Have any of you registered an LLC, corporation or similar?
Discussion
There are ways to secure property like a house over the LLC. So the german government for example has no influence on your house anymore.
Well, I would be working from a home-office, so I could probably also write off running costs for the house. 🤔
I'm a certified Kauffrau, so I could do the bookkeeping and taxes and etc.
Got questions? Hit me up, I may have answers. 🤙🏻🫂
Okay, here's a basic question: Do you think it's weird to have a Nostr-based company, since everyone else on here is all anon and libertarian, and stuff?
Or do you think that would maybe make people take projects more seriously, since they could get letters of recommendation from a registered employer?
Nostr is not the product, it is the mechanism. Generally, individuals beyond tech enthusiasts won't care that a service uses nostr any more than they'd care about a service using postgres or mongodb. Build the interesting product on top of the tech and market that - keep the mechanism available for those curious
I meant more people working on the development team.
But, also, I guess I'd be more inclined to give my money to a real, discoverable human, that I could chase down to get it back, then to npubbunchofnumbers.
Just wondering if the ghosting thing can be combated by official registration.
Guess that would just depend on the development model you care about - do you want employees or are you okay with a more incremental, diffuse approach? I think i remember nostr:npub1utx00neqgqln72j22kej3ux7803c2k986henvvha4thuwfkper4s7r50e8 mentioning he paid based off of pull requests
That is probably Scheinselbständigkeit and illegal in Germany.
Granted, also pretty sure payments were in btc and non-kyc, so there was less formality and bureaucracy needed 🤫
Working on the black market sucks, tho. Know a lot of people trapped in that sort of situation.
Can confirm paid by pull request. Developers like this arrangement too. It's not a black market or illegal to hire contractors to build stuff for you. Not everyone wants to be tired down to a single employer.
The point being that you might be their only employer, in which case German law forbids it because they're tied down, but not covered by employee protections.
It would be clear if we had a larger market for paid-by-PR and they were pulling PRs from different projects. Then it's contracting. Perhaps we have that and they're pulling PRs from many different employers.
And, for the record, I'd want real project teams. That's the sort of development environment I'm used to working with, for startups and large corporations, and their efficiency is unbeatable, when the management doesn't micromanage them and they have a good rapport.
Also... it's just more fun and the working conditions and the pay tends to be better. 🤷
Companies get a bad rap.
Biggest bad rep comes from taking vc money and then ensues the enshittification and monetary capture process to milk the service so they can earn a profit back.
not knee deep into the formalities of creating a company but i have heard that cooperatives could be another route, but thats literally all i can say about that😅💁♂️
Nonprofits, maybe.
By nonprofit, if you mean a tax exempt organization, it could be difficult to raise funds in the US since the tax code is not favorable for donations in Bitcoin from a donor perspective. Again, I’m not familiar with other taxing authorities and I’m guilty of seeing everything in terms of US Tax Code/Law matters. In the USA, it’s really easy to create an LLC and file a few documents with the resident state office that licenses businesses. Also some states are friendlier Thant others about foreign LLC’s. I’d recommend anyone going down this road to start out with a single member LLC. Any payments to outside parties could be contract labor. At some point if a certain dev contributed in such a way that the owner of the LLC wanted to bring them in as a partner/member, it’s easy to convert the single member to a multi-member LLC. But when that happens, you file a separate tax return, which starts to complicate things for people not used to handling multiple return filings. Also it’s hard enough having a partnership with someone you know, so multiply the issue by 100 when you start to deal with people you really don’t know. As one heard more than once….your partner is your friend, until they not. If it’s your idea, make it your company and compensate the external contributors accordingly.
If you have a business purpose and you see it as a profitable venture, LLC’s are pretty easy to setup in the US. I know you’re currently not in the US, so not sure the process if you were attempting to setup a US LLC. I know of a foreign person who has created at Delaware LLC. I’ve been in some discussions with a NOSTR business that is in the process doing what you’re asking about. I can’t say for sure that it would be make people take it more serious though. We can talk more if you want.
Well, we're still developing the MVP. Let's see how the products run and how they're received. I'm very curious.
Interesting that some other Nostriches are having the same thought. Nice to see some entrepreneurship taking root.
My wife and I formed an LLC a few years ago. We are in the US and I'm not sure how similar the laws and process around forming a business are with Germany.
They have LLCs here, too, but they're really expensive. I'd only do that with my Texas residency.
But, I'd actually prefer to stick to the German side and just buy a rider for my insurance, or something.
Interesting. Each state is different but LLCs are generally pretty cheap here. People are incentivised to start businesses from a tax perspective. Definitely cleaner from a legal standpoint too.
