You made a calculator and want to sell it legally, how?
I'm in the US
Once you're ready to sell something/make money on it, how do you deal with the legal/ToS stuff.
I mean sure it's easy to just add stripe and collect/get paid. But what if someone's like "the colors on this webpage made me get a seizure" and then you get sued. Sort of thing.
Is an LLC really necessary for a little basic calculator(this is a hypothetical product).
It seems laughable but this one of my main concerns, I'm an SE day job so code isn't the concern it's the law stuff . "Seems silly" to hire a lawyer for a simple app that may or may not make money. Granted I don't think anyone would pay money for an online calculator but that's the point, if you have a bunch of random web apps/services do you need an LLC for every single one.
Thanks for any info
I see questions like this get brought up a lot. You definitely don’t need an LLC or any form of structure. There is nothing wrong with not having one, it’s perfectly legal to be making millions of dollars just as a sole proprietor.
As far as getting sued, that’s a risk you’re going to have to accept whether you have an LLC or not. Even if you have an LLC they can pierce through that and still take your personal assets. However, this risk is microscopic and frankly you can get sued for dumb reasons whether you are charging for the piece of software or not. Unless you’re in a grey industry like letting users share music, you have no reason to worry about getting sued.
There is value in having your company setup properly. My advice to entrepreneurs is to wait until you get to about $3-5k MRR, then hire an attorney and get everything setup correctly. When you’re just starting out it’s perfectly fine to connect Stripe to your personal bank account, and just worry about creating value.
Ha, yeah I have not achieved that other than a day job haha.
Yeah I think that's what I will do. I will have to find some templates to work with. It's too bad I was helping some web SaaS product and they had a legal team on their side I could have picked their brain at the time.
LLC are mostly founded for tax purposes, in many countries you can't legally sell stuff without a LLC.
Oh I probably should have mentioned I'm in the US, though not sure how that affects global internet sales
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Yes, that's what I meant. Outside US people/companies are not that worried about get sued and in general the main reason for founding one is taxation and accountability, not liability.
A corporation or LLC protects your person. You can sell without it but it leaves you open to financial risk. What I would do in your case is to see if people buy the app first then meet with an attorney and have them protect you.
What do you think is a realistic "goal to reach" before I should worry like $10K or something? ha I've never made that from a personal app or venture before.
In most areas, the big law firms will provide incorporation and other protections for around $2000 as a loss leader. In addition, they will offer some very good advice on protecting the business. When you determine it is worth doing this is up to you.
What I would do is call around business law firms in your area and ask how much and what they offer. Then take that amount as the goal to reach before doing it.
I have to look that up "loss leader"
Yeah I at least have some ideas/can start in the first place, so thanks
A loss leader is a phrase used to describe a business practice of taking a loss on one product to bring in customers for the other ones.
thanks gotta brush up on my acumen(business) haha
edit: well what I said doesn't really make sense but yeah, be more aware of business concepts such as this one
You don't really 'need' anything, but having a privacy policy and ToS is a good place to start to protect yourself. You don't need a lawyer for this either, you can just use a template.
You don't need a LLC either, but it will protect you if something goes wrong.
Right I mean I cruise sites like this and it seems like so many people "launch products" but the legal side doesn't seem to be talked much about.
LLC is not necessary, but you need terms of service and privacy policy.
I think I need to get strapped to a chair with my eyes forced open like clockwork orange and read some popular company ToS/Privacy Policies.
I feel like I see so many random SaaS's wondering if they ever seriously considered this stuff. There are probably templates out there that are pretty good.
I need a fine fine print that says "don't sue me"
I am considering to build a service that you may need now - simple to understand Terms of Service (that don't make your eyes bleed). Can you contact me on email or Twitter? I may help you with the ToS/Privacy Policy in return for some insight into what you and other makers may need.
I don't think I'm at a stage yet where I need it. It's just one of those "sources of friction" for me at this time.
It would be neat if you had a workflow though like "what is your service dealing with?" "will you be collecting information" etc... then you get a ToS/Privacy Poly generated that you can save as PDFs/attach to the website footer.
That's what I had in mind. I am wondering, though, does it matter if it is in standard legalese or you'd prefer plain language?
Well personally the "legalase" as you put it is off putting but I also realize these things are generally not easy to read overall(many pages).
But I guess there are similarities everywhere eg. code would seem cryptic if you've never worked with it before.
It's probably too much to have a "simple-ized"(is that even a word) view or side by side comparison where a block of legal text is translated to plain text. This is only really applicable if it's repetitive jargon.
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Yeah need some kind of umbrella/generic thing
I guess people just slap on a ToS/Privacy Policy at the bottom of a site/call it good
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Interesting I suppose it's more lenient if you don't collect data(other than basic stuff maybe ip for logging stats)