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Starting a Home-Based Software Company?
deanj asks: "I'd like to start a new software business, as I'm sure many Slashdot readers would. I'd like to be able to run the company out of my home, at least until I can afford to move into an office in commercial area. A major roadblock to starting a home business are zoning restrictions, set by both home-owners associations and by the town you live in. So, I'd like to Ask Slashdot: What were your experiences with getting your company zoned properly and started? What did you have to do? What other tips do you have for someone starting their own home-based software business?"
I know tht;s a bit flippant .... but if you use a PO Box for your company's registration and correspondance and no one ever is going to come to your house you're not going to piss anyone off .... and they probably wont care
I'd like a flying pony like my most people on Slashdot. I currently have a dog, but I don't think I'll be able to turn him into a pony. If I am able to though, I think I could create some wings out of paper, and glue them on. Would this pony fly?
That most companies in my experience will treat you as bedroom without decent headed paper, a domestic address and cheap prices.
Make sure you don't take on poorly paid jobs in the short term at the expense of long term security.
Why do you have to get it zoned? Just start working. A software company is hardly going to be complained about.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
can i have a job?
*ducks*
Well, the experience, one would imagine, would be similar to this.
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Start with your city's Commercial Licensing offices, whatever they may be called. Many of them have all the paperwork you need for running a business out of your home, which includes the zoning change. It's a fairly minor change, and in most cases isn't a hassle, unless you have some seriously strict HOA or city codes.
Seriously, it's easier than you think. Hit up your local Chamber of Commerce as well, there are undoubtedly more people running businesses from their homes in your area.
- billn
IANA tax expert, but since your home is now your office, wouldn't it be a great opportunity to get some tax back on your "office-related expenses" such as furniture?
Don't tell your clients you just learned how to do this on Slashdot forums.
If you don't have commercial traffic to your house, my understanding is that there is no problem with having a business.
For the non-US world... what are these zoning restrictions exactly?
Software is a very quiet and peaceful industry, and you could send your product over the internet. Your neighbors probably wouldn't notice if you had such a company, and therefore probably don't care if you do or not.
I know I am. Ignore zoning/homeoner's associations/whatever. Who in their right mind is going to know or care if you're writing software in your house?? That kind of piddly shit is the last thing you should be thinking about when starting a business. Ignore it, and concentrate on building a business.
Most HOA / zoning restrictions are almost always to stop people from running retail or other kinds of customer-intensive businesses. In fact, I believe courts have upheld the rights of people to do things like sewing, design and other work in their homes in spite of no business restrictions.
You shouldn't have any problems. However, you should consider using an incubator or other business to get yourself an address with a "suite" or other kind of name in it.
Don't tell anyone. No one really cares unless you have a bunch of cars/clients parked out in front of your house. That's what the zoning is for.
Anything else is just a money grab, and you can simply not pay. The fee vs. lawyer-fees-for-them-to-fight-it ratio is HEAVILY on your side. Also, when push comes to shove, you can just pretend-move your business to 1040 W. Addision in Chicago or something.
I've done it for 10+ years and no one gives a damn from a city point of view. Heck, I bring in a couple hundred grand in out-of-state revenue, so if they want me to pack up my bags and move, then fine. Their loss.
I think there's actually a bit of related legal precedent involved here. Remember when a Florida town tried to get an injunction against one of those Voyer Dorm type sites? The court ruled that since the acts of transacting business took place online that the zoning ordinances didn't apply. Their position was that since there were no customers visiting the house and didn't have any foot-traffic or outward signs of a traditional business that it was exempt.
If you're planning on having customers come to your door (how quaint!) then you might have a problem, but otherwise, start working, man. If you're writing code for someone in your city, meet them at their place of business (and call it "going the extra mile" for them so they don't have to break up their day with travel time) or plan to meet at a coffee shop or something (because you're going to be in their part of town at that time anyway).
Get a business license (assuming US-based) and start writing code. Don't go looking for trouble.
To start your own "home business", an individual only requires two primary means of contact...
(1) An Address - that can be satisfied via a PO box at your local post office
(2) A Phone Number - this can be accomplished through something as simple as a dedicated cell phone which comes standard with caller ID and VM...
The issue of location rarely, if ever, has come up as I am always more than willing to meet potential customers either at their location or often times over lunch. Seriously, when was the last time you went to the home office of a small-scale software vendor!
Beyond that, I would suggest starting a relationship with a good attorney and create some high-quality (not home printed) business cards!
Of course, you will certainly bomb if you don't have the tallent to back up your aspirations, but that is a different 'Ask Slashdot' topic all together...
Hope this helps...and good luck!
n2q
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
You can also write off capital items like chairs and computers, the a minimum lumpsum per year which you may fall under (makes it easier) otherwise you'll need tax help to figure out amortizations (still worth it).
do like everyone else... fuck the zoning restrictions, start up the company and launder the money.
i have this cousin who used to be a crack head, he can help you.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
postign drunk to corrupt the internet yeah babay, this is good
If you dont have business traffic going to your house, then there is no problem.
Don't worry about that sort of stuff... Just start making money first... I know of plenty of home businesses that started with almost no "official" stuff at all... You can take care of the technicalities later.
If you're starting a business you need to focus 100% on getting customers. Everything else you can do along the way. If you don't have customers, you won't have to worry about zoning. If you do have customers, the solution to any zoning problem will suggest itself. First things first.
As a practical matter, these kinds of things only present themselves as real problems secondary to traffic and parking. If you draw attention to the fact that you're running a business from your home by being obnoxious to your neighbors by bringing a bunch of traffic to the neighborhood, then you'll have to confront the problem. But, if you're that busy, you can afford to move anyway.
Don't sweat this, concentrate on getting customers.
The best way to do is to be.
I get bombarded with email from people who want to help me work from home. Perhaps I should forward them to you?
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
deanj asks: "I'd like to start a new software business, as I'm sure many Slashdot readers would. I'd like to be able to run the company out of my home, at least until I can afford to move into an office in a commercial area. A major roadblock to starting a home-based business is zoning restrictions, set by both home-owners associations and by the town you live in. (Note, the grammar of the preceding sentence is totally messed up. Let's try to rework it: Some major roadblocks to starting a home business are zone restrictions from both home-owner associations, as well as towns & cities.) So, I'd like to Ask Slashdot: What were your experiences with getting your company zoned properly and started? What did you have to do? What other tips do you have for someone starting their own home-based software business?"
-unquote-
In addition, it's not your business that gets zoned; it's the building or neighborhood in which the business operates that gets zoned.
Blah!
I have recently done the same thing. Here's what I found out when I went to see my lawyer (aka my uncle). At least where I live--WV--it doesn't matter if the place is zoned as residential as long as you don't have customers coming in and out of your house (which you probably won't unless your starting a software store) or dozens of employess. We have 2 full time. You can list your address as the address of the business and you can register with that address with the state and federal government, even if you are a corporation and not a sole proprietorship. This had worked in my situation. Just ask a local laywer you know, they probably know right off the top of their heads.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Lost Sheep to Shepard, you got your ears on?
are you going to runa buisness (that is make money) with free software?
Just curious.
Thanks
I don't think something like a software company requires zoning in most cities. When a city requires zoning changes, they are most likely concerned about store fronts or customer traffic. I operate a sales business out of my own home, and all I did was apply for a business license, a resellers permit, and a DBA in my city. That was all that was required. My neighbor (same building) has a network solutions contracting company, and he just set up shop with a business license and DBA. He also wrote off his car lease by putting a big sticker on it :-). Avoid renting office space if you can do it at home.
Most communities have zoning regulations which specify which types of home businesses are permissible. The types of businesses that are usually permissible are things like consultancies which have little or now walk up traffic.
On a more pragmatic level, just do it and see if anyone complains. Unless you have clients lining up down the street, no one will even notice. The IRS does not (yet, until Total Informatin Awareness comes online) coordinate with your town, so the town won't even know of the business until you file a ficticious name (D/B/A for a sole proprietorship) or form an llc or corporation (any of which is a good idea). Even then, the property tax folks in the town (who want to tax your computers) probably don't talk with the zoning folks, so go with the old "it's easier to get forgiveness than permission" motto on this one.
Good luck.
Where do you get *your* entropy?
If you have to do an "Ask Slashdot" for this, I'd hate to see the follow-up Ask Slashdots that you have to do.
* My client is 30 days late on paying, is it wrong for me to hack them?
* What's a 941?
* Should I S-Corp?
* Will people know if I work in my pajamas?
You are WAY early in the game if you want to do this seriously. Best thing to do is to fine 5 experience, older people to use as advisors. Take on of them to lunch each month and pick their brains. I do this with accountants, tax people, lawyers, software execs, sales guys from other companies... whoever I can. Slashdot is not the forum for this. This isn't hard, but it is a different lifestyle and you have to start being an expert in 10 different things (marketing, sales, finance, taxes, etc.) not just one (reading slashdot).
What other tips do you have for someone starting their own home-based software business?
1. Build time machine.
2. Go back to 1999.
3. Start your company.
4. Profit!
Other than that I have no idea, the economy being what it is. Or perhaps being what it isn't.
PS. Trolls complaining about the lack of a "???" step: you may safely substitute that for the first three if so inclined.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
whoAre peddling sum phonIE payper liesense stock markup bullshipping scammage, whilst attempting briberious cowardly ?pr? fud0cide on the hobbyist dogooders.
looks like the cesspool is backing dupes all the weigh up to the SourceForgerIE(tm) buy now. whoring for the evile wons is won way to ?survive? the 'hard times' to come?
gov.va.msn.?net? (VAST)?
this is what you wanted? robbIE?
To run a home business you don't need to get it zoned commercial. That is, if you work from home it doesn't need to be commercial.
I recommend you talk to your accountant (or GET an accountant) or talk to a lawyer. Do NOT do this yourself and WTF are you doing asking slashdot about this?
Are you talking about software development only, or opening a retail shop ? I can't see zoning being any kind of issue if you're simply going to be developing. The laws will vary from state to state, but I seriously don't think you even have to consider it at this point. How many, if any, employees are you going to hire ?
One good thing anyway, you can write off a room of your house, or appropriate square footage, as work dedicated when tax time comes around.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
If you must have customers come to your "office", and you live in a bigger city, consider renting office space by the hour. Believe it or not, there are companies that serve as front offices for tens or hundreds of businesses. They forward your mail, have a bank of telephone operators that answer with "Foo Bar Inc., how may I help you" or whatever, and forward the calls as appropriate. They also have office space rentable by the hour -- they go in ahead of time and put your pictures on the wall, put in the right plants, nick knacks, etc.
Bizarre? Sure. But, if you need to look like a real company before you've got the capital/manpower, this is the way to go -- and still be in compliance of zoning laws (as well as impress your new, small client base).
If you won't be entertaining/working with clients in your home, screw it. Get yourself a fat pipe, a few terminals, and a big whiteboard -- and get yourself to work.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
"We ain't no softies"
If it's a matter of just you or you and somebody else sitting your house writing code or running servers, zoning shouldn't affect you any more than it would affect someone such as a playwright. Don't worry about it.
Up here in the Great White North, having a home business is rather encouraged. I get all sorts of tax breaks from having part of my home dedicated to a business, as small and un-profitable as it is.
As long as it remains small and there's no store-front, I'm in the clear. I would think you would be too. Since most major corps started in someone's garage, most jurisdictions don't want to discourage things like that.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
...and this isn't the right place to ask about the application of the law in your local area.
I've run a software company out of my home since 1997.
Generally speaking, regulations prohibiting the operation of a business from a residential zone only come into play if you're mucking about in your neighbors' quality of life *and* one of them complains about it. IOW, having a semi deliver stock to your house twice a day is probably against regulations, but no one is going to say anything unless your neighbors complain.
For a software business, even one with a couple of employees, none of that is going to matter. You'll won't be getting deliveries, you won't have customers coming and going, and you don't even really need a sign out front.
Note that I'm talking about municipal regulations, not neighborhood covenants. If you've made the unwise decision to purchase where anyone but you (and, as usual, the government) has the authority to dictate what *your property* may be used for...well, that's your own fault.
You can ignore your homeowners association but you might not be able to ignore the city. If you open up a separate checking account and start filing taxes they'll eventually come around to see if you have a business license. That reminds me, I'd better go get one.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
As long as everything is online, I don't think you need to worry about zoning restrictions. However, what does your internet access allow? You may need to move over to a business account of somesort.
That law only applies if you decided to started manufacturing TNT from your house or maybe a smelting operation. It's laughable to think that you can't start a homebased software business because of zoning. Most shareware guys probably don't have offices just their software companies.
Here's how red hat did it..
We could use more software businesses with models like that.
Don't ASK SLASHDOT and advertise your intentions.
Just do it. Keep it quiet until you've got enough business to "go commercial."
You obviously have no experience and no buisness sense. My suggestion to you is to forget it.
You just don't have what it takes.
This lame phrase was pulled off of The Family Guy episode "There's Something About Paulie"
You can't get the zoning changed unless you have gobs of money, or are on the Board of Zoning. Don't pursue that route.
Many states allow "low impact" home based businesses. There are restrictions, like how many deliveries you may receive a week and so on. (example) The objective is to keep the residential areas residential, and move all the 18 wheelers into industrial areas.
Do some research into what the local municipality allows. You may find it's friendly for what you want to do. Otherwise, move.
