10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company
Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) - these are over-hyped in my opinion and few angel or venture investors will sign them, but always helpful to have one handy to bust out at parties.
LLC Operating Agreement - I put my first LLC together myself using this agreement. My advice is to hire an attorney, but if you don’t listen to advice so well, knock yourself out.
Sample Convertible Note - A convertible note is a way to raise debt for your company that will convert into equity. When you are first raising money, if you can use a convertible note instead of having to give up shares/equity, you’ll usually be in a better position later on and own more of your company.
Board of Advisor Agreement - A good board of advisor can be worth their weight in gold, a bad one can be worth their weight in radioactive fluid.
Financial Projections Template - This document is “da bomb”. My good friend and previous business partner Mike Sheridan put this together in our prior consulting company Venature. This is a fantastic financial model template to build your basic Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow statement. Needless to say he paid a LOT more attention in accounting classes in our MBA program.
Financial Model Projections for an Internet Company - Big shout out to Brian Garrett of Crosscut Ventures (site coming soon). This is a fantastic model/template for internet companies to use to project their growth.
Application for Employer Identification Number (EIN) - Basic government form you need to fill out to get set up with an Employer Identification Number (EIN) so that you too can hire folks and pretend to be a badass at cocktail parties (don’t forget to pull out the NDA).
Start Up Pitch Presentation - there are no graphical elements here, but this doc lays out how to describe your business in a presentation format. Business Plans are dead, use a PPT Deck, see graphic examples below.
10 Questions to Consider When Start a New Business - I wrote this doc so I’m biased (hell, I’m writing this whole blog post) - but I do think this is a simple set of questions you can use to analyze any business you are thinking of starting. And once you decide to start, here are some mistakes to avoid.
Business Plan Presentation Template - This doc has a sample layout you can use to pitch investors/partners (plus its got a cool effect of color changing bars on the side - that only took me 4 hours to figure out one law school class)
Business Plan Presentation Template - Get more Legal Forms
Business Plan Deck - I stripped down the docstoc deck and left all the graphical assets in the presentation so that you can download it and use it however you like. We paid a good amount of money to get this done, so I hope you can take our graphical starting point, and raise LOTs of money for your own company with this. Upload Documents to Docstoc and we’ll call it even.
Business Plan Deck - Get more Business Plans
Oh yah, I should probably have some legal disclaimers around the use of these documents…. use your best judgment and hire a qualified professional to review or customize where needed. Or don’t.
July 10th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
Very Helpful. Thanks foe these!
July 10th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Great resource. Thanks for posting. I linked to it from my blog.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I would be very, VERY careful in executing the LLC operating agreement, in particular. Since you still need to hire an attorney when dealing with formation issues as they involve complicated tax issues, have them help w/ the operating agreement. Be careful! Don’t just sign these willy-nilly. You can get burned easily.
July 10th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Since contract law (at least in the U.S.) is regulated at the state level, you’ll want to have an attorney licensed to practice law in, each state that you’ll be doing business, review ALL of your formation and contracts documents. I would add that you’ll need to get a Workman’s Comp & General Liability policies underwritten too. Depending on your business (and state in which you do business), you may also need to get E&O insurance.
As a matter of practice, very few professionals will sign NDAs w/o some sort of serious financial enticement. My default policy is NOT to sign them. An NDA is one more contractual agreement that both parties will need need to manage/maintain/archive during its duration.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
[...] Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company (tags: business startup entrepreneurship documents legal reddit) This entry was written by delicious and posted on 7/10/2008 at 11:34 pm and filed under Home. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. « links for 2008-07-09 [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
[...] Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company (tags: business startup documents legal company) [...]
July 10th, 2008 at 8:48 pm
how go
go
July 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
كيف النسان يمشي
علا قدماه
July 10th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
الا ه فغررىا ل ب بف عفؤلاؤؤلب لا ب ه خلرفلهرنل رنل نال ه
July 10th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
From vBharat.com » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company…
10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company…
July 11th, 2008 at 1:10 am
MIRACLE.
Nothing is impossible!!!
July 11th, 2008 at 3:34 am
Which ones make me above the law?
July 11th, 2008 at 4:44 am
[...] Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 7:33 am
Thanks for posting, many are definitely useful.
July 11th, 2008 at 8:27 am
[...] This should save you a bunch of time if you have a startup or are thinking of creating one.read more | digg [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
This article was very Helpful. Thanks for sharing these!
July 11th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
[...] 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), LLC Operating Agreement, Sample Convertible Note, Board of Advisor Agreement, Financial Projections Template, Application for Employer Identification Number (EIN), Business Plan Presentation Template, .. (tags: business law reference template) [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
wow interesting list of documents.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:11 am
[...] 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company [...]
July 12th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
These will be incredibly useful as general guides for anyone. Thank you very much, Jason!
July 12th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
[...] July 12, 2008 at 11:30 pm · Filed under Business [From Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company] [...]
July 13th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Very helpful, thanks for the list.
July 14th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
[...] Jason Nazar’s Blog » Blog Archive » 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company [...]
July 14th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
[...] To complement these “168 start-up tips”, this week we are featuring a terrifically useful blog post by Jason Nazar containing links to “10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company“. [...]
July 17th, 2008 at 5:29 pm
[...] Nazar shares 10 documents to hold you advise a company. It’s a accessible itemize of resources for those of you who are budding [...]
July 18th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company…
As the title says, here’s a list of 10 documents you need to start a business. Link is from @nfib on Twitter.
My twitter link is: zanesafrit…
July 22nd, 2008 at 1:14 pm
10 Documents Every Startup Needs…
From Jason Nazar comes 10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company. Besides being humble, Jason’s accurate too. These are…10 Incredibly Awesome Documents… And they include good, useful, commentary. Here’s two examples from the lis…
July 23rd, 2008 at 2:29 pm
great advice =)
July 23rd, 2008 at 7:44 pm
[...] Nazar shares 10 documents to help you start a company. It’s a handy list of resources for those of you who are budding [...]
August 2nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
It’s amazing
August 3rd, 2008 at 6:08 pm
excellent compilation of documents. I found .docstock a few weeks back and have found the documents on the site very useful.
August 21st, 2008 at 8:01 am
[...] Jason Nazar. His posts never disappoint. I came across another one the other day titled “10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company“. Jason has compiled a list of 10 docs found in the Docstoc repository of douments to help [...]
August 26th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
[...] To complement these “168 start-up tips”, this week we are featuring a terrifically useful blog post by Jason Nazar containing links to “10 Incredibly Awesome Documents to Help You Start a Company“. [...]
September 19th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
[...] For more useful startup documents check out this list. [...]
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
When you need to incorporate in the US, the best state of choice is Delaware as more than 50% of Fortune 500 Companies are incorporated there. http://www.ecompanyformation.com/USA-Readymade-Companies/Delaware-Readymade-Companies/Delaware-Readymade-Companies.php
October 29th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
[...] to you by Jason Nazar, CEO and Co-Founder of [...]
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:26 am
[...] SOURCE: Jason Nazar RELATED: [...]