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Hey there. I'm a freelance creative professional, and I'm looking to join into a team with a few other freelancers with different specialties. We'd like to retain our (as some lawyers have called it) "eat what you kill" payment structures: getting paid for the work we invoice, rather than getting paid some share of the company's revenue. The company itself wouldn't hold on to much revenue, except to pay our low operating expenses. The main purpose of the company would be to create a brand under which we all gain more notoriety and a strong position in the market. Which company structure (LLC, series LLC, partnership, S-corp, C-corp, cooperative, etc.) would best accomplish this goal? Or is there a way to organize the sole proprietorships that we already have under a new brand (that could be liquidated if we split up) without actually setting up a new company? Caedar fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jan 9, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2016 20:25
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 00:44 |
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If you're just looking to share a brand and maybe some infrastructure (like accounting, legal, offices, admin, advertising) I would look into forming a non profit that owns the brand and licenses it out to each partner for some fee that is used to cover expenses.
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Jan 10, 2016 01:35
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the talent deficit posted:If you're just looking to share a brand and maybe some infrastructure (like accounting, legal, offices, admin, advertising) I would look into forming a non profit that owns the brand and licenses it out to each partner for some fee that is used to cover expenses. Yes, all we'd like to do is share the brand and light infrastructure (mostly a website and advertising). There's the question of brand ownership, though: if the non-profit is licensing out the brand, is it still possible for all of us to be members of the non-profit? The main concern is what happens if the company dissolves but someone wants to continue the brand; if only, say, one person is a member of the non-profit that's licensing the brand, that leaves very little protection for the other few people on the team.
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Jan 10, 2016 06:57
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Caedar posted:Yes, all we'd like to do is share the brand and light infrastructure (mostly a website and advertising). There's the question of brand ownership, though: if the non-profit is licensing out the brand, is it still possible for all of us to be members of the non-profit? The main concern is what happens if the company dissolves but someone wants to continue the brand; if only, say, one person is a member of the non-profit that's licensing the brand, that leaves very little protection for the other few people on the team. You can setup rules for things like members joining and leaving in the non profit's charter. Probably you'd all be on the board and any changes to membership would require a majority vote (or supermajority, if you want). A lawyer can set this up for you easily.
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Jan 10, 2016 07:02
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the talent deficit posted:You can setup rules for things like members joining and leaving in the non profit's charter. Probably you'd all be on the board and any changes to membership would require a majority vote (or supermajority, if you want). A lawyer can set this up for you easily. Excellent. Thank you!
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Jan 10, 2016 07:26
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What exactly do you do as a creative? Is it a services firm (design, architecture, marketing, etc) or more artistic (theater, art, what have you). If you're setting this up as a non-profit I'm thinking the latter, in which case you should see if there's a law firm around that would take this on pro bono - someone at a local arts advocacy group, or just a person in those circles, would probably know who to contact to find out. I know my firm takes on stuff like this pretty regularly.
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Jan 18, 2016 01:58
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JohnCompany posted:What exactly do you do as a creative? Is it a services firm (design, architecture, marketing, etc) or more artistic (theater, art, what have you). If you're setting this up as a non-profit I'm thinking the latter, in which case you should see if there's a law firm around that would take this on pro bono - someone at a local arts advocacy group, or just a person in those circles, would probably know who to contact to find out. I know my firm takes on stuff like this pretty regularly. We're a services firm—writing and editing, graphic design, manufacturing, marketing, and the like. I talked with some more lawyers about this, and one experienced with groups such as mine put forward an interesting idea. It looks like in my state (Mass) the easiest and best-fitting option might just be a general partnership formed as what he calls a "marketing partnership" or "marketing coop" depending on the agreement's language.
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Jan 26, 2016 19:34
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If you all want to continue (i.) do your own work and (ii.) retain all of the profits from that work, then I don't really see what the appeal of forming a common business entity would be. You could just as easily find a shared office space in order to split expenses like rent and internet service with other people, and you wouldn't find yourself taking on liability if one of them decided to pinch a delivery boy's rear end or something. Unless you are somehow profiting from their work (and vice versa) this seems like downside without upside to me.
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Jan 27, 2016 00:12
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| # ? Apr 30, 2024 00:44 |
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Aren't most real estate agencies setup like this? The office advertises the general brand and holds the logos and such but each agent eats what it kills and just kicks up some money to pay for shared expenses. I think your bigger problem is making sure your partners pay their share.
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Jan 28, 2016 16:54
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