Oh, and don't think you'll sneak by with having a PO Box as your registered place of business. Most states won't allow a PO Box as the business location. If you put your home address down, you can expect the local code enforcement officials to come a knockin' in a few months. The gub'ment has programs in place to hunt down folks who are "non-compliant." Your tax dollars at work.
Provided they don't require massive notification to all of your neighbors, you're good to go, UNLESS you're going to have more than a couple of employees taking up street spots. This is where your local HOA will catch you.
As for home office tax deduction, I'd skip it, since this is usually raises a flag with the tax authorities. Unless you're converting a garage as a separate outside entrance only, and don't store ANY household items there, it's not worth the bother.
Check your local Municipal code, a business license for consultant or software work is usually cheap, like $100 or less, and as others have pointed out, they're usually allowed in residential areas since they don't generate commercial traffic.
I worked as a freelance designer for a couple of years out of my house. There were no zoning issues here (New Orleans) because it was just me and clients didn't visit me, I visited them.
But, my advice, based on my experiences (good and bad) is this: Get a lawyer and ask him/her. Also, get an accountant. Talk with them both before you start. The cost will be more than offset. It's not about how smart you are or whether you Could figure it out. You need experts for these things the same way they need experts to write their software, create their websites and build their cars. Cause you've got other stuff to do.
You want to worry about your business - the parts you know and love, right? You want to worry about software. You'll need to worry about your clients. You don't want to worry about zoning and taxes. The last thing you want is to find out that you're in deep shit with the police, the IRS or immigration or whatever because you were working on a big job that month. Get your experts in order and make sure they handle this stuff for you.
That's my advice. two or three cents.
Seriously, you get what you pay for. It's amazing the difference in talent between American vs Indian (graduated undergrad and/or grad in India, not of Indian decent) programmers. No, this isn't supposed to be some "yay U.S.A." homer rant. Just an observation from someone that gets to waste time interviewing way too many people for a small handful of entry-level jobs.
What I've noticed is that the Indian programmers are solid when it comes to "I need a function to take X and convert it to Y, it needs to go here." However, they are very weak when it comes to "We need a function to do X, do it". While that may be fine for some simple jobs, most software projects require good problem solving skills
It gets frustrating when HR forwards me 30+ resumes a week all with insanely high grades, all claiming that they're in the top 2% of their class, yet when you interview them, they suck at basic problem solving. It makes one think that all they have out there is a hardcore "learn C++ in 24 hours" curriculum that is extended over 4 years.
Of course, there's always exceptions, and that's why we still interview people...even if our expectations of them have plummeted through the floor.
Next on ask slashdot:
Show us your cool new dwelling modifications...
Like the Type R Toilet!!!
Check out a nolo press book on the subject here: nolo.com
Here's a quote:
"In some residential areas -- especially in affluent communities -- local zoning ordinances absolutely prohibit all types of business."
In the next line:
"In the great majority of municipalities, however, residential zoning rules allow small, non-polluting home businesses, as long as any home containing a business is used primarily as a residence and the business activities don't negatively affect neighbors."
They sell many books specifically for the small / home buisiness.
Hope this helps, and good luck!
I dont belive there is any concern about zoning as long as your company isnt a public place. If you start as a consultant, having a room in your house as office it has nothing to do with zoning. All you need is a room (or more) and a web page and a phone. Zoning is mainly for managing the general look of a sector. Its mainly there to lower traffic in residential areas, make peacefull residential areas, and to regroup services. As long as you dont modify your home outside ( put a banner with company name ) and dont have trucks deliveries or any special need that would disturb the residential zone usual apparence and peace ( like massive noise or massive waist production ) you can have your software company home. I ve seen Doctors, lawyers, veterinarians, notary use their home as office. I belive there is a max workers you can have in such setting .. somthing near 3 or 4 workers ( you should verify this with your town office regulations )
However, if you operate as a sole propriortship, you dont need the second checking account. The money made is simply your income. The unfortunate thing is though, if your business harms someone, and they sue you, they can take your personal assets, not just busniess assets.
-- Insert wisdom here:
While I have never used their services, this company www.intelligentoffice.com lets you rent a "virtual" office where they handle incoming phone calls and mail, and if needed can set you up with conference rooms, etc. if you have clients you need to meet with. Again I've never tried their services, but I really like the idea :).
Step 1: Collect programmers Step 2: ...
Step 3: PROFIT!!!
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
One cannot hear telephone conversations on the outside of a residence, no matter how loud the person is yelling.
Now if you're a rock band like my little brother, you WILL annoy the neighbors....
Take pictures and make notes and make a tarball ouf of them and don't forget to include the GPL a few hundred times and start project 'flyingpony' on sourceforge if that name hasn't already been taken by a Qt python XML extension to make emacs compatible with NetBEUI over a covert channel of steganography within ogg vorbis files.
First off, asking questions about the law on Slashdot is a futile endeavour. The best that can happen is that you don't get any answers at all. The worst is that you do, but they're all wrong.
I managed to find some general info on the net for you though; check this and this. I have no idea of whether or not they are relevant to your inquiry. I just happened to stumble upon them while googling for an answer to an even more general question, namely: "what the #%&! are 'zoning restrictions'?" (I'm not a US citizen and therefore have no idea.)
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
I mean 'out'. Thank you very much and fuck you very much and I'm going to go huddle into a ball in the corner and drink myself into a coma but not before absolutely filling my pants with completely liquid feces.
...than could be done with just a PO box and a cell phone.
Maybe something with a bunch of people working, working late sometimes; lots of deliveries, possibly clients or investors or business partners coming in for meetings.
I realize this wasn't specified, but if zoning really is a big issue, then it sounds to me like it's not a case of "me and my friend writing programs and selling them online."
I see a lot of posts going in that direction and rising to the top, but I'm curious whether anyone has advice for this person if the business "looks" more like a business (at the residence).
This Like That - fun with words!
Instead you should consider your corporate form. Being a C corporation will make your stock into SBIC stock with special US Federal tax treatment. This can be very valuable if the business is successful. On the other hand, S corporations pass out the losses to be deducted against income.
Check on city taxes. Some cities have very high business taxes, some can even be 2-3% of revenue (not profits). It might make sense to incorporate in another city or state to avoid this tax. It really sucks owing city taxes when you are losing gobs of money in the startup phase.
Don't contribute capital to the company and then take it back as salary. Duh - you'll pay income taxes again on your own money. Work for stock instead and use company money for company expenses like travel and equipment. Everyone should work for stock until you start making some sales.
File both your state and federal company taxes, even if you don't owe anything. Not filing can cause you to lose SBIC status.
Don't waste time trying to raise VC. You really don't need it and if you get it you probably end up wishing you hadn't. Pretend like you're still in college and live on pizza.
Yes, you can write off property tax, mortgage interest, and even homeowner's insurance. Suppose your home office is 15% of your home's area - you deduct 15% of the above against your business and 85% against your personal taxes. Why split it? Because your business income is subject to "self-employment tax" - the same as Social Security, but double (15.3%) with no exemptions, deductions (like Sched A anyway), etc. Unless you make over $100K a year, you'll probably pay more in self-employment tax than income tax, so you want to cut your business income as much as possible. The other big home office deduction is depreciation (if you own) or rent. But if you depreciate you need to look carefully at the tax laws if you ever plan on selling.
Oh, and you're home office has to be used *exclusively* for business - not part bedroom or rec room, or whatever.
I don't know about the zoning rules, but I can't imagine it's a real issue.
...
BUT, having started my own software company about 7 years ago, which is now doing about $3M/year, employs 17, here's my 2 cents, in the category of "other" advice
Get a lawyer. Won't cost that much really and the thousand dollars you might spend now will save you tens or hundreds of thousands or more later. You're bound to run into something, some deal, some license issue, something - that you'll regret later if you didn't have an attorney at your side. I HATE LAWYERS - but I now consider them a necessary evil (and the other side always has one).
Hire an accountant from day one. This will save you thousands of dollars, if not a lot more, in the long run. Not having an accounting firm day one has probably cost my business over $1M. (in my case, as with most small companies, I should have been an S corp and double taxation on C corp dividends has cost me, big time)
I didn't have an accountant, I didn't have an attorney, when I started my business... and again, if there is any advice I would give someone starting out, it is that you can't afford NOT to have them by your side.
Unless (or until) your business becomes a public nuisance your local government will probably be very supportive. Since they will be collecting tax revenue on your business (directly or indirectly) it's in their best interests for you to succeed.
Larger cities often have offices whose sole purpose is to help small businesses. They are probably your best first resource for understanding basic legal issues related to your business (i.e. what taxes you have to pay, what permits are required, etc.). The people in that office can be a great resource for lots of other questions as well since they see people like you every day.
Your local chamber of commerce may be a good resource too. When I was starting a small web development business a few years ago they seemed mostly interested in collecting membership dues though, so YMMV.
You do need that second checking account. If you get audited, the IRS wants to see that you're conducting your business like a business and not a hobby. Having a separate checking account and a separate charge card, both used just for the business, help in that department.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
I started my own e-commerce and computer consulting company (see sig). I started it out of my house. That was a mistake.
I'm all for working from my house. I work from there three days a week. But running a business out of the house is not good. From zoning issues, to mailing issues, to clients that want to show up at the office, to spousal issues, etc. etc. etc.: there are a lot of disadvantages.
I know it's scary starting your own company. I've been there. But if you seriously cannot afford up front even $100-$200/month for a year of rent, or you have so few connections (or marketable talents) that you cannot exchange some sort of service for office space, I strongly encourage you to re-think your decision.
My company takes advantage of free office space from one of our clients. They are our *tiniest* client. We would make no real money from them, but they give us an office for our use, in an attractive building, a nice lobby, a receiptionist, someone to sign for packages, etc. It's a good trade.
I would also say the exact same thing about setting up your business properly (with an S-corp or LLC), and an accountant (at least for taxes and such). It might cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get a lawyer to draw up the corp. paperwork, and it might cost you a couple of hundred a quarter to have an accountant handle your taxes, but it's work it.
Again, not to be harsh, but if you can't afford $500/month for the first year up front ($6000 or so, say) for setup paperwork, rent, phone (do *not* use your home number!) and such, you do not have enough resources to start the company.
I wish you much success! I certainly enjoy having my own company. It was a couple of rough years, but things are much more stable now. I've grown to the point where we have a few employees and long-term relationships and contracts. People talk about the lack of job security when you work for yourself. I disagree. I think that I have more security: I know exactly what the books say, and what my prospects are. I know that right now I have enough cash for several months even if I don't invoice a dime, and I know how much I'm going to invoice. That's a lot more information I've ever had from any other employee. And I can't get escorted off the premesis at 4:30 on Friday and told that my personal belongings will be shipped to me... :)
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Hey that was a lucky random link. I am in Walla Walla, and I love rockets, ballistics, spudguns, etc. I would like to perhaps get involved, or at least watch a lauch or two. The problem is I go to Walla Walla College, but I dont have a car. Are any of your members from around this area?
P.S. You are now a "friend"
Art Ketcham
www.ArthurK.com
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
I used to run a limo company from my home, first in Baltimore County, MD, later in Howard County. Customers rarely came to my home; once in a while someone wanted to inspect my vehicle before they hired me for a special event like a wedding, but that was about it.
I had all appropriate licenses and took a home office deduction on my income taxes. The law in both jurisdictions said I could run a business from my home that didn't generate "excessive traffic or noise," which I didn't. So I was 100% legal.
Virtually every shareware developer I know works from home, no problem.
Many graphic artists work from home, no problem.
A majority of the people whose bylines you see on Slashdot work from home either all or most of the time.
Marty Roesch started SourceFire, the "commercialization of Snort" from his home. He was selling/shipping hardware, not just writing software, and he got away with it for a good while. (He has an office now - the business got too big for the house - his wife started getting upset at having boxes all over the kitchen and the sales manager working from a card table in the living room.)
A neighbor of mine across the street installs satellite TV dishes and works from home. Every week or two a large truck comes with a bunch of systems, and he and his son unload them, then the truck goes away. He's probably right on the edge of the law, but I'm not going to complain and neither is the president of the community association, who lives next to us -- and is a computer programmer who does a lot of work from home.
It depends on your neighbors and your relations with them more than anything, I think. If you have clients coming into a ritzy gated community via noisy helicopter 3 times a day, and you have a lot of workers who sit on your lawn and drink beer and get rowdy during breaks, you're going to have problems. If you're in a normal working class community and know your neighbors, and stay fairly quiet, hey! You're working! The worst thing that's likely to happen is that once they realize you're around all the time and that you know something about computers, they'll stop by a lot and ask you lots of Windows questions...
- Robin
A business license in most areas is no more than $100. (It was $10 in my town). I've never actually heard of any government body going to a location of a business to check up on a license, anyway. My point is that he's getting ahead of himself. Just start the damn business, get some cash flow. You don't have to worry about zoning until you start hiring people, and as soon as you can afford to pay a salary (or even hourly wage), a small rent payment monthly becomes irrelevant if all you need is office space.
You won't be able to open a business account at a bank without your business license, which you can't get without the appropriate zoning review. Business accounts are generally done under 'fictitious names', which is how they term a business name, since it's an entity and not a person (even if the company is named after you!)
- billn
Ignore the flippant posts about "nobody will ever know", there are licensing and tax laws and even though the odds of being caught are low, the consequences can be bad enough that it's not worth taking a chance.
