, from Gmail & Calendar, which practically every startup uses, to Google Docs, which provides fantastic real time collaboration capabilities across its versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Then decide where you’re going to store all your documents: Google Docs, actual Microsoft docs, PDF’s, scanned docs, etc. And set up (and use consistently!) an intuitive folder management system so you & your employees know where documents are stored. Due diligence during fundraising will be almost easy if you’ve been consistent about document storage. Both Google Drive and Dropbox do a great job of this, and doing it from launch will pay off exponentially as your ventures expand and evolve.

Choose your outsourced accounting partner.

Unlike a bookkeeper, an outsourced accounting firm like Attivo Partners (my firm) can scale with you and provide a ton of value-added services at a fraction of the cost of a full time team. Choose one that offers full stack services, from accounting clerk all the way up to CFO. They can:

Help ensure you remain compliant with accounting policies, tax registrations and filings, and general compliance requirements.

Track your expenses (and hopefully, revenue) accurately and consistently from the beginning to proactively identify opportunities for improvement.

Provide strategic resources (Controllers, CFOs) that can be layered in as you grow to ensure you’re evaluating strategic opportunities from a financial perspective, help you manage & forecast your cash, and get you ready for your next round of financing.

Recommend & help implement the best back office tools, including Quickbooks (accounting), Bill.com (customer invoicing & vendor payables), Expensify (employee T&E), Hubspot (CRM), etc.

Build your revenue model.

More than just a fundraising tool, a good revenue model provides you a go-to-market roadmap. What’s your target market? How will you reach your customers? What resources will be required? How long will it take? How will you price it? How much will it cost to deliver it? If you’re handy with Excel, do it yourself! Or, ask your outsourced accountant to help put together a lightweight one. Then, use it! Track your progress against it. Update it when you discover things that work and don’t.