But if you want to do this on the German side, none of this is very helpful for you 😅
It is because
1) Some of the people in this thread are in the EU
2) I'm wondering how Nostriches feel about registered FOSS companies. Is that an oxymoron?
3) It probably wouldn't make sense to do this until/unless we started earning quite a bit of income, as I would have to put everyone (including myself) at least minimum wage.
4) Is the market even big enough for this, or must Nostr be dominated by a few rich Kingmakers?
I was just thinking about the OpenSats model of a public charity. Is that heavy concentration with a gigantic budget the superior model to small, competing companies?
I don't actually think it is, but there's no momentum to start companies, as far as I can see. Almost only grants and bounties. Too early?
I'm just thinking aloud. 🤔
You'll get a variety of opinions on this. For my part, I don't take issue with a registered FOSS company. My scrutinizing the software/service would be the same for a registered company as it is for the unregistered project maintained by a passionate and dedicated group of devs.
When it comes to *how* you would successfully make such a business work, I am not informed enough to say. But there are a lot of examples out there and I am guessing there are many ways you could approach it from a structural and financial standpoint.
Yes. Made me important at the bank
Why ask permission?
Because then you're a legal entity with more options and higher trust.
You can, for instance, hire employees.
How many people dream of working for a Nostr company? But I think there are no Nostr companies... yet.
Don't forget to pay your taxes lol
Unpopular opinion
I pay a small shitload of taxes, probably much more than most people who whine about them, but I have nothing against taxes, on principle.
Taxes aren't (gasp) the problem...
It's spending that's the problem, and the funding of that spending (which of course typicalky requires more taxes and/or money printing)
Without addressing the spending, you'll never be able to stop the money printing, nor the runaway taxation theft.
And that means addressing politicians...and therein lies the rub.
I think the money printing is just baked into the currency and the governments have to keep spending like crazy or the currency will collapse even faster. Fiat, I'm afraid.
I doubt anything will change until after hyperinflation.
Oh I agree completely--right now, the payment on the interest on the debt (not the principlal) is mathematically impossible for us to pay back, even if we devoted our entire annual GDP to the effort.
In other words, the only way we can continue is to print money (and suffer through the issues that will result).
Yet the true cause of our current problem is politicians who continued to spend, even when there was no way to pay for the "benefits"...
Yes, well, oh well. 😆 🤷 People peopling. Aristotle said that's what democracy is. People voting themselves other people's money until the money is all gone.
Yes, what is it you want to accomplish?
Just thinking about registering a domain under a company name and bank account, instead of my own, but the conversation has gone off on various rabbit-trails. Which is interesting.
I know very little about protocol outside the US, if you’re looking for protection from liability, I would research the few jurisdictions that allow the creation of a shell company anonymously. That shell or holding company can then own the LLC. Without this step, it is relatively easy to legally pierce the veil of an LLC or corporation and hold the sole proprietor responsible. The state of Wyoming is a decent place to found the LLC, Delaware used to offer anonymous shell companies, and strong privacy protections. Ever notice that most US banks are incorporated in Delaware? It’s no coincidence.
Yes, but this wouldn't really raise trust, the way a German-registered or Texas-registered company under my real name would (I'm legal resident in both places).
But, okay, exhausted and it's almost midnight. Interesting discussion, folks.
Later, gators!
So the use case for your LLC is to appear to clients as a more trustworthy operator by being a company? Generally I think separating personal operations as much as possible from your company operations is always preferable, also keep the parts of a complex company separated from each other, there are many benefits to this, tax liability, legal liability mitigation. One LLC can mitigate the tax liability of another by “buying” materials from it, year to year it’s possible to never show any taxable profit as an operation.
Yeah, one of my employers had 4 different companies of varying types.
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We registered our business as an S-Corp over 20 years ago. I don't remember much about it. Actually, my Dad, who had done it before, helped and did a bunch of it.
I really admire that about you. I've always wanted to own my own business.
Once established, owning your own business gives you flexibility, but it is still a lot of work. When I worked for someone else, I didn't think about work when I left. Now, work is always on my mind.
Our first several years I basically worked every waking moment except dinner and a movie on Saturday night and church on Sunday morning. Now that we are more established, I have more flexibility, but I still frequently work weekends and even holidays. As the owner, you are responsible for everything getting done. If someone gets sick, quits, is fired, or just doesn't get their work done, I have to do it. It is far from easy, but I am grateful that we have a business that gives me the flexibility to homeschool my kids and to take time off if I need to (even if it is stressful).
I feel like that, with our project. It feels like my baby.