....". At a minimum if you make up a "company" name to use in correspondence and advertising rather than just using your own legal name, you'll have to file a "trade name" or "alias" registration with the state so that there's an official record that "Suckus Maximus Software" is actually you--so that people can find you if they want to sue you. In my experience this costs in the range of $5-$20 per year. You probably won't have deal with workman's comp, but you should find out.
1) The direct answer to your question, go down to your city hall, find the zoning department, and ask. Typical residential zoning restrictions have to do with the size of the sign marking your location, parking, foot traffic, animals, children, noise, outbuildings, security lighting, storage of hazardous materials and so on. IOW it's pretty likely you'll find out that none of the restrictions apply to your business and you're 100% in the clear. (I assume that if you're a homeowner in an HOA that you read the convenants before you bought!)
2) Now find the business license department and go ask them what kind of license you need. I have done this in 3 separate locations and each had different requirements: first location no license needed, second location license required with fee based on 1/10% of gross income, third location license required with $15 annual fee (initially, now they've eliminated that charge). If a license is required, it generally requires filling out a simple form.
3) Make sure your county doesn't have its own separate licensing requirements.
4) Check state requirements. Many states have all the information online. In others you can order a booklet titled something like "Starting a Small Business in
5) Go to the IRS site, get these publications and read them: 334 Tax Guide for Small Business, 535 Business Expenses, 583 Starting a Business and Keeping Records. Then keep the records and do it right--you really don't want to screw with the IRS!
6) Check the titles at Nolo Press; they have great info available and it's often a more clear than the government publications.
7) Don't forget the bits about business plan, budget, setting rates, finding customers, getting insurance (property, liability, health, disability), actually doing a good job, and so on. Always remember, cash flow above all else is what will determine whether you make it or not.
For the non-US poster who asked about "zoning": this refers to the local laws governing what you can and cannot do on your property. A city is typically composed of "zones" which are each rated in some category, things like "Residential Low Density", "Residential Medium Density", "Residential High Density", "Retail and Office", "Light Industrial", "Heavy Industrial", "Agricultural". So for instance it's pretty certain that if the poster lives in a building where it's actually legal for someone to reside, then it would be illegal for him to operate a petroleum refinery in his yard. Most residential zoning restrictions don't apply at all to a software developer hiding in his basement. Also, FYI, zoning is not immutable; there is generally a government body in charge of reviewing requests for changes in zoning, or exceptions to the rules--this is how farms are able to become shopping malls.
Do your self a favor, and please don't listen to people on slashdot who say that you don't have to worry about zoning.
Chack the laws in your area (duh!). Visit the local city hall and ask them. They are the people who know, not Slashdot.
I have no idea about your area, but here's my experience:
In 1999 I started doing web design and consulting, etc. out of my house. I had a website with my contact info (address) on it, and my domain's WhoIs information was accurate. The business was also registered to the same address. I never had a customer or client come to my house. Early one Sunday morning, I got a knock on the door. I stumbled out of bed to find the local code enforcement officer at my door. He asked if I was running an "Internet" business out of the residence, and I (not knowing any better) said "yes". He then told me how it was not legal without rezoning the house as a multipurpose, yada yada yada. He didn't give me the fine he was supposed to, but instead gave me one week to sort out the issues or close up shop.
I went down to the local city hall, and found out that rezoning the house would cost a lot more than I had to spend, and by rezoning, I would also incur many other additional costs.
In the end, I just closed shop (I only had a handfull of customers anyway).
On the other hand, my wife is currently running a small business from the same house, and she hasn't had any problems at all. She registered under a DBA/Fictitous Name (I incorporated), and used a PO Box as the address.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
What to do:
How to do it:
The first rule eliminates wannabe rockstars. the second one eliminates the production of the number one agricultural cash crop in canada and the us.The third one eliminates any retail sales establishment. The fourth one eliminates a great big sign, like golden arches, or a little sign, for that matter.
Pay your taxes.
Inc Magazine used, and probably still does have a book on the guidelines to starting a business at home.
Wind uder Thy Wings
Amber
Suppose you did.
Suppose you did not.
Partner Jody and I wanted to create a consulting business, and decided for various reasons a Limited Liability Company was the right way to go. We visited the state small business office and picked up a very helpful booklet on how to start a small business in Utah. This little book had information on all the various forms you need, who to talk to at City Hall, and how to get a business license if you're not in an incoporated city. Very helpful.
Note: don't think about scamming the business license if you're going to do enough dollar volume to file taxes on. The state tax people will report your income to the city, who will make sure you have a business license. The business license doesn't cost much and is very little additional hassle.
We filed the LLC paperwork with the state first. (An LLC doesn't have to be a business so that paperwork had no prerequisites.) Everything went smoothly and a few days later we got a nice form letter from the State office of something or other notifying us our business name was now registered. The next step was to apply for the business license.
At this point we decided we should get a business bank account and run the checks for all these applications through that account. We tripped down to the local bank that was just up the street from the town hall to open an account, only to be informed we couldn't open an account without a business license. See what I mean about not skipping on the paperwork?
So Jody wrote the check for the business license and we finished our application. In South Jordan home business licenses have to guarantee not to generate business-related traffic; you're not allowed to meet or entertain customers at your home, for instance. Not a problem for us, we were going to sell information and services over the web and do our work on-line or at customer facilities. The hook is, your neigbhors, anyone within 500 feet of your home, get the right to comment at the next town meeting before your license is granted. So the city gave us a list of addresses, we had to write a note to them inviting them to comment at the town meeting and pay the postage. We printed the invites on post cards, got them metered at the Post Office, and brought them back to town hall a few days later. The town clerk looked at the stack, guessed it was about right, and chucked them into their out basket.
The town meeting was a couple of weeks later. Jody and I showed up, nobody else did. We said on our post card that we did our business online and planned to have very few deliveries and no customer traffic, but I doubt most people even bothered to read it. Our business license was approved that night, and the office mailed it to us the next day.
With business license in hand, we revisted the bank and our account was opened in a few minutes. It was shockingly painless. They were happy to add a second signature line on the standard checks for us. We were shocked to find out the same checks that cost $5/box for a residential account are $15/box for a business account, but the account itself was free and we only needed one box of checks anyhow. Be prepared to get charged more for everything from checks to phone lines if you tell them it's for business purposes. When dealing with phone companies, sometimes saying it's for a "home office" will get you the same features at residential rates. Caveat Emptor!
That was it. For the next 4 years we renewed the business license each year, for $35, and filed an annual report to the same State office of something or other with the $15 filing fee, and had no other interaction with the local authorities at all.
We did file for and receive an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the Infernal Revenue Service (rat bastards), becaus
The only issue was to have the City send notifications out to our neighbors when we first applied for a zoning varience. It wasn't a big deal but there are no covenants where this house is located so we only had to deal with the city people. We do consulting and mostly we go to client's offices although the occasional client does come here. We use the entire top floor of the house, have 3 full-time and 2 part-time employees. We do get a fair number of deliveries but no one has complained. One important thing is to try to keep a relatively low profile. Don't park in your neighbors' driveway, don't let your employees speed through the residential area (and if they do and you see them come down hard on them). In short, be a good neighbor. If your neighbors complain you are likely to have to move your business. I also recommend you incorporate as an S-Corp. I did this myself with forms from a bookstore and it worked out fine. We also have an accountant to check that we are doing things right. We stay here because the house is lakefront and it makes a great office but one more employee and we will have to find larger quarters.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Whether you decide to make it legal or not, realize that the excess cars parked around your house will be the thing that annoys people and be what compells them to call the city/county and complain.
And it will be not the people next door who, even if they are annoyed, know they can just walk over and knock on the door and complain, it will be the ones around the corner, down the street.
Some friends and I started a fairly successful company, first in two shared apartments (2 years), then moving to a house (2 years), then to an actual commercial space. The company now employs about 20 people.
We were careful to make sure we did all our taxes right, but never bothered to figure out whether we were breaking any zoning rules. The important thing to know with most zoning rules that don't involve safety is that you're generally fine unless your neighbors complain to the police. If you have reasonable neighbors and aren't impacting them, you most likely won't have a problem. Even if you get neighbors from hell, probably the worst thing that could happen is that you'd receive a notice to move your business. IANAL, but you're not going to jail or anything like that.
People start businesses out of their homes all the time. The grey area is when people start commuting to work to your house, or when you start to have a lot of customers show up. We decided to move to a commercial space when we had four cars parking in front of the house during the day (which, not coincidentally, marked the first time that we could actually afford a commercial space).
People who get bogged down by such a silly question will never even start a business let alone have to worry about zoning restrictions. If you don't know the answer to the question (which is, incidentally, nobody gives a crap if you start a business in your home), then you'll probably never get it off the ground. It's people like this who end up in middle management and make my life hell!! They ask questions like, "Do you think we're aloud to actually... gulp ...innovate?" In the immortal words of a famous Nike ad campaign, "Just Do It!" dude! (dude added for emphasis). Just my .02.
The software company starts YOU.
I run a software "company" from my house. Basicly it's just me developing games on a freelance basis. I'm not located in the USA though, but in the netherlands, so I can't be of much help in the legal department. It would be hard to imagine however someone complaining.
;)
I can however recommend it highly, altough this recommendation might be a bit colored by my the fact that I've managed to get gaming contracts pretty much right away.
I love the working from home, and can deduct quite some stuff (rent, phone, paint, (just got a new place), from income tax). It's advisable though to make sure you have some money stashed in the bank in case you run out of work for a while, which over a period of time is bound to happen sooner or later. Also you should think about if you like working with next to none co-workers. This is what I 'miss' the most from a regular job, the people you work with. You're alone most of the time.
Happy game programmer
Lucas Meijer lucas at mach8 dot nl
I've been working at home for over six months now for a company in FL (I'm in MO) coding c++. I would not waste your time worrying about it.
If there isn't a sign on your door I wouldn't think you really have anything to worry about.
When I started freelance programming, I really didn't like the idea of working from home. There's just too much isolation from the world, and not enough seperation of work and personal.
Fortunately, I found a few other people in similar situations who felt the same way.
We got together and rented some nice studio space together. We called ourselves the Soup Group, since we're a mixture of everything. To fill the space, we had to convince a few others that they should quit their jobs and go freelance.
Now, 8 years later, we have a great studio, filled with 16 people who like to be around each other. We're an intentional community, not a corporation whose members are decided by the whim of the HR department. There's lots of synergy, as we have programmers, designers, project managers, video editors, animators, and lots of other talents.
We save a lot of money by sharing resources like our boardroom, Internet connections, colour laser printer, fax machine, kitchen facilities, copier, etc. This especially helps people just starting out working for themselves.
Have a look at the Soup studio.
So my advice is to do the same. There are a lot of freelancers out there, and a lot of great studio space. It might take some work to find the people to group up with, but it's worth it in the long run.
Oddly, it never became a problem. The neighbours complained plenty when I turned on my stereo, but not when I was grinding steel below their bedroom at 2AM.
I managed at one point to have either UPS or Fedex arriving once a week, sometimes with 50lb crates. This still didn't match when I had 4x8' sheets of 3/4" MDF delivered to the door. Oddly, despite all this, nobody ever complained.
I would NOT reccomend doing this. Software is one thing, but apartment buildings are not really suitable for light industrial work. Goodness knows how much I could have been sued for half of this :P
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
I run a business out of my house as a (tax wise) "sole proprieter". On my tax forms, I combine both consulting fees and products sold as income for my business. (I am also an author, but that income is tracked separately.) For consulting, no sales tax needs to be collected; for products, simply keep tract of which sales occur in your state (this might change!).
Not to give them a plug, but I use PayPal for all product sales and small consulting jobs - a yearly dump of payments makes doing my taxes fairly easy (actually, I print out the yearly report fairly often - just to have hard copy).
Since the economy basically sucks and the IT industry is in the tanks, it is great to be able to work out of your home to save money.
Anyway, I am not making much money (compared to a few years ago), but I am happy and having lots of fun.
-Mark
Zoning laws need changing ! Do authors of books deal with zoning laws. Nope. So why should software developers ? This law is another attempt to frisk people of cash.
When you speak to your attorney and accountant (if you don't have one of both, you should) look into the possibility of forming an LLC, S-Corp, or C-corp. Working as an independent contractor can cost you fortune come tax time. Also, remember that as a corporation (not sure about LLC)the company is allowed to "loan" you up to $10,000, upon which you are not obliged to pay payroll taxes. This little loophole has saved my butt more than once. Above all else, DO EVERYTHING BY THE BOOK, especially when it comes to taxes. Do not listen to those on this esteemed forum who would recommend that you not take care of zoning issues and the like--they have never been on the bad end of an inquiry. Granted, chances are, you won't get caught. If you do, THE RESULTS CAN BE CATASTROPHIC. It is so easy to take care of little issues like this that there is really no excuse for not doing so. Good luck.
Don't Panic!
unless you generate traffic, extended power needs, or use controlled chemicals. I run my business from my home, I have a license, but none of what I needed, power, T1, SDSL etc needed upgrades beyond residential needs. Now if you decide to say start a manufacturing business I could see some issues but otherwise screw em.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
From a cab driver in Baltimore: When I was fixin' to buy my townhome, the homeowners' association tole me I could park my car, which is my business, in my driveway. And now they're telling me that I can't.
You will find that most local laws will allow a dual-use for a residence as long as you aren't putting huge neon signs in your yard. There is usually a limitation on the amount of space and employees that can use the dwelling, as well. Of course, these are rarely enforced, so good luck!
