Starting a web company

[fourthdan]

Hi

I have an idea for a website. But I have a few queries about how to go about setting it up:

1) I can't code much. My coding is limited to a little bit of C++ from over a decade ago. But I'm a whiz at flash and photoshop. I asked around my programmer friends and i definately don't think I have the skills needed to code this. How reliable do you think is getting a freelance company to work on my project? Or should I do it the hard way and code it myself? I'm also thinking of a third alternative: hiring someone directly. I live in India, I'm surrounded by software engineers - and my wife's a recruiter

2) Suppose I do decide to get someone or some company to build me the website. Should I form a company as a legal entity? Like a sole proprietership?
Because I want to have some form of Intellectual property registration and copyright - not sure how I have to do this, but the way I've been going so far is making a document with the info on my idea. I thought I'll design some layouts for the website, add it to the document, and then use that document to get copyrighted. Thoughts?

[Matthew Cluff]

What's the basic premise of your website? Is it along the lines of a blog, squeeze page, and sales pages?

I'd recommend holding off on hiring a programmer and just seeing what there is already out there. If you install Wordpress on your domain, there's thousands of free themes you can use for building websites. On top of that, there are many more themes you can pay for from third-party websites to install on your site. So let me know what the idea you have behind the design/premise of your site, and I'll be able to help you a bit more.

As for the legal advice, I'm not recommending that you do in any way what I did, nor am I saying you shouldn't do what I did. (For what you want to do, I'd recommend seeking legal counsel). I'm just telling you my course of action:

I was really big on pushing incorporation at the start, but it just wasn't working out for me, my situation, and what I had to do. I found a company name I wanted to use, but the domain name was an expensive premium domain and I just didn't have the funds to do what I needed.

So, for the start, because I didn't really "need" the business name, I decided to do my business as an unincorporated sole proprietor. If my business takes off and needs expansion, then I can incorporate it and "sell" the proprietorship to the incorporated business to hire more employees.

On top of that, I think I read somewhere online that whenever you "publish" something, it's copywritten automatically for 50 years or something of the like. So for me, I just have everything "Copyright © 2011 Matthew Cluff" on all my documents, PDFs, and websites. Might want to look into that a bit more though...

Hope my post helps. Remember, it's just my story for that last part. No legal advice on my part was ever given or intended in writing that though.

[fourthdan]

Thanks for the feedback Matthew.

I can't go into the specifics, but I'm planning on setting up a website that offers a service the way mint.com or tripit.com do. It needs medium level complex programming on C# or at least ajax. I've done lots of stuff with wordpress, made a blog, bought and used hosting, so I'm not a total noob - but I'm just not capable of programming this project unless I invest at least a year into getting good at programming, which I really don't want to. I've got a full time job plus my savings so I don't need partners or funding at the moment. All I need are the people with skills to build it without taking the idea away from me and building it themself.

I'm thinking of starting a company (lsole proprietership / egal entity) because then i can draw up legal documentation such as contracts with the companies or programming contractors / freelancers.


On another note - I found out today that the company I'm working for full-time doesn't allow me to form or own another company, so I'm probably going to have to register it in my wife's name for now - if I do take this course.

Anyways - anyone out there with experience dealing with letting your website being built by freelancers, companies, etc? Is it better to do it the legal / corporate way or can i safely interact with them as an individual?

[Brutha]

On another note - I found out today that the company I'm working for full-time doesn't allow me to form or own another company, so I'm probably going to have to register it in my wife's name for now - if I do take this course.

This could be a very bad idea.
You should talk to a lawyer who understands your local law and show him the contract that you have with your present company.

Otherwise there a chance that the company for which you are working could sue you and take over your website.

[fourthdan]

Thanks Brutha. Found a lawyer's office today on the way home. Will definately check if it's ok.

[Packman]

I live in Ukraine and their are freelancers that you can hire for web development everywhere. There are forums for outsourcing...these people can be found.