Information on starting my own business.....

[Codewiz]

I graduated with a Computer Science degree in May and I still haven't been able to land a full time job programming yet. While looking for a full time job and working a crappy sales job, I have been doing some consulting work for a company in Atlanta. It is good money and I feel I have done a pretty good job. The past two months I have been developing a billing system for an apartment system's phone system. Since they didn't care what language I used, I decided on C# since it was a natural progression from Java and I didn't know C# when I started. It has been quite an experience and I have learned what testers go through on large projects. I code and test everything myself which is less than ideal. Of course they do lots of testing before deployment. I also plan on a code review in the next week or so because I have done some things in less an ideal ways. They were more interested in a quick product to get started so some code isn't very good.

While I don't think I will ever be able to make a great living on my own doing consulting work it can't hurt to do it in my spare time. I will probably finish my current consulting job in another month or so. Since I was able to land this consulting job, I hope I might be able to find a few others. I would like to start my own "business" and I would be the only employee/owner of course. I have looked into business licenses in North Carolina but I was wondering if anyone had any good advice for someone looking to do this.

I already have a great domain lined up for a website and I already checked to make sure the company name isn't taken so I think I am good there also.

Any advice or pitfalls? One thing I worry about is the fact I would be running this out of my apartment but being a one man wrecking crew there isn't much choice.

 

[xSauronx]

if i wanted to start a business, not only would i make sure i had a fair amount of prior background experience, but id look around for good books/tape sets/lectures and such on business policies and principals. general stuff, and things specifically related to starting/running that kind of business

"its easier to OBtain, than MAINtain"

remember that, depending on what you do, it can take alot more than what you think to keep a business in order the way it needs to be, and its better to be prepared than to learn the hard way about something and have to start living out of a box, even if its a particularly nice box

 

[Ryan]

Yea, send me $76,000 and I'll help you out.

 

[conjur]

Read this...thoroughly

And good luck! 🙂

 

[Codewiz]

Well guys, this isn't something I am sinking money into(I am willing to spend the money to get all the licenses and stuff like that of course). I want to just do consulting work on the side. Instead of just doing it under my name I would like to have a name to the company and have a valid business license. Currently I am just doing it as a self-employeed person for tax purposes. I live in an area that already has a lot of competition so I never expect to make a complete living off of this.

The whole reason I got the current consulting job is because I was willing to deal with a lot of crap that other companies wouldn't. The company could not put down on paper exactly what they wanted. They only had a general idea but they needed a product that worked within 1.5 weeks. I delivered something that got the job done that they wanted but of course they also found out they needed more. Basically, I have just been updating the software with new features and bug tracking since the first release. Most consultants for companies want a definative set of product specs. That would have been nice but since I had a general idea of what was needed I decided it was worth my time since they were paying by the hour not by the job.

Basically, I want to register a company name and try to get some extra business on the side. I already have everything I need to code. I do need some resources on legal documents for contracts. Another thing, has anyone dealt with developing software for a company as a consultant? With the company I am working with now, they don't care about having the source code and I am happy with that. They only want the compiled program. I would prefer to not give the source code out to companies unless they agree that they do not own the rights to the code, they only would be allowed to maintain the code and couldn't sell it.

Thanks for the advice guys...

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: Codewiz
Well guys, this isn't something I am sinking money into(I am willing to spend the money to get all the licenses and stuff like that of course). I want to just do consulting work on the side. Instead of just doing it under my name I would like to have a name to the company and have a valid business license. Currently I am just doing it as a self-employeed person for tax purposes. I live in an area that already has a lot of competition so I never expect to make a complete living off of this.

The whole reason I got the current consulting job is because I was willing to deal with a lot of crap that other companies wouldn't. The company could not put down on paper exactly what they wanted. They only had a general idea but they needed a product that worked within 1.5 weeks. I delivered something that got the job done that they wanted but of course they also found out they needed more. Basically, I have just been updating the software with new features and bug tracking since the first release. Most consultants for companies want a definative set of product specs. That would have been nice but since I had a general idea of what was needed I decided it was worth my time since they were paying by the hour not by the job.

Basically, I want to register a company name and try to get some extra business on the side. I already have everything I need to code. I do need some resources on legal documents for contracts. Another thing, has anyone dealt with developing software for a company as a consultant? With the company I am working with now, they don't care about having the source code and I am happy with that. They only want the compiled program. I would prefer to not give the source code out to companies unless they agree that they do not own the rights to the code, they only would be allowed to maintain the code and couldn't sell it.

Thanks for the advice guys...

Consulting full time can be fun and a pain.
I was doing 6 months slots; the last 6 weeks was then spent scrambling for another gig.
Eventually the gigs dried up when two contracts were cancelled early.

There are self-help forms for a small company - Chapter S Corp.
I have delivered source code and also kept the code. Depends on the company. Either way, I retained the rights and a copy of the code if needed for additional development.