The first thing you need to do is check with your local zoning laws. In some states/counties/cities you can run a small business if it is not 'retail' out of your home, ie: as long as customers don't come by.
Here in NC, we had to go to the county zoning board, request a variance for a similar problem. It takes from 60 to 120 days in most places I know of, unless you live in a major city. Houston, on the other hand, only recently introduced zoning laws and it may not be an issue at all there.
If you do not have customers that come by, I would not worry so much. Unless your neighbors complain, there is no issue, and if you have no commercial traffic, there is nothing to complain about. A good relationship with your neighbors is more important than minute details of zoning laws, and if you have one or two customers come by a day, it is no more traffic than many people normally have anyway.
If you do have to go to a zoning board meeting, bring notes, be polite, be forceful but not rude, do your homework first and find comparible cases to present. Most of these guys want just don't want hassles, and if its easier to give you what you want than to deal with you if they think you will be back and back and back, then your odds are better. If they have done this variance before for someone else, you can present the case where they would rather quietly grant it for you than not.
If you get turned down, learn who is on the board, find a connection. Lion's club, Elks, Rotary, etc. and do a favor. Or find a way to do a favor directly, such as fixing a problem, or writing some small software program, whatever, not in exchange of course. In otherwords, schmooze him a bit. Then request the variance again.
Say what you want, but local govt. IS more corrupt that way, very small petty things. You can spend thousands fighting it, or get what you want first, then fight it.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It just happens that I am Vice Chair of the planning commison for my city, and we just re-wrote the zoning regs so I actually know quite a lot about this subject.
Most zoning regulations provide for some home based occupations, when you dig into the specifics of the code there will probably be restictions on having employees, number of visitors and on types of businesses that are noisy or intrusive. You'll need a business license and probably an occupancy permit or the local equivilent.
My suggestion is call or go and see the city planning staff, tell them you know nothing and need help- they are normally quite helpful (if you don't come in with an attitude) and will tell you if what you want to do is legal.
Many cities have the zoning code on the web so you can look it up but I still advise asking as interpretation of code can be a black art.
Home owners / Condo Associations and the CC&Rs that come with them are a whole other game - your milage may vary on that one.
As a last resort if you're not having visitors the PO Box will work fine (and maybe a good idea anyway to maintain your privacy)
I suggest creating a LLC (modern form of a partnership) to run the business - this is mostly as a liability shield al;thouhg if you have no real assets then youcan just file a DBA (city hall will be able to tell you how to do this).
Lastly get a good CPA, the home office rightoff is hard to get and equipment depreciation is a complex - a good CPA will save you a lot in the long run.
John (who runs a photography business, a property company and a private foundation from his home)
P.S. quickbooks is really good value for money for small businesses.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck load of tapes
I have a home based business in Chicago and the city makes it relatively easy/cheap as long as you follow only a few rules. the city charges $125/year for a regular business license. I think the county was $25 for a one time license and the state doesn't charge anything to register so you can charge and pay state sales tax legally- I'm all service, so I only have to send in paperwork once a year to the state. there were no zoning requirements or anything else that needed to be done. but there are restrictions: I think a limit of 4 delivery vehicles a day, 5 customers a day at your home and you're not allowed to have a publicly displayed sign outside of your home advertising a business.
of course getting all the right info from one location is difficult considering it's a big city and none of the organizations(city, county, state) seem to know anything about the others or what you need to do to satisfy everyone.
good luck!!!
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
. . . has always been my motto
Just what my brother and I have done for our business interests. Check your local laws to see how they work where you live.
:)
First, let me give my specifics so you can know where we're coming from. We are living in Titusville, FL. Both unemployed since the tech bust.
My bro is a high level web designer who used to work for a BIG company out of DC. He's worked on nike's website, timberland's and exxon mobile's. So he's got the skills. I've been doing backend programming and database type stuff for a while... so we're a good pair to do a web design business.
Additionally, we're into kite flying and run sort of a hobby business off of our kite site. (see sig) So this is a second business.
Beyond that, my bro's wife... my sister in law... does medical transcription. So this is a third business.
Anyway, we knew there were going to be a multitude of businesses that we were going to have our noses in. So, we incorporated. For a fee (forget how much offhand, but not TOO much) we filled out the articles of incorporation for a Limited Liability Company (LLC). Thus began the company Lutter Enterprises, LLC. (lutter being our surname). The LLC then filed a fictitious name of Kitestop.com.
With a company, and a name (and the documents to prove it) it was easy enough to go to city hall and get a business license for our home. We had to get one from the county as well. They require that we don't have any employees that don't live here. We can't have signs or outwardly recognizeable business items. Can't be having trucks coming or going all the time either. After that, we registered with the feds to get a Fed Tax ID and the state to get a sales tax certificate (which is what all our manufacturers look for before they will wholesale us anything)Pretty easy to have a business structure, huh?
After this, we needed to give the bank about a million documents and forms before we could talk them into giving us a business account and merchant account in the company name.
Then, when we decided to expand a bit, we got an office space in Cocoa, FL for cheap. Now we run all three business out of it. Of course we had to get new fictitious names for Lutter Interactive (web design Biz) and Far Out Transcription. We also had to go to Cocoa city hall to get permits and back to the county again. Plus it was a headache again dealing with the bank to get our accounts split up so the names all match up.
Cost a heap in fees and all that, but this gives us plenty of liability protection. The city, county, state and feds are all happy and we are 100%legal.
Now... just to make some money.
It must be reiterated, it all depends on what your local laws are.
For example, I started a home-based business doing on-site computer consulting. When I started it, I lived in a city that required a 'home occupancy permit', which took all of 5 minutes to get at the city office, and a business license that also took about 5 minutes.
Then I moved to a different city that only requires that if your busness has more than $25,000 in income per year, you must get a business license. So now, since my business is making less than $25,000 a year (hopefully to change soon,) I don't even have to tell the city I'm running it.
Either way, you still have to register federally to pay payroll taxes if you're anything other than a sole proprietership. In my state, I also had to register with the state. But until I reach the $25,000/year mark, my city doesn't care. (Certain types of businesses, such as restaurants, are obviously subject to further regulation, but a software company shouldn't be.)
Also, if you're not going to be operating solely under your own name (such as 'John Doe's software') then you have to register your name with your state.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
I had to fill out a form with the Department of Planning. That included agreeing to never have customers come on-site and to not have any markings outside showing my place of residence was also a business. I had to give them the square footage of my townhouse, the square footage of area set aside for my business, and a sketch of the layout. There was also a $50 charge attached to this. My business exists solely online, so the restrictions really didn't apply to me anyway. The only thing that irked me was them wanting to know the entire square footage of my home, a sketch of the floors, and the frickin 50 bucks just to have them stamp a big ol' "ACCEPTED" on the form.
Usually, homeowners associations cannot regulate the activities inside the confines of your home. They can only regulate the physical appearance and external upkeep.
Zoning restrictions may prevent you from doing things like having employees at your home, keeping inventory of any kind, and other things like daily or even weekly shipping pickup. Zoning laws, however, also usually cannot regulate the activities going on inside your home.
If worse comes to worst, get a co-lo and do your development over your DSL. You'd technically be working from home, with your "employer" being at the address of the co-lo facility. Bam, they can't touch you.
I'll probably get slammed for this, but...
<rant>
Seriously, if you are too lazy to check with the local governments, you might want to stick with a job where you can just "get by".
If you live in California you can look here.
This isn't "rocket science" all you have to do is look around a little. Somehow I doubt California has cornered the market on a web site like this.
</rant>
Good luck on your new venture.
Just as long as you don't have customers coming in and out of your house, pay your taxes and you will be fine. you will find that most of those laws were designed so you don't turn your driveway and front yard into a parking lot.
*** I suffer from a colorful array of psychological problems
Think of yourself like a gay in the military...
Don't ask
Don't tell
Did I mention fuck home owner associations?
I tried to start 3 different business at home. They all flopped or are in the process of flopping. Wait until you become big *before* you figure out where you are going to park all the Mercedes. IOW, don't fret over issues that have yet to grow into problems.
On the other hand, lots of people break these rules right and left, and nobody cares, because they're considered good neighbors. I have a friend who's operating a business out of her condo in total violation of her housing association rules. All the other condo owners know about it, but she's such a valued member of the community (networks a lot, goes out of her way to make friends and help people) that nobody's inclined to make an issue of it.
Of course, if she ever does make a enemy who want to shut her down, she's screwed! Worth bearing in mind before you build that illegal granny flat.
You most likely will be able to claim a proportion of your rent, bills, interest repayments etc. as a business expense, depending on how much of your home is used to run the business.
is the best advice I can give you. Hire an accountant to handle the tax stuff, an attorney if you need one and go from there. Usually the local biz license people are very helpful in pointing you in the right direction to find stuff that you might need. Get the right permits. The last thing you need is a distraction over a $15 permit. Unless you live in Dc which has some hellish professional permitting deal. Then I suggest you move....
Or just try to settle somewhere where they don't have or won't charge for bussines licenses. I didn't even know there are places in the US where that's not the case.
If not, Welcome to Texas!
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
Is anyone else hesitant to click on a link about a toilet from the domain with the phrase "cox" in it.
"1. Build time machine.
2. Go back to 1999.
3. Start your company.
4. Profit!"
What an ass.
Just do something origenal. If I see another company selling popup blocker software I'll scream. Software is a good industry to be in, especially if you keep your costs low. The trick is to have an origenal idea. Not a time machine. My guess it that the above poster is just jaded because he's a no talent hack.
Don't take it personally. There's a lot of them around.
Give us an example of what would you ask in an interview to sort the problem solvers from the human computers (need all the instructions to write the instructions)?
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
So, it seems that it's okay to take work home from the office, or work from home when you work for someBIGcompany? So, you incorporate in Delaware (Nevada, etc), pay $75 per year for a registered agent in Delaware, and work for the company you incorporated in Delaware. Where is the difference from some guy who telecommutes to his job from home, or the work-aholic who spends another 2-5 hours per night working at home?
Good lord are you people actually this naive? No they're not doing to get your cash, they're doing it to prevent your neighborhood from becoming a semi industrial neighborhood. Are you seriously that naive? I'm glad we have zoning law's otherwise I can only imagine what my Red Neck Neighbor who is a Plumber's Front Yard would look like.
I can only speak from experience and Nobody talked about product; i.e., what can you do that I can't ?
In my case, I developed two 'things' that were not available before me and (honestly) had to get a remote location place, on a mountain, with a front gate, in order to get folks to leave me alone.
So, if you are one of those 'build it and they will come' folks, the rest of the pieces will fall into place.
I often tell folks to use the tools they have available to make something happen, rather than wait for the tools that 'may' come tomorrow.
Really, it doesn't. This is why there are deductions allowed on your taxes for "home offices". It doesn't matter what the zoning laws say. As long as the property is still your residence and you aren't making any unusual changes to your property (new building for a transmission garage, etc..) then zoning laws be damned. I already run a consulting business out of my home. 21% of my home is my home business. IIRC it also matters if you can pay your taxes with a Schedule C or not. If you have to pay your taxes like a business then you probably shouldn't be in a residential neighborhood. Take not however that as an LLC you can still pay your taxes with a Schedule C. :-) Talk to you accountant (or pay one $30 for a few minutes of his time) and ask about it. I'm sure he'll have good insight for you. And like others said, just don't tell people. As long as you don't have people in and out of your house all the time, I doubt your neighbors will notice.
Just remember that some of these places have a huge banner on the outside of the building that says "office space by the hour" or "America's premier temporary office space!" In some cases the client would rather meet you at your house than going out of his way to one of these places. Good suggestions though.
Having run a business from home for the last two years, let me stress that you must lay down rules with your wife.
Because sooner or later, she's going to ask you to do the dishes "because you are home"
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
What are you doing, writing your homeowners association for 'permission'? Just sit down and code and sell it on the net. You don't have streams of customers coming in and out and you use your phone and email for everything. I've been writing software from home for 20 years in several countries (including the US) and never asked permission. Never even occurred to me. That's dumb. Maybe you should look into a new career as a sheep.
So you'd like to think perhaps, but in reality this is bogus. American programmers are no better (I'm interviewing too as it happens) - but they are the MINORITY of those I interview: the order is Indian-subcontinental, ex-USSR (including those via Israel), Chinese-east-Asian then a variety including American. I assume this is because non-Americans lose their jobs more easily. I don't believe this is for reasons of competance. I don't see any particular association between ethnic origin and competance amongst my colleagues - but there is obvious reduction in communication due to language in some cases.
Quite honestly I expect in the next 10 years the center of gravity for software production shifts to India. It will be diffused via the net of course but in terms of money earned most will end up in India by sheer weight of numbers.
However, you will need a business license which you'll need to specify the address of your business (physical address, not a PO). Because of that and the fact you're in your home, you may need a home occupation permit (you do in my county). That doesn't cost anything extra (and even if it does, it's still cheaper than an office lease).
Your mileage may vary, but the steps to making your home business legit are short and easy. You'll be doing yourself a major disservice if you don't get a business license/permit if your city/county requires it.
Doubtful, but could depend on state.
Most states do not require your business to be in a business zoned space to get a business license. In fact, most zoning regulations allow home offices and home businesses in residential zoned locations. The zone regulations are ONLY FOR TRAFFIC. If you are a retail front, you need to be zoned that way. If you are a single software business owner who R&D's in his basement and sells on the internet and you don't get shipments all the time like a real business would, you don't worry about zoning. Home offices and Home businesses are legal, legitimate, and perfectly fine in residential zoned areas.
