I'm at a stage where I have a side project that works well for me. I'd like to open it up and allow other people to start using it, but I'm not really sure how to take it from fun project to side business. Do I need to hire a lawyer to draft a Privacy Policy and ToS? Do I need to incorporate an actual business in order to open an account with stripe to accept payments? Anyone have resources on the legal/operational part of this process?
I think it's more up to a person's accepted risk and the nature of their business concept. One thing mentioned in the linked article is the advice that you use an existing entity if you've previously formed one for consulting or some other business. I'm 100% in favor of that since the early stages of a startup are often full of non-starts.
Sure. I can agree with that part. One doesn’t have to form corporations for each idea, but if you are taking payments and offering a service or product that may impact another person or business then being protected is important.
Agreed - the risk/reward seems off here. It will probably be fine, but you could potentially end up in legal hell and risk your family assets.
Why not a "parent" company you keep going indefinitely, spin off other entities as needed?
This all varies by jurisdiction of course, but last time I did something like this I filled out the paperwork myself and it cost a couple hundred only. Gets more complicated with more structure, etc. and any legal work you need - but you don't need to pay for that before it's justified.
you can set up your corp once, then present it as "doing-business-as" (DBA), depending on the jurisdiction, many times. I am not convinced that the above is good advice.
In fact, talking to a lawyer is probably better idea than picking up ideas from some blog.
Go to https://IndieHackers.com, copy paste the story you explained here, give a brief description of your product, ask for a few people to try it out. The crowd there is helpful and is willing to spend the time with you.
The good news about ToS and Privacy Policies is that every company you do business with makes theirs publicly available. So find a couple companies that are similar to yours in terms of business model and/or size, and read theirs. Then put together something of your own. If you have a friend who is a lawyer or has worked on these sorts of issues at a startup (as a non-lawyer), have him/her review it. But don't stress out about this part too much, since you're not much of a target for enforcement actions when you're very small.
I'd advise getting other users to use it for free first before you dive into any paperwork. Basically, make sure you're solving a problem worth money for others first.
I am in a similar situation, but we are already open for free (that is a must i think at first) I was thinking selling support, offering consulting with the setup etc. but what would be the strategy for having paid support and open github issues at the same time?
If you're already looking into Stripe for payments, you should check out Stripe Atlas: https://stripe.com/atlas It might be too much for what you're looking for, but could give you an idea
