Day 7: a company that exists
Entity chosen and incorporation filed, EIN application in, business bank account underway, founder equity split agreed and headed onto four-year vesting.
startup-launcher — set your company’s foundation right
A guided walkthrough of the legal, financial, and operational groundwork a real company needs — 25 concrete foundation tasks across your first 7, 30, and 90 days, each with the steps, the documents, and the deadlines that actually bite.
Start your foundationWhat you hold at each milestone
Not progress bars — documents, accounts, and filings you can put in front of a lawyer, a bank, or an investor.
Day 30: the hard deadlines, met
83(b) elections postmarked inside the 30-day window, IP and invention assignments signed, payroll and bookkeeping live, registered agent set, compliance calendar built.
Day 90: diligence-ready
Tax obligations mapped to real dates — Delaware franchise tax lands March 1 — insurance decided, minute book complete, one clean cap table that survives an investor’s lawyer.
The three strands of a sound foundation
Legal, financial, and operations run as one sequenced walkthrough — every task explains what to do, why it matters, and what goes wrong when it slips.
Legal
Incorporation done properly, then everything that keeps it that way.
- Entity choice and incorporation, filed step by step
- EIN from the IRS — direct, no filing mill
- 83(b) election with the 30-day postmark deadline explained
- Founder equity on four-year vesting
- IP and invention assignment, so the company owns the work
- Registered agent, name clearance, trademark basics
Financial
Money handled cleanly from the first dollar in or out.
- Business bank account — company and personal money never mixed
- Bookkeeping set up before the receipts pile up
- A budget and runway model you actually maintain
- Expense hygiene and card policy
- Tax obligations mapped — federal, state, payroll, franchise — with dates
Operations
The unglamorous systems that keep the company out of trouble.
- Payroll set up before anyone gets paid
- Contractor vs employee classification, done correctly
- The insurance you actually need now — and what can wait
- Licenses, permits, privacy policy, terms of service
- Security basics, a minute book, one clean cap table
Also: the build
The technical journey is in here too — ship the smallest thing to a real production URL, get your first ten users, take the first dollar. Forty-six tasks across five phases, with the product build riding on the foundation instead of racing it.
Set the foundation once, set it right
The walkthrough starts at day one and never asks you to guess.