That is why its called a home business.
Two infinite things: your stupidity and mine. But I'm not sure about the latter. If my sig offends you, I'm sorry.
The most likely thing to annoy neighbors is visitors/co-workers blocking driveways or using up parking (assuming it's in a fairly busy area.
Zoning is one of those ordinances that's only enforced when someone gets pissed off.
There was also all the cars of very strange people at all hours.
Then there was when he was training attack dogs in the back yard. Had the big foam suit and everything.
When he finally moved out at 2 in the morning, we all breathed a sigh of relief. Took a little while to get the collection agencies to stop calling asking where he was.
Please don't do that to anyone. :-(
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln
How do I brush my teeth? What is that thing in between my legs?
How about being able to communicate X to them and understanding them trying to speak back to you in slaughtered over accented barely English! Another huge complaint not covered is being to understand this sort of outsourced employee and screwing over of the American worker.
You get what you pay for and what you can understand.
"I assume this is because non-Americans lose their jobs more easily."
Maybe because the boat just hit shore, and immigrants don't have a job (in the first place)??
Cover your eyes and click this link!
What kind of arrangements do I need to make with the zoning board of my town?
---
"We have concerns about Iranian agents in Iraq... We have made clear to Iran we oppose any outside interference in Iraq's road to democracy." - Ari Fleischer
Australian laws are different to the US.
You need an ABN and you will be checked up on, if for nothing else other than GST purposes.
Don't lie to the tax office in any way, or you'll be on an audit list for years.
Audits go back 7 years, so you'd better be prepared.
What happens when homeowners association goes bankrupt? And there are no meetings?
Cover your eyes and click this link!
You may not see this since I'm so late posting but here goes anyway.
Of course you should just check with your local city to find out what you actually need to do (simple call to city hall usually works).
I run both a consulting and software business out of my house and I've done everything 100% legally. All I needed was a form for permission to work out of my house (from the city) and a business license. That's it. It only took about 1 day to get everything signed and approved.
In my city there are additional rules if you place a sign larger than a certain size outside (I have no sign since I work entirely by Internet and referrals). Also if you have a lot of traffic coming and going (I don't). Basically anything that might disturb the neighbors might require additional permits where I live. I didn't have to do any of that though. It literally took me 1 day and about $100 to get everything setup and I'm 100% official and legal.
Nobody ever needs to come to my office. Every time I've dealt with a customer it was at their site. That only makes sense since I'm small and they have all the facilities. However, if they needed to come to my office that would be fine since I have an entire large room dedicated for business (conference table and all). Because that space is only used for business I can write that part of my house off on my taxes.
I see lots of other posts here talking about zoning and such. I only thought that was for store-front type businesses were there would be customer traffic coming and going. A simple consulting/software business doesn't need any special zoning in my area (see above about signs and traffic).
The ratio of people to cake is too big
... to bulldoze his residential into a industrial. Thanks to SimCity, everyone knows about zoning.
I made a new rule. It says "no criticizing the ability of others to speak English unless you can do it in their native tongue."
Do not include these words in the names of your products: .com to everything you plan to sell, your company name- it's a big selling point with investors these days!!
Windows, Apple, Office, Word... or anything that may entice swarms of lawyers.
Secondly- Stripers! Nothing impresses clients more than strippers- become accustomed to your local gentleman's club... and enquire about the "champaign room".
Wanna look cool at home- buy a wireless headset- so when clients call you can be in the bathroom clipping your toenails- or in bed... it doesn't matter with a headset, plus all your friends will think you're savvy
Lastly- Include
Simply put, you should probably list "do enough business to have zoning problems" as one of your business goals. You have to be doing business before you have to worry about whether doing business from your home--and the Number One issue for startup companies is doing business. Here's a list of things you need to worry about, ranked in order of how often I obsess about them:
The big employers in town worry about "booking the sale" or "shipping the product." You have to worry first, last, and always about getting paid. You have to deliver the goods, you have to send the bill--but you have to make sure to follow up if the check is late, continue to follow up through a dozen excuses, and even drop by to pick up the check if need be. The grocery store does not accept accounts receivable.
Forget what the slick TV ads tell you. If you're doing project work for a limited number of clients, your cash flow (see #1) is at the mercy of your client's accounts payable people. MasterCard doesn't take accounts receivable, either. Use debit cards, require clients to front money for travel, etc., and do not (NOT NOT NOT) float yourself money from a credit card. Loan sharks offer better rates.
Big Charlie from Queens, my sometime employee (and sometime employer) reminds me frequently that if I'm not spending 40% of my time marketing my buns, I'm going to go hungry. In project consulting work, that's a tad high--but not much: even if you are hip deep in a killer project with a fabulously wealthy client, keep networking, keep hustling, keep looking out for the next gig and the one after that.
Working from home can do funny things to your relationships. For some people (including my wife and me) working at home can be a terrific thing--and it can be very stressful. When you're both in that state of just-got-the-big-check euphoria (I'm a programmer, she's a book editor) long walks in the woods while the kids are in school can be a blast. But when you're on deadline, and so is she, the stress level can soar. (When the kids start complaining about having too much junk food, and asking to have things like salad, that's a cue.)
You're not "self-employed," a "small entrepreneur," or "on the cutting edge of new working/living patterns." To 99% of your potential clients you're "some guy who works out of his basement." They've all see the Dilbert "clothing optional" comic strip (and they will all ask you about it) and your choice of working patterns will mean that some of them will never do business with you. Buy a tie, wear a suit, bathe. Shave. Learn to eat with utensils--all the things CDWS (cubicle-dwelling wage slaves) do. The more you look like them, the more you sound like them, the more comfortable they will be.
You have to do more than walk right and talk right. You have to D-E-L-I-V-E-R. Every single time. You will have a tough time to start: your business will start to prosper when you start doing repeat business: because there is no marketing, advertising, or sales promotion like a long list of clients that have hired you repeatedly. A key performance metric should be how often you have worked for the same client.
Lots of startup consultants charge way too little. WAY too little. Worse, lots of startup consultants confuse "being busy" with "working." You need to market. You need to network. You need to find projects to try out new concepts and ideas--and usually those are pro bono gigs. But you need to nail down a chunk of billable hours each and every week. You cannot bill more than 30-32 hours per week without seriously hurting your marketing and networking time--and all the stuff like taxes and billing and collections, etc. You have to bill enough to make enough in those thirty hours. And you have to hit those thirty hours week after week after w
I went down to the county court house and got a DBA. I quit my old job after they got bought out by a really big company and management lost touch with reality. Now I do contract programming for various companies around the country - including the one I left for about double my old pay. It's a bit lonely but I'm very happy and don't have an insanely long task list or full of competing deadlines. I do miss the cheap insurance though.
I setup a DSL/WiFi network in my house and got a nice lock for my office door to keep my son out. That's the only modification I made other then running a phone line into a new room.
Zoning restrictions generally only apply to home businesses where the public may come to your house or you may have large/noisy/ugly machinery to do you job. Get a laptop and visit the clients. After over a year in business I have yet to have a client visit my home, and have never seen many of my clients.
Of Course you could always check google instead of Slashdot.
Best of luck to you, it's a wonderful life if you can work it, but it's hard to get 8 hours in some days when you can just as easily go out an play in the park with your family.
This was the case a few years ago, but not anymore.
It's much harder to get a new H1B these days - and even a transfer is scrutinized MUCH more closely. I have seen no resume out of hundreds from someone whose last job wasn't in the States (or Canada).
I think it entirely depends on where you live.
;) and work your way up. When it comes to zoning issues, generally, any smaller level of government can be more restrictive than any larger level of government, but not less restrictive. (The township can't say "Sure, you can build a 35 story office building," if the county has imposed height limits on buildings county wide, etc.)
;)
I cover nearby township meetings for the local newspaper, so I'm obviously only qualified to talk out of my ass about this. But in the particular township which I have the most experience, running a software company from home is actually a *right*, as long as you file for the correct permits and abide by the specified restrictions. The permit you need is called a "Conditional Use Permit" here in Minnesota. It'll cost about 250 dollars or so to file for one, and then the city/township/county has to chew on it for a while.
You'll probably have some sort of hearing before a zoning board or township board or committee or whatever. Be prepared to answer questions like, how will your business affect residential traffic patterns? Will you have any employees? Working on-site or off site? Will you have any employees in the future? How many cars will you have parked outside during the day time?
Another thing you might want to check is to see if your software company violates any housing covenants that you signed when you moved into your neighborhood. As I understand it, disputes over housing covenants are not settled by any governmental agency -- you start out with courts and lawyers.
32579738956 other people have said this before me, but go talk to your city, township, or county zoning administrator. They're usually very helpful (unless you live in a larger city, then, good luck). Chambers of Commerce are also good places to find out info.
But the best way of approaching things like this is to *start* at the local level; ask the smallest level of local government (your wife?
But get as much local info as you can, since everywhere is different (that's why you start smallest first and work your way up. Kinda like booting.
Your milage may vary, I'm not a lawyer, etc. Good luck!
Electric_Boy banned: Banned by Metallica: See http://infringe.napster.com/metallica.html
Check out the information and resources provided by the National Association for the Self-Employed. They offer a wide range of help to the small business and self-employed (hence the name). Membership is not free; they DO offer one of the best independent health insurance plans you'll find. Yes, you DO want health insurance.
... was reading up earlier)
(oddly enough, i try the link right now and it returns nada. I know the site is there
Ignore the people who say "ignore the people..."
Vote Quimby.
When my former employer disappeared, I started working full-time as an independant contractor (paid by the hour for software dev, mostly supporting the ex-customers of my old employer), plus I'm working on a few independant projects that I hope to start getting some money out of a few months down the road.
I work entirely out of my house or on-site, and my accountant is already writing off portions of my house and vehicle use for my taxes.
For tax purposes, I'm "self-employed", so I can basically write off everything I pay for (including home utilities, hardware, etc) that are for my work.
Zoning is no problem because I don't have any employees, and customers don't come to my home (see messages above).
If you are going to have employees working for you right away, you should consider letting them work out of their own homes officially, and just hold meetings at your house (meetings which could last all day, if need be).
One thing that sucks, though -- I'm not on salary anymore, so taxes don't get withheld... I guess it's the same thing, but somehow it's more painful to put all that nice money in my account, then have to take it out again and hand it off to Uncle Sam.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
In most cases, zoning rules only apply if you have a storefront/foot traffic. With a software business, presumably you would have neither, and so zoning doesn't apply at all.
The world won't end in darkness, it'll end in family fun, with Coca-cola clouds behind a Big Mac sun.
I started hacking on a CompuKit UK101, an Acorn Atom, and a Jupiter Ace. I.E., I've been doing it for a long time, mosly for love.
I've met any number of Indian graduates who say that their high school scores indicated a future in political science, but they did CompSci to make money. Losers, mostly. I'd never hire them. And I'd recommend the Microsoft interview as a way to keep them from fscking you up.
Pat
--
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I ran a business out of my house for several months, but decided it had to end when the police were taking a suspicious look at all the people coming and going, shootings taking place outside, etc. I now rent a room at a Motel 6 under an assumed name and make the crystal meth there. Sure, it's an extra $30 onto my overhead, but in retrospect it's much easier than hauling away hundreds of pounds of incredibly toxic by-product.
Also, don't listen to these guys telling you to register your business with the city, etc. That's just asking for trouble.
You've obviously never played Sim City 3000. A software company puts out as much pollution as a sludge factory.
Since the company I work for is a home based business, I hope this helps. Most townships here in Southern NJ are ok with home businesses, but there are still rules. Some will want you register for taxing purposes, hitting you on top of your property taxes. You can't have people coming and going from your home all the time. And can't have big trucks making deliveries all the time, UPS is ok. But since you are doing software development only the people coming and going applies to you. Best thing to do is to go to your Borough Hall and ask the clerk what the town requires. Most likely they will have quick and simple answer for you. Plus having nice neighbors helps. But you can always just not tell anyone. Especially if no one comes and goes, who will know the difference?
Fear Is the Only God
...is that for the kind of business I've been doing (consulting/programming) that the city has no damn business getting into my business. Clients rarely need to come by my home--I go to them or connect to them through a VPN or their corporate dialup server (they prefer that anyways). Thus, there are no extra parking or traffic volume requirements. I don't have a great deal of storage needs--I don't keep any physical inventory (hardware is shipped direct to clients--only when a couple of units need configuring etc. do I ever have their stuff here). Thus, I don't need to build additions and what not.
The whole point of municipal business taxes/licenses as I see it is to provide revenue to the city to support services they must supply to businesses, and to keep the community in the loop. I need no parking space, upgraded roads or utilities, external signage or ANYTHING that I don't already pay residential property taxes for. Asking for more simply because I make money from home is simply being unfairly greedy.
My city seems to agree with that--there are some circumstances where no business license (and thus extra tax) is required. A consultant or software writer (or novel/article writer for that matter) can be considered a "telecommuter" in the same way people who have bosses downtown but work at home.
One thing is for certain--you have to register your business and pay taxes on your income one way or another. Where I'm at it is strictly in the provincial and/or federal juristiction. the simplest setup is to register your business name and operate as a sole-proprietor or partnership. Your revenue is taxed on your personal income tax.
Alternatively you can register a corporation (under a name or a number with a "doing business as" name). The corporation is a distinct legal entity that prepares its own tax return. If you ARE required to pay municipal taxes/fees you would do so under the corporation.
