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Looking for legal/financial advice in getting started with a startup. We have an an enterprise product and one client who has shown promising interest. One client is all we need to get started although we have other clients we are preparing pitches for and a couple possible angel investors as well. The catch is that the client is a Spanish company. We have three founders, one American (myself), one Spanish, and one Spanish in America on an F1 visa and so is limited in terms of income. Obviously figuring this out will require specialists and I've reached out to some people on the US side. On the Spanish side we were advised to incorporate there as well as with a US LLC and have the US LLC buy equity in the Spanish entity. But that advisor didn't seem too confident about the international component, or the visa issue. Just thought I'd float this here and see if anyone had any thoughts or hopefully resources in the meantime while we wait to talk to a real advisor. There's not a lot I can find online about international startups.
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Jul 28, 2016 15:49
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The internet has mixed advice about whether someone on an F1 visa can get paid from a foreign company. Apparently the law is ambiguous and some lawyers say not to risk it as it's against the spirit of the law. But we're trying to get legal advice in that arena. Also IP issues, corporate structure... this whole thing is complicated.
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Aug 3, 2016 20:09
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We're pre-revenue and a good ways away from having a complete product. We're also in an area with a lot of hobbyists and people trying to break into the industry. After talking to some students in a related university club I have a dozen undergrads offering (practically begging) to work for free. We could really use the help--bootstrapping seems just out of reach but possibly achievable. If one of these students can grow into a "first tech hire" type role it would be ideal, but I want to do this right. Obviously I'll talk to a lawyer about internships and employment (I expect we'll have to pay at least minimum wage) but I was wondering if anyone had any advice. At this stage I'm mainly concerned about deciding how many I can manage and who to move forward with. They're all very impressive and they all know each other which makes this potentially difficult to navigate. Also looking for advice in demonstrating traction to investors at this stage. We're a high-ticket B2B item; just one client would give us a nice boost. Due to industry experience we have a good network and several customers who are interested. This doesn't seem to mean much, though--understandably. Are there ways to demonstrate traction at this point? Is it a thing to get a proof-of-interest document that says "if this product with these features is available by this date we are committed to spending $X on it"? Are there better options? We have also tried to sell it in advance but that seems impossible without giving exclusivity and basically becoming an in-house thing.
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Mar 15, 2017 20:14
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