Form your company

By the end of this chapter you will have a company: registered, with a name, a country and a bank account. That is what the chapter is for, and in this candidate it is not written yet. The steps to a limited company in the UK, the case for Lithuania, what Portugal costs and what the European Union offers a founder are each a memo of mine that the newsroom has not recorded, and the rule of this book is that a chapter is written from material that exists. So this is the honest version: what the chapter will cover, the little the sources already say, and the decisions you can make before the steps arrive.

What is known

Three things, and I will not stretch them.

The company I created in Portugal for MyFeeds is being closed, because running a company with little revenue in Portugal is expensive in a way it is not in England. That is my experience of one company, not a study of Portuguese company law, and the Portuguese chapter will have to say more than that. The Portuguese ecosystem graph at pt.newsroom.sgit.ai is where it will start.

I am looking at Lithuania for the next one, for its digital advantages. Nothing is registered. The article where I said it, Not a straight line, is careful to call it a consideration, not a decision, and so am I.

The UK is the first country the chapter will cover. The proposal that reshaped this book says we can be the champions for the UK, and maybe Portugal, and eventually other countries, and the steps to a limited company there are the first memo to record.

Everything here, when it is written, will be from experience, mine and the people I work with: not legal or tax advice, and the chapter will say so where it matters.

What to decide before you register

The registration is a form. The decisions behind it are the work, and most you can make now, from chapters you have already read.

1. What the company sells, in one sentence. Not the technology: the thing somebody receives. Your first price and your first ten customers makes you write that sentence and put a number next to it. Write it before you choose a name.
2. Where. The three countries this chapter will cover, and the EU around them, each with its cost of running a company with little revenue, which is what you will have for a while. The one fact I have is above; ask the same question of any country before you register in it.
3. What it costs when nobody is using it. A founder with no servers has nothing to run at three in the morning and nothing to pay for when nobody is using it. If you build the way Ship a serverless product in a weekend does, the company's standing costs are the company's own fees and little else. Know that number before you sign anything.
4. Which programmes you qualify for. The credits in The credits and programmes, 2026 each ask how old the company is, how it is funded and whether it has customers. The day you register starts those clocks, so read that chapter before you pick the day.
5. Who holds what. The 2018 book said to act like one of the founders of the business you work for. Now you are the founder, and the question of control is yours from the first day; Fund it, or do not is the chapter on that.