In Canada, there is one thing ALL business should do (and MUST do if you are at it full time and bring in revenue above a pretty modest threshold--even if you are a one man show). That is, you MUST obtain a federal Business Number (the BN--even if you aren't a corporation). This is used for taxation purposes (to report business income on your personal tax return for non-corporate enterprises and as the identifier on a corporate return). The BN is also used in the collection of the GST and is required in order to properly hire employees (for payroll deductions and so on).
Make sure you look into that sort of stuff first--the city crap can wait as they don't REALLY care that much if you don't draw attention to yourself. Federal and provincial (or state-level) governments on the other hand are much more humourless (and greedy IMHO). If you don't go by the book with them they get serious--the city will just say "get a permit" and perhaps charge you an extra little fee (and here, they'll do a surprising amount of "hand holding" as well).
Ignore all those people who swear you can get away with not going to your municipality's zoning commission. The first thing you need to do is go in and get permission to build a twelve story glass cubicle farm in your back yard.
You'll still be working out of your basement, of course. The new building's sole function is to hold patent lawyers. These days, you'll need every one of them just to stay alive.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I work at a software company is located on a 80 acre farm.
I far as I know the owner had little problems with zoning/restrictions. Make sure you get a good lawyer though, expensive but worth it.
This is actually a world-class company with clients like Cisco, HP, Nortel, Siemens, etc. And a number of the engineers I work with have their names on rfc's.
Of course the locals think it is some type of cult.
Land is cheap and so is cost of living.
So maybe move out to the sticks, ya never know ya may like it.
1. I want to start a software business doing...
2. ?
3. Profit
Ignore it, and concentrate on building a business.
No doubt. I see people like this all the time. They think business cards, a name plate, company letterhead, a computer, and a home office constitutes a business. All the while forgetting the real question, what's the point of the business?
more than anything else. In most places, you can run a home business, provided that you do not employ more than one other person on the premises and that you don't have more than 3 cars parked out front. Simple rules apply, so in general, just relax and do it.
You could do yourself a very big favour though by incorporating right from the start. That way, you learn how to run a company and do corporate taxes while it is still small.
I own 3 private companies and my wife has 2 and we do it all ourselves...
You dont have to always be zoned commercial to run a business.
Where we are, the customers never come to the house, so all that was required from local government was a $90 a year business license.
State Incorporation ran about $400 with around $30 a year renewal.
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
The smartest advice I've seen offered so far is 'read up on your local zoning laws'. It really does vary considerably by local municipality. Nevertheless, in most communities, if you are a sole proprietorship with no other employees, and you are not engaging in industrial manufacturing or walk-in retail sales, you should not have to rezone. In some cases you might need to get a special use permit, but even that is rare if you are just making phone calls and sending emails.
Now you if want to live in your commercial building, that is an entirely different story! I am an incorporated independent contractor. Through my corporation, I recently purchased a commercially zoned (C2) building (a retired funeral home). Though it has an apartment on the second floor (it used to be a family run business), I was surprised to learn that I could not live in my own building until I went through a lengthy process with the city planning commission and common council to eventually get a dual use permit. And don't even get me started about the whole occupancy permit and building inspection process! (shudder) At least we are finally moved in, have a tenant renting the first floor to help pay the business loan, and we still have 5300 square feet of living space including a basement complete with a rec-room, freight elevator, and our very own embalming room! >:)
The Bolachek Journals
If you were a poet and sold your stuff to artsy
magazines would you worry about zoning or
business licences?
Why should a software author be
treated differently?
Call up your local authorities and say
"I'm an author, do I need a permit?"
FLAWED (Free legal advice, worth every dime.)
If a smelting operation you wish, I think I can help you, Asarco just mothballed a plant here, and I think they'd let you have it pretty cheap.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
A reputable lawyer looking for business will answer questions for free as well. It builds good will for when you actually grow and can afford to pay. Prepaid is a total rip-off for all concerned. I should know, a cousin of mine participated in it. If you don't have a family lawyer, you know someone who does or at least knows a lawyer who they think well of.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
And like all good advice it's blatently stolen (from Warren Buffet)
Learn accounting, at least enough to read financial statements and the footnotes, it's the language of business.
I can not tell you how much I agree with this, it should not be too hard to either grab an intro accounting book, or audit a class at the closest learning institution. Learning accounting will make your life much easier to see if you are profitable, generating cash, what deals might not be worth trying for lack of proceeds.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
No wonder the bubble burst the way it did! A whole mess of people went back to 1999, started a company, then sold out at exactly the right time (hey, they knew what was going to happen)! All those sales at once started the ball rolling...
This is the real signature
(Beats those shadows on the cave wall, don't it?)
Start small with one contract working on one application. Work your tail off on it and generally speaking you'll start getting calls from other companies wanting your work. Thats how my employer did his company and it as a successfull at home software buisness.
Something I haven't seen mentioned: if you DO have trouble (I've seen some wierd-ass fights inside homeowner associations in the news), find a workaround address. Hell, a mailbox at Mailboxes Etc. might be sufficient, but most consulting types I know find a semicompatible firm to work with, or a small-business facility, an incubator/innovation center run by local money, an office-rental facility, etc.
I did like the remark that worrying about zoning should be a business goal. That whole forgiveness/permission axiom comes to mind when dealing with anyone but the IRS.
- Sleep in doorways so it doesn't rain on you.
- The best shopping carts are at 'Lucky'.
- You can make an excellent sign with a black marking pen and a hunk of cardboard.
- Despite the name, food stamps are not edible.
Ok, that's some tips for people wanting to run their own business from Scott Adams' "Casual day has gone too far'.Now for some real tips. As someone who has been running a company for 3 years now, I'd recommend you ask yourself the following questions:
- Is there a market for your services? How big is it? How big will your slice of it be?
- Do you have the resources/funds to cover several months or even years in which you might not make any profit?
- Can you convince your potential customers that you/your company are the right one for the job?
- Do you already have a list of potential customers?
- Are your prices realistic?
I personally needed 3 years before I actually started to make money with my company. There was a lot of bad experiences and such, but in the end it was worth it. The independence and all.Another tip: Many newcomers make the same fatal mistake the first time around. When calculating offers, they think like people, not like companies, and they somehow have this weird idea that if they're cheap enough, they'll get a foot in the door. Don't. If you sell yourself below your price, people will think you're stupid. They will abuse you and then throw you away.
PS: I know I'm slightly off-topic, but I think you might be worrying about the wrong issues here.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
The only one I know of was a bourghs system that had: 9 bit bytes 36 bit word pointers 72 bit char pointers The 9 bit byte is 8 bits of data + 1 bit parity I believe that the 72 bit char pointer combined the size of the string with the pointer to the begining of it. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong.
An Aeron chair!
Yeah, it's just ridiculous to ask this question in a forum where many successful people read and post. I guess the best thing to do is go back to the pre-Internet days and rely soley on people that we've personally met to offer advice. Oh, and people shouldn't ask any questions too early in the game. Perople should wait until they're already moderately successful before asking for advice. I'm sorry, it's late, I guess I missed the "Insightful" part of the parent post.
My suggestion would be to search for interesting tidbits here, and don't take any posts too seriously even if they've been modded way up as "Insightful."
PS: I don't wear pajamas, but I don't think anyone can tell.
I've met any number of Indian graduates who say that their high school scores indicated a future in political science, but they did CompSci to make money. Losers, mostly. I'd never hire them.
That may be the key difference. The more desparate you are, the more you focus on money. That is why immigrants often heavily encourage their children to pick high-paying careers. However, a "typical" American parent will say something like, "do what you love, just do it well" WRT career choice.
Thus, perhaps US citizens are more likely to be better in the longer run because they are more lickly to pick computers as a career because they actually *like* computers, and if you like something, you focus on doing it better. Look at all the pretenders that came out of woodwork in the dot-com bubble. (I am not bashing ex-dot-com'ers, just saying the bubble produced lots of phoney nerds.)
The economic situation in India is more likely to produce phoney nerds.
Table-ized A.I.
When I looked into this, I was told that the issue is traffic --- if people aren't coming to your house, for one thing, no one would even know, save the postman. If you wanted to do it "right", I shouldn't think you'd have a problem getting permission or an exemption or whatever's needed, unless you've pissed someone off somehow.
So you won't be able to solve it.
I consider it to be about the same as asking really obscure parts let's say C++.
I bet you would be one to ask questions concerning the lexical scope of inline friend functions.
I have done database work, financial type applications as well as some scientific applications. In all of the applications that I have worked on, the bit wise operations have always been useful. I cannot say the same for linear algebra.
The theory classes that have been useful in all of my programming has been algorithms and "theory of automata, computability and formal languages".
There are a lot of rules in South Africa concerning the ability to run a business from home, but I know of a lot of tele-commuters who work in the UK, but live in SA. Also, the cost of having a dedicated line at home (SA is one of the most expensive for line charges/ Internet charges) is cheaper than having a dial-up solution and an office.
..
If I were a customer I would far rather see better/quicker support than a fancy office
I also base my software company out of my home. I didn't notify anyone. In fact, notifying the city your in will probably just lead to more taxes for you to pay.
Just don't be surprised when LA learns of your most likely illegal business (because you're operating a business in LA without a license) and you're smacked with big fines and possible jail time (depending on local laws). Oh, and back taxes. Governments are rather picky about such things.
DO I need to say more about problem solving???
What's under yellowstone?
I've been working from the home for 3+ years. Usually good, sometimes bad. Biggest problem is having a place to meet clients - I have an "office" now that I go to 3 or so days/month to meet the occasional local client. (Most of my clients are out of the area - more than half of my income comes from people I've never met)
The rent at my office is cheap, but it looks very nice.
The bad is when my 5 kids get rowdy, the wife is running errands, and I'm in the middle of a nasty, nested/recursive loop and looking for an esoteric bug. (The kind where $var=$value or $var=&$value can make all the difference)
I know my neighbors, and I don't produce any noticable amount of traffic. My professional life exists via my DSL modem.
Do I like what I do? He11 yeah!
But working at home has its ups and downs - despite having 5 kids and a wife around here (and the incessant noise that accompany this many people) I sometimes wish I had other "co-workers". The closest I come are clients that I largely work with via my IP telephone.
Give it a shot - zoning (at least around here) is not an issue, and the licensing takes $50 and an afternoon. The real issue is getting paying customers. With that, the rest is easy!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
I honestly can't belive anyone would even worry about something like this. Do you think the cops are going to come by and make sure you're not doing anything 'comercial' in your home?
Besides, why do you even need a physical location anyway? Just colaborate with people over the 'net.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
This comment is not a racial slur, it's a sarcastic reference to the fact that outsourcing programming services to India is far cheaper than hiring local talent. This is understandably becoming a sore point among competing American programmers who have much higher living costs. There's no need to bring women's math scores or anything else into it.
Not only do we get paid a little less than in the US (well, less than NY or California, despite slightly higher cost of living in southern England), but we have to do CS exams involving hardcore problem solving, and at Bachelors level every exam I had was closed book!
... they had zoning regulations where they could shoot you dead for trying to leave the "zone".
The first gulf war gave us "mother of all...", and now the second gave us "shock and awe". Neat.
In any case, wouldn't a bigger concern be that your coworkers (rather than friends and relatives) think that you were not actually working...
You need a killer application to sell, and it has to WORK, otherwise you are just dreaming!
It's official : the pro-H1-Bs play the race card every time!
In most cases you only need to worry about zoning regulations if you will be seeing customers from your residence. I;m not sure about homeowners associations though. From what little I do know they can be pretty draconian in terms of home use and looks.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
I've run my own business since the late 1980s. Here's my modest but hardwon advice:
1. Get a good accountant and provide her/him with good records. Professionally prepared returns function like audit kryptonite.
2. Don't take a home office deduction. This is an audit magnet.
3. Start a Solo 401(k). This will enable you to set aside, no questions asked, $12,000 in 2003 AND roughly 25% of your after selfemployment tax profits. Best deal ever for a sole proprietor or one person shop.
I had to train some Indians for 3 months before they went back to our office in India. They stank to high heaven, and the work SUCKED after they returned home.
And when the group was here in the U.S., all the poor women were forced to "keep house" and cook for the men - regardless of position and job duties.
But I have to admit, it is very interesting watching these backward societies evolve with the influx of technology and tech jobs. Dirt floor houses with broadband connections - real priorities!
My personal rule, which can be applied to licensing, hardware, business accounts, etc, is this: when what you're presently doing / using becomes an impediment to making money, upgrade, but not until.
For instance - if you don't already have work / contracts, keep right on using that 366Mhz machine with the 15" monitor. Yes, it's slow, and non-productive, but you don't have any work yet. When you get a major contract, and you're actually spending time on the machine and not on the job, and there's enough profit to afford new tools, then buy the tools.
The same holds for things like a business license and a business account. You have to pay for these things, and business services always cost more, sometimes 5x or 10x as much! You may well have free personal checking, but business checking could cost you $10-$25 a month, all for having a formal name on your check. Meanwhile, though it makes accounting easier to have two accounts, it doesn't change your tax liability at all. Yes, there may be penalities (I've received a ticket for not having a business license). But, by the time you get hit with such a penalty, you've probably saved a good bit of money and time not dealing with such issues.
In other words, don't spend the money and especially the time because you think you ought to, but becaue you have to. This runs counter to a lot of advice above, but I've found that trying to be an "official" business as a sole proprietor isn't worth the hassle. Be advised that when and if you get employees, everything changes - so, get a business license then.
