Start as a company or individual?

The primary reason to incorporate is to protect yourself from personal liability, and to enable investment. Unless you are at risk for damages, I suspect its safe to wait

I would suggest you go as an individual as long as you can. Even when you will start charging people for your service you can do it as an individual and the file it as personal tax income. If the business will grow up then you can register the company. But in the beginning this just unnecessary extra work which you definitely don't need.

I would go find a few lawyers and just talk about the differences so you can understand. They like to do this for free to get to know you. Then you can make a informed decision about the risk tradeoff you are making.

I think you can do some initial validation first without a corporate entity but then if you are more certain you want to setup a corporate entity for a variety of reasons that lawyers can explain better. I've done this different ways before - setting up first, validating first, not setting up and it all really depends on your specific business needs. Lawyers are trained to think about what trouble you might get into and how to keep you out of it or get you out of it.

You can easily do this on any of the online lawyer matching sites by posting this question there. Then having a nice chat with who responds to you :) So definitely go do this and then you can make a smart decision.

As stated, the only reason to form a company is to prevent a law suit from seizing your personal assets. Forming a company separates “your stuff” from “company stuff.” If you feel you are not at risk for litigation, a sole-proprietorship is perfectly viable; perhaps forever.

• I am not a lawyer. Don’t accept legal counsel from a bunch of nerds on the internet. Seek the advice of a legitimate lawyer, if you can, before making your decision.