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Origin: the checklist for incorporation & beyond
When
Order
What needs to be done
Recommended
Honorable Mention
Year 1 Cost (<5 ppl)
Notes
Week 0: Prepare Scaffolding
4
1
Purchase your domain
<$50
After Google Domains announced the sale to Squarespace, Namecheap is our go-to recommendation.
It’s quite easy to use, is a simple interface, and their domain search / exploration tools are best-in-class.
Cloudflare is a bit less user-friendly; Dynadot is well-priced but not quite “the” player. So both platforms are listed as honorable mention. Avoid most other platforms.
2
Set up email
<$50
Setting up your email ASAP will save you a lot of pain and searching. Google is the easy choice; MS Outlook isn’t horrendous, but Google is the gold standard: easy to use but powerfully configurable. Avoid everyone else.
Pricing starts at $6-7 / mo / user, scales up to 2-5x as you step up in pricing tiers.
Note: it’s also worth setting up contact@, founders@, sales@ and others as . Fuller article coming on this soon.
3
Set up password manager
$50-250
This is one of the biggest misses in the setup phase: set up 1Password, start with the individual / team subscription. For $3-20 / mo, it is one of the most no-brainer decisions you can make. Avoid Lastpass or other options.
4
Set up virtual mailbox
$238 / state for Sec of State + RA
$475 / state for all biz + payroll tax registrations and compliance
$250-500
This is the second biggest miss in the setup phase. Setting up a VMB very early ensures that your mail (from IRS, from states, from vendors) gets auto-scanned and digitized, rather than getting snail mail to a founder’s house. $30-50 / mo may seem like a lot in the early days, but this should be one of your earliest purchases.
AbstractOps is not a virtual mailbox provider, per se, but we include a subscription to in our subscription to the tier.
@Stable
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