Finally, I do recommend providing some separation between your personal life and your business life - a separate addresss and phone at a minimum. I've used a PO box for years, and never had a problem. And I have a separate phone; if you can't afford that, get an 800 # - you can initially point it at your home phone, then subsequently at a business line if you get one, with no interruption in service, but easily allowing you to point your business calls elsewhere. In the same vein, voice mail with a box for work and home will help separate work from pleasure.
$.02
cheers,
neilv
I set up a homebased business for my wife.
.com name that describes your company by name or purpose. $13.95 per year at http://000domains.com
Here are some tricks.
Example
http://BeauClassics.com
1) Get a mail order, mobile or software business license. These usually require no particular zoning.
2) Get a federal tax ID number.
3) Create a product that will sell to busineses (if software) or to the masses as a product.
4) Get a second personal phone line and tie it to a computer based answering service (http://www.01com.com - I use communicate pro)
or use ureach.com for $4.99 per month for a 1-800 number and email etc.
5) Become a member of a Credit Union and open a DBA, Doing Business As Account, I pay $5.00 per month where at a commercial bank it is $30.00 per month.
6) Make the product a time saver and not too complex or unique, but search the web for your competition and out price them or make it better.
7) Price the product below $300.00 for credit card purchases as most companies can purchase to this amount without get purchase approvals.
8) Get a
9) Go to dr2.net to set up a $20.00 year server.
10) Use the dr2.net shared SSL certificate for credit card purchases.
11) Become an Executive Member of Costco. Create some product flyers and apply to Nova information systems through the Costco membership as a credit card merchant. Now you can take Visa, MC and American Express. Tie your DBA account to the Nove account
12) Get cable or DSL for your home server. Run Apache on Windows with PHP and MySQL. Reference http://www.dslwebserver.com/ for help.
13) Create your web site using HTML-Kit (free), Apache, PHP and MySql (All free)
14) Use the dr2.net shopping cart or create your own like I did. Have the orders email themselves to you and an automatic order confirmation back to the customer.
That is about it...
Makaha
Surely you could tell they didn't know the basics because their job application would be in all uppercase and they have spelled the name of the company that they are applying to wrong
The one I like is when the salary is commonly expressed in K like $75K and the applicant asks if they can have 1024 dollars in a K-dollar.
I have met people who are really up on theory of computing but cannot write a useful program to save themselves. I can't explain it, and they have their place but it isn't in applications development or maintenance. I'd give them a short but interesting coding spec and ask them to write or design an algorithym to implement it. And then do a "code review" of it with them.
And having worked in the public service, the other thing I get very wary of is the "glowing" reference. I look for a "balanced" reference. Although I know in some twisted countries, applicants sue if they don't like their reference.
I guess I ask for a balanced reference when I'm asking for myself and I ask if the person who asks me for a reference whether they want glowing or balanced and then I discuss it with them until they're happy. There's nothing worse than a surprise reference. References are a whole new topic.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I just registered a business and was told to go to the zoning office. They made me sign a statement that I wouldn't have employees coming and going, and that I would park company vehicles on the property. No big deal...
What? You are doing walk-in retail software sales? It seems like a home setup is more trouble than it is worth for a software company. You can house yourself in practically any back street commercial dive with adequate security (and "character" if necessary) because who's going to drop by?
In my suburb, a home business is no problemo: you just can't have employees or parking. As soon as you bring an employee into the home, I would imagine licensing inspectors come out of the woodwork.
Don't let the city know? I would rather not be in a position where an employee can blackmail me.
Most communities around here don't care what you do at your home, so long as it is unnoticable. The line is drawn at signs, trucks, and traffic: they don't like those. I asked at the local code compliance office when I started my consulting business 10 years ago; they told me that so long as I didn't put up a sign, didn't run truck traffic through residential areas, and didn't have mobs of customers trying to park on residential streets, they didn't care. And so it proved.
:)
Of course, this is semi-rural Indiana, which takes "laid back" to a whole new level of meaning. Your mileage may vary, especially if you choose to live in an overpopulated center of pollution otherwise known as a city.
Rocketboy
Trouble is, the sucker that has to come back and fix up the weird code is usually me. And I hate it when I have to figure out something from scratch again. And I hate having to do it over again.
If it is readable by the newbie, that means I get to work on something new and challenging, instead. If there is no newbie, at least I can change it quickly and accurately.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't be interested in running an obfuscator over code for distribution, while I am dependent and interested in income from it, but the minute I lose interest, I want someone else to be able to handle it.
And I have had several employers request me specifically because they could read, understand and maintain my code. It was actually good for my employment.
10 lines of tangled code, ok, but 20000 lines per program times 500 programs, puts you off deliberate complications for life.
Actually it was trying to get help debugging a program with lots of loops, when I'd named all the loop counters after different America's cup boats, that made me switch to obvious var names and straightforward coding structures.
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Call your insurance company, a lot of companies won't cover home based business if you have employees working on the premises. If they are willing to cover you the cost are significantly more then regular homeowners policy.
I ran a small consulting firm out of my home for a while, the insurance was killing me, so I had everyone work from their home and held weekly meetings at the local Starbucks.
Here's some random advice that I wish someone had given me before I started.
Incorporate now, before you do anything else.
If you're offering any of your friends/workers equity in the company find a good lawyer, tell them to find a good lawyer. Have the lawyers work out a real agreement. It's not a matter of trust, it's a matter of clarifying what all parities expect.
Consider subleasing space from an existing company. I know people who do this in New York for as little as 80$ a month. Even if it's just one cube you'll get access to the companies conference rooms and have a "real address" in a commercial district.
Work out the worst case scenario for employing yourself, you will need money to live while you get your company off the ground. Nothing sucks more then having to take a job or freelance assignment to pay the bills because your business isn't bringing in money. Assume that everything will take three times as long as you think it will and that you'll need twice as much money for startup cost.
And finally, relax.
Good Luck.
When punk rock is outlawed, only outlaws will have punk rock.
He's stating his experience. I've encountered the same. If you have friends from India/Bangladesh (sp?) their way of living is completely different than ours. It's stupid to assume that different cultures can solve problems the same way. I have friends from all over the world and everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. It's not racism to stereotype.
For example, my Asian friends (not born in America) have the most difficult time in Business Law (Legal Studies). This has nothing to do with intelligence or race. It has to do with the norms and mores of our society being learned from an early age. Laws are implemented and administered very differently in SE Asia than they are here. As a result all my Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese and Philippine friends struggle to understand the way Business Law works.
So take your narrow minded quick to yell "racist" shit elsewhere. Political Correctness is the worst fucking excuse for calling someone racist I've seen yet.
Nobody in this thread had a single argument to dispute or refute the "market forces" alluded to by the root of this thread.
I read that post to say [irrespective of ethnicity or origin] you get what [qualities] you pay for. I work with some talented Russian and American and Indian developers. The nature of the educational system each person came from *IS* apparent in their different talents and approaches. The ones with really sharp wits rise to the top, getting seniority titles, responsibilities, and pay, and the other ones need more hand-holding.
Some people say that most Indian developers in their experience are weak problem solvers. Unless you have first hand knowledge of these peoples' experiences, you have to accept their statements of fact for arguments' sake. You can only criticise them for not being clear about potential biases that weaken the correlation between the stated experience and everyone else's experience in general.
For example: We might all be correct, as in without disagreement, if the vast majority of weak problem solver Indian developers were hired from the applicants who would accept the lowest salaries. H1B Visas are a diversion. Please help tie this all together, or the "faulty logic" thread will need to continue..
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
If you are planning to create a new piece of software - hey, why not an operating system or something ? - and you don't expect to be in a position to actually sell anything for a few months, I'd stay away from the bureaucracy. Concentrate on the product, get it to a stage where you think you can sell it, and save your energy.
However, if you plan to run a consulting business, or plan to have people working alongside you, or plan to have frequent visitors - get an office. In the long run, if you can't afford to do the right thing now, you probably don't have the right backing to do this in the first place.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
He also warned me that if I wrote off any part of my mortgage because of the use of a room for business that part of my profit whenever we sell the house would then be taxable (whereas it would otherwise not be).
Tom Mollerus
Oneworkspace.com
Consider writers, designers, etc. Piece of paper and a fertile mind, work anywhere.
Including on the couch in pajamas.
My state flags tax returns with home office deductions, schedules C and E, to see if they are paying proper business licenses and obeying zoning laws. Some people have been caught and fined.
What about the family? Are there any /.'ers running a home-based software company and have family at home?
:)
I am trying to start my own software endeavor, but after spending 8+ hours at my day job (developing software), then try to spend a few hours in the evening (developing more software), my wife and kids present serious road blockage.
Sure, my family "says" they will help support my attempt at this, but it never seems to work. The dishes, kids homework, servicing the wife...it all get in the way. There are never enough hours in the day. I guess I could give up sleeping, since I only get about 5 hours/day anyway
Another problem I have is that once I get in "the zone", someone always manages to break my concentration. What do other "family" orientated software developers do at home?
I believe my pet project will sell...if I ever get the chance to finish it. So, I guess my question is...what are some successful ways to deal with a full-time day job, part-time family, and sub-part-time software project?
I guess I could tech the family Java and Oracle and put their asses to work!
Is it just me or does the USA come accross as a touch autoritarian?
I live in the UK. I recently looked into starting a business from home - nothing fancy, just a sole trader type business. The tax laws made the whole thing a nightmare, but that's the only gotcha I faced.
I didn't need a business licence. Banks were happy to let me have business accounts (all be it under my own name with the firm name listed as a "Trading As"). There were no "zoning" issues. No red tape what so ever.
Indeed some government departments publish PDFs which went out of their way to encourage small businesses run from home.
Now, I always thought the UK was overly fond of red-tape. But reading some of the issues raised here it looks like the US leads the world.
I looked into starting my own business a few years ago - I called city hall and asked about a business license.
They told me everything I needed to know (basically, $65 for a business license - I could run it out of my house, but only if there were a maximum of two customers at a time. If there would be more than two customers at a time in my house, I needed to get an office.)
Call city hall and ask. They'll tell you what you want to know.
Just do it from home. Don't get any permits or anything. Don't put up a sign. Don't blab to the neihgbors.
Get a mail drop at Mailboxes Etc or something similiar (that is not a chain). There are plenty of these. They can act as your official mailing address. If any mail shows up, they can call you and let you know it is there.
Get a service like onebox.com for an integrated 1800/fax/voice-mail/email.
If you need to have a meeting with others in person, do it at their place, a coffee shop, or rent for a couple of hours one of those shared hoteling places. Don't hold the meeting at your house (unless the biz person is also a buddy who already is in the know). You do not want to have noticable (annoying to youir neighbors) business traffic to your residence.
Find an office, even a cheap one
Agreed. A year ago, I was involved in a new start-up company. We found, through a business advice service, that the local university was offering office space for free, including a low to mid spec PC, phone line, broadband internet connection, and software licences at educational institute rates. You had to meet their prerequisites - the business being hi-tech related, and the business plan and a presentation passing the scrutiny of a board of industry sponsors. Once through, the office was yours for a maximum of 12 months - the idea being that your start-up will be established by then and able to move into other premises. They have since introduced a nominal monthly fee, I believe, but still far cheaper than standard office rental. They also have plenty of good contacts and business advisors on hand...
I'd advise checking to see if there's any similar schemes running in your local area.
From many long years of experience. Zoning is based on outward restrictions. If you observe those, they could care less about what you do in your home.
(1) Do not put up any signs
(2) Do not do anything that increases traffic in your neighborhood or requires people to park at your home.
That's it. That's all they really care about.
"Is your memory error detecting/correcting"
You fail. Hardware ECC is always hidden from the programmer. Always.
So in an attempt to show us how smart you are, you come across as very *french*.
Also, if you will have a significant number of servers, equipment, etc. be prepared for property taxes -- they'll want to tax it just like Real Estate once the amount is larger than some threshold (e.g., $10K). So, be sure to track your depreciation.
Also, unless you are ACTUALLY reselling the equipment in some reasonable amount of time (say six months to a year), don't try to use your tax ID to evade the state/local sales taxes.
The advice of others here to get a GOOD attny and accountant is well heeded. Decisions about S/C Corp status, and many other items can affect you for years to come, so you shuld have a good idea of the potential of the biz when you start out -- is it going to be a basic proprietorship, or a growth biz that you might sell later?
...especially from non-Lawyers, You Get What You Pay For.
If you are doing tech stuff where much of your work is online, then you don't have to worry. If you serve your customers on their site, then ditto. What you have to beware of is a business that requires customers to visit you frequently. That would have the possibility of creating vehicle traffic in a residential neighborhood and getting you in trouble. While I have occasional customers visit my home, I work mostly online and on site. No problem.
"There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832); German poet.
just don't call it a business. consider yourself someone who does contract work or something. call your website a porfolio and not a business.
that will do it.
First of all I'm Indian and I kinda agree with the guy :) The fact is that the majority of Indians that come here didn't go to IIT (India Institute of Technology). Those that did are probably better than people you'll find at MIT. But those that went to other institutions, don't have the funding and curriculum to really teach there students what they need to know.
Personally I grew up in Chicago, and went to Purdue University. Of the grad students that I meet from Indian, the ones from IIT were really impressive, others really did lack problem solving skills.
