Comments on: Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My!

By: Olivier Tripet

Olivier Tripet — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 14:39:50 +0000

Having a registered company is not a must unless you already plan to hire people or in case you absolutely need it for the image of the event. Also, you may prefer to wait and see the result of the first event (interest, attendees, problems) and make your final choice only then.

Country: not sure if you should decide up front. Note that the Swiss Law will change on January 1st 2008 (Nouveau droit des SA et des Sàrl) including more flexible rules for Swiss ciitzens and foreigners.

Advisory board: why not but if you're already 3 it may be enough. I'd make the difference between friends just giving you a hand and a formal board. For the latter, you need to define the needs, the objectives, the roles, the outcome of the board meetings, etc, which may require more time and energy than working on the event itself.

Shareholders: too early to think about shareholders imho since you don't yet have a biz plan. Same for the trademark, it needs to be part of the plan incl. the justification, financial implications, IPR, etc.

In other words, my recommendation is to start small (which should not prevent you from thinking big) otherwise you may end completely overwhelmed with millions of tasks. Focus first on the core aspects of the project (for instance by using SWOT), the rest will come naturally and probably at a later stage.

By: Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » Websites and Blogs, Where Does One Start?

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 09:35:33 +0000

[...] it too early to create a site for the company, though? I’ve got a good mind for the moment to hold off incorporating it until the first event is done. I mean, not to be pessimistic, but if Going Solo doesn’t [...]

By: Climb to the Stars (Stephanie Booth) » Nasty Problem With Basic Bilingual Plugin

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:44:49 +0000

[...] if somebody has the French excerpt to my post Advisors, Boards, Companies, Partners, Oh My! in their newsreader or browser cache, could you please send it to me or copy-paste it here as a [...]

By: Stéphanie

Stéphanie — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:24:59 +0000

Je ne peux rien te dire de précis, car je ne m’y connais pas, mais je pense qu’il vaudrait mieux que tu aies recours à des pros pour te conseiller. Soit tu consultes un avocat (c’est pas une idée bête, tu veux pas te retrouver coincée par le fait que ta compagnie est britannique pour une raison qui t’étais inconnue), soit tu consultes qqn qui a une compagnie en Suisse (ce que tu as probablement déjà fait) ou un genre de comptable, de consultant en entreprise, enfin, bref. Qqn qui est calé.
En général, pour la rédaction de contrats ou de tout genre de documents légaux, tu ferais mieux de faire réviser ça par un avocat.
Pour les impôts et ton statut de freelance, c’est pareil: un comptable serait pas de refus. Au Québec, je ne suis pas sûre qu’on puisse être proriétaire d’une compagnie ET freelance. Mais peut-être que, comme tu dis, si on n’est pas un salarié à temps plein, c’est autre chose.

Donc, pour résumer tout ça, si j’étais toi je me “surinformerais”, quitte à avoir des frais inutiles. Ça peut te sauver la mise et te donner des infos auxquelles tu n’as pas pensé parce que tu ne connais pas le domaine légal ou le domaine des affaires.
Et si les pros sont hors de prix, pourquoi ne pas essayer d’avoir recours à des étudiants ou à des centres communautaires? Ce n’est qu’une idée…

À tout bientôt!

By: Imran

Imran — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:25:18 +0000

OK…on incorporating in the UK - great idea and if you’d like a UK registered office, I can sort you out in Leeds at the prestigious Old Broadcasting House!

Companies House (http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/) and BusinessLink are good places to start for advice on the mechanics of incorporating. It shouldn’t cost more than £50 and a few working days to setup.

For your board structure I’d keep your ‘recruited’ legal directors (non-executive directors) of the company to 2-3 non-executive directors at a maximum, maybe with 5% equity stakes to begin with. One of them should be a good administrator or company secretary.

However, an advisory board doesn’t have to be compensated or a legal entity. It’s basically a mechanism of adding friends and helpful advisors of the company…exposure in return for access to knowledge. I wouldn’t make them legal directors.

In compensating your staff…purely performance-based is sorta harsh! Give a mixture of a fixed fee based on their time-input and then a bonus based on the success of your event. That way everyone gets paid fairly for their effort, but you can share a huge success equitably too without people going hungry!

By: Howard Greenstein

Howard Greenstein — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 15:16:33 +0000

I think the kind of advisor you need first is someone familiar enough with Swiss law to answer your independent status questions, and the company incorporation questions. There’s also a need for insurance advice related to events - I’m sure someone in Switzerland could help you with insurance questions

As to the size of the advisory group and how they’ve got ’skin in the game’ or ‘money on the table’ remember that an advisory group is only as useful as your ability to use it as such. I’ve found that with one organization where I’ve been on the Board of Directors, the size of the board >30 means that it’s tough to know everyone, and that we didn’t get utilized as well as we could have by the director. Each relationship is something that has to be maintained, as well as tapped. Keep that in mind, or you’ll find your board, advisors, etc may lose interest.