On the other hand, students here are the same. If you compare someone who went to Purdue, UIUC, Stanford, MIT, or other well funded schools, to someone who went to Tennesee Tech, or some other small school with limited funding there is an obvious difference.
At the same time though the school makes a difference in entry level canadates, I'm sure we all agree that after a number of years of experience, we are all at roughly the same level.
If you have employees and customers in and out of your home. I live in a town home with restrictions but I have been successfuly operating my home office here for more than 7 months. Complete with my network rack and workbench for all my toys. See picutre below. http://www.eatlizards.com/pictures/04-03/Home/Home -Pages/Image4.html
I know it's a late post, but springboarding off the orignial poster's question: Have any of you started you own company mid-career? Meaning, you had a mortgage that was more than $1500, 2 cars, credit card debt, kids in school, school loans, decent salary, whatever?
Dude Culture and Problem solving? I'm sorry, but Indian has the largest collection of Engineers outside of the western world. Because of them and the Arabs we have the base 10 number system that makes math so easy for us. And they dont have our culture. Its not culture, its resources. We are spoiled by the fact that we've had computers forever. They probably never see computers until they enter college. This has nothing to do with culture. The fact is the software industry is the exception. For every other type of Engineering, there Engineers are probably on par if not better than the average engineer going to the average American University. If you look at most of the papers in Mechanical, Civil, or Electrical Engineering that are significant, they came from graduate students who grew up in those "different cultures" and have that "different way of living". In fact most Engineering Departments have more of these people from these "different cultures" than they have White and Asian Americans. Culture is irrelevent. Ways of living is irrelevant. Lack of resources is there problem, and the reason we (as Americans) are ahead. I hope that makes sence :) Nothing againt you as a person, but I really think people need to think a little before we just chalk stuff off to culture or race.
If you are in the US, look for your local "Small Business Development Center". You've already paid for them with your tax dollars. Some are better than others, but they all share the same basic mission -- free or inexpensive access to information and advice about starting a business in your community. They are usually associated with a local college. They should be able to supply you with a checklist of things that need to happen to legally start a business in your area. This is the information that the .gov people know, but are too busy to tell you about.
For instance -- should you form a corporation, an LLC, or a work as a sole proprietor? If you call and ask the county clerk, he'll only know about DBA (doing business as certificates) for sole proprietorships. The secretary of state will be able to send you forms to incorporate, but neither will (probably) have the info to help you make a decision about which is best for you.
When you see that stupid SOB on TV with the question-mark suit saying "there's government money to help small businesses" -- this is what he's talking about, not what he's implying. Ain't no grant money for start-ups of course, but the SBA and other such entities do fund the SBDCs.
How do I know this? I'm working on an MBA -- and I'm a grad assistant at one. Moving back to technological backwards state (due to family reasons) means I'm having to figure out a new or modified path -- not too much work for embedded systems guys in Huckabee's state -- hell, most people here can't even say "embedded systems".
Best of luck to you.
I was an English major, and I could've answered that one. Sheesh.
That is correct if you are incorporating, in which case the bank will typically require the corporation resolution opening said bank account, with all the board-members signatures.
It typically does NOT apply for partnerships or sole proprietorships.
In Massachusetts, I paid $5 to register with my town clerk. They asked a series of questions:
zone: residential business type: software traffic: occasional customer visits, 3-20 cars per week.
Granted signed sealed and delivered in 3 minutes.
-Chris
Put the route command you have to run in a script that will run every time you boot up ( call it route and put it in /etc/rc.boot/, in other linuxes you would add it to /etc/rc.local, but debian had to be gay.)
/etc/group file, or use the command "addgroup username proxy" which does the same thing.
To add a user to the proxy group, either edit the
Also, join a linux user group mailing list somewhere and ask these questions there. Austin Linux Group (austinlug.org) is the best, all other linux groups are flame-waring heaps of shit where people never answer your questions.
Have fun !
I host my own DNS, so my zone is no problem.
Ugh. I wouldn't say this makes you look like a real company.
I worked for a contracting agency once that had space in one of those generic office-space farms. Driving up to the building for my initial interview, I didn't realize what it was, and was mildly impressed by the size and location of their apparent premises. Once I got in the door, it rapidly became obvious that they were renting the space as needed. They interviewed me in a generic conference room with no identifying logo/decorations/etc. I left feeling vaguely uneasy, thinking I'd just gotten involved with some fly-by-night operation.
A year or so later, they realized it would be cheaper to buy a house in the burbs and set up shop there. So they did. I don't know which was more unsettling--interviewing in generic conference room #32, or meeting with them in a sparsely furnished suburban living room. (On the bright side, the unprofessional setting made it easier to attribute their shady payroll tactics to cluelessness rather than crookedness.)
I started one at home and as long as I was not going to have customers driving up to my house and parking the city did not care. If you just have a home office there is nothing they can do.
but I will ask it anyway. If ever had a successfuly website that with enough hits I could justify an amazon.com affiliateship would I have to worry about all this zoning/lawyer/whatever crap? I just mean a humble little blog and/or personal website of which there are millions I am sure as opposed to actually selling something like web design, consulting, shareware or Macintoshes out of the garage like that 12 year old.
"UNIX is very simple, it just needs a genius to understand its simplicity." -Dennis Ritchie
All you really need is a micro office that you can use to receive mail and a place to work at when it's too distracting at home. In this economic climate it's likely that you have your choice of offices a quarter mile from your house.
Having a real place where you're doing business clarifies every facet of your new biz.
Though really zoning issues are the least of your worries. Do you incorporate? Taxes? Health Insurance? Talk to a lawyer and an accountant.
-Iron
Steve Warren
CEO NetWizards
1601 NW 97th Ave, SJO3016
Miami, FL 33102
1-305-468-6390
(Leave a message with a brief description of your needs so I can have the
correct person return your call)
My (now-ex) wife and I started a software company, selling a niche CAD/CAM application. She provided the specs/unit-test/marketing/sales (being the domain expert) and I wrote the code (handling SCM/QA/etc. - we actually used a code repository and written bug reports w/db for same for two people working in the same room 8-).
;-) - but since we have customers from all over the world who haven't access to the latest/greatest Windows OS's, this has been a concern we've been able to put off, at least for now.
/. effect would likely eat up my beer money for the next 3 years ;-).
Actually, this product is still a going concern... the ex still runs the shop (takes her about 1 hr/month - essentially cuts trial license keys and fills P.O.'s) - we get about 1 order/month on a codebase I haven't really touched in the past 3 years (would be 5 years, but I fixed a minor bug reported 3 years ago, plus one minor tweak for y2k compliance).
At ~US$500.00 a pop, split two ways, that's at least beer money 8-) - not counting the dozens of customers we got in the beginning - somewhat of a Poisson distribution, that, with the effort being expended being proportional to the area under annual 'chunks' of the asymptotic tail of the curve... FYI, this is not my 'day' job - there isn't enough area under the curve of this niche to make much further investment of our time in this area worthwhile.
At some point, I should port the code to some platform with a better future (it is currently Borland C++, Win16/OWL based - runs on a 386 w/4MB ram, fits on a 3.5" floppy
And NO, I won't post a URL to our website... the subsequent
OK, I ramble... the original poster wanted to know about zoning - wasn't an issue for us, as this was a 'home' business - the restrictions were (paraphrasing) a) no employees, beyond residents, b) no physical manifestations of the business visible in the neighborhood (signs, etc.), and c) a certain limitation on the number square feet of our home dedicated to the business.
Note that said zoning is very much dependent upon your local area (country, state, county, municipality, what-have-you-ity) - YMMV.
And, I can't stress the amount of stress putting your livlihood on the line in your home can have on your family life. While this wasn't the major reason my wife and I were divorced, it was certainly a contributing factor - be warned. (Though we still are good friends - probably get along better now than before 8-).
Good luck!
OldFart 8-)
Remember the origins of RedHat Linux
That would be disgusting. I mean that aussie didn't even seem to shower regularly.
However, office space is cheaper in my area (Oklahoma City/Norman, Oklahoma) and there are problems with people renting business space for living (like in downtown, etc).
Your questions are real, and improtant, but you are obviously not at the point where you need to ask them yet.
First you need a buisness plan. Odds are you local library carries a few books on writing one. Get them and read them. And remember the buisness plan is for YOU before the bankers, so don't fill in some forms, do real work to make sure that it is reasonable.
Part of the plan is deciding what you will do, and proving to yourself it will sell. You might be able to make a better Quicken, but odds are you can't sell it because Quicken is good enough and has the name. You might be able to sell a almost as good Quicken, that has all the numbers for you local tax code that Quicken doesn't have. (IF indeed this is an issue to local, something your buisness plan research will reveal). Or you could write a game, which if it is good will make your a ton of money, if not you still have options, and you should know what they are. (Bundel it with every dell for some amount of money for example)
What is your sales plan? I'm a good programer, but I havn't started my buisness yet because I don't do sales well. You will have to, and if you are not convinced that you can sell this, why invest money in it? Mind you, there is no need to sell it yourself, hiring someone else to sell your products is just fine, IF you can find a salesmen who will sell it right. The world won't beat a path to your door just because you have a perfect mouse trap.
Who are your customers? Are there enough that they can afford to pay your?
There it is, I knew, I could hear a voice squeaking away in the back of my head "6 bit bytes, 6 bit bytes" and I couldn't remember why.
And you have to go and remind me. I thought I had successfully repressed all memory of the cybers even if I couldn't quite forget the gi-normous cobol programs.
And the damn byte size actually mattered then...
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
I used to get that kind of answer...
I mostly solved it by joining a toastmasters club. Ironically the interviewer that recommended that to me, ended up joining about 3 years after I did, and I thought he recommended it because he'd been in it...
There is always a way of saying what you have to say in a way that is absorbable by your audience.
Example: Nobody likes to hear "you did that wrong" but most people are interested in how they might do something better so they will usually absorb "I think there is room for improvement here, and you might like to try blah".
Often now, when asked a technical question that might have a superficially simple answer, I answer "the simple or usual answer is blah", and then I ask "Do you want more technical detail on the possible variations?" Mostly they don't.
The other possibility is you might have a mild case of aspergers (nearly autism), where things that are important to most people like who is having a good day, what their family is up to, what clothes to wear, and which famous person is dating whom, etc is completely unimportant to you.
And then you have to learn modified communication systems to talk to these people. Unfortunately, you'll frequently find them in management. ie your boss.
It isn't really unreasonable, after all you wouldn't expect a computer that speaks netbeui to understand one that speaks tcp/ip?
Which reminds me I can't get my win98 machines to see each other. curses. I'm trying IPX/SPX next. Eventually if I ever figure out how to make gnome2 work I might be able to give up win98..
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
Hmm, if I'd spent a bit longer thinking what I wrote through, it probably wouldn't sound that way. And you seem to have eliminated the aspergers for you. I'm afraid I score close to 30 +/- 2 on that test, and it explains a lot about why people misunderstand what I'm trying to say. But the test alone is not a diagnosis. It's more like a measure of how far apart I am from what many people think is important. That by itself is not "Autism".
/. and go to bed so tomorrow I won't procrastinate so much.
Eg I'm not suggesting you are broken in the least. I am perhaps suggesting that the people who say your communicaiton skills are lacking may be broken, and that you can probably if you want to perhaps...use that to your advantage by communicating with them on their level.
I suspect however, it is one way of weeding out bosses you don't need. Like working for someone who doesn't understand you and wants you to tell them what they want to hear, not what they ask for, would be very irritating. Well I'd find it very irritating. I do find it irritating. In fact, I've rarely had a boss that had a clue what I did. This is not a problem with some bosses, who don't mind that they don't understand so long as my clients are happy. Its a bit hard getting references from them. About all they can say is that I keep the clients happy... Unfortunatley there are some bosses who want details but cannot cope with them.
On the coms side of things, too. I find it interesting that in most forums where people are talking about improvement, they want themselves or their kids to be "smarter". I've found being very smart (eg good at maths, puzzles, english lit or whatever) is not conducive to making friends, being popular or earning lots of money. The smartest guy I know is working at a uni in the philosophy department. He isn't the CEO of GE, doesn't want to be, and never will be.
Still haven't tried the IPX thing for the windows machines. And I know what you mean about forcing the frame types. I used to work with an application that required it. And I had to teach the network admins how to set it on the win95 machines and make them give me admin access to do it for the Win2K machines. These pesky things ought to be able to see each other with tcp/ip. I never had a hard time making peer to peer windows work before. Strangely both computers have no trouble working over the internet. Which means they are happily talking through the Freebsd gateway - which I can use if I really have to mount the hard disks so I can copy stuff across. sigh. There must be a better way.
And what I'd really like to do is stop messing around on
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.
If you go to your local city center (sometimes where utilities are paid), you can ask them. The last time I registered a home-based programming company, I simply told them I would have no walk-in traffic as a result of the business, due to all business being conducted over the internet. They were fine with that. Zoning restrictions are almost always based around the amount of traffic that will be generated (walk-in and drive-up) by said business.
As a side note, the part that confused me when I was registering was that I had to check which counties I would be conducting business in. Upon questioning the receptionists, I found that I was supposed to list all counties that would see my advertisements. That is not realistic for internet-based businesses. They told me just to mark the ones where I might physically meet with clients.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
I should a figured... I turned of the nortons personal firewall on the new one, and pop, both PCs present and correct in the network neighbourhood... without ipx but with netbeui (which maybe I don't need anymore)...
-- it must be true, it's on the internet.