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Comment by bherms | Hacker News Reader

hopefully dev has insurance?

but anyway, this is partially why I spin up an LLC for every app i make... just declare bankruptcy and kill it

You're not wrong. An LLC and similar aren't perfect, but it gives you an enormous amount of legal bargaining power compared to not having one.

In what sense is it not perfect? As long as you don't commit actual fraud, creditors can't "pierce the corporate veil" of an LLC, can they?

What the sibling said. You also have to be sufficiently business-like in your projects, according to legal advice I got. If you slap an LLC on your obviously hobby project, they might be able to make the case that it wasn’t a legitimate business operation. That is fraud isn’t the only way to pierce the veil, I was told.

It's not technically fraudulent to use your personal bank account, per se. You need to keep great records though. But from what I understand that could be enough to consider the veil pierced. Also need to make sure you don't personally ensure any debts.

That's a really cool idea. Would you mind sharing more?

In particular, do you use something like Stripe Atlas for that? And if so, is there any impact to your account with them when you declare a bankruptcy?

Yep, while it's a few extra hundred bucks, Stripe Atlas is just super easy and you get tons of credits and stuff through the partner perks. Plus I've always enjoyed using Stripe for payments.

Apparently you can get it 50% cheaper via Microsoft Startup Hub:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/startups/blog/trusted-partne...

How do you create your LLCs?

I do a few clicks on the Secretary of State’s website, pay $99, and the certificate shows up in my email the next day.

Doing a search/replace on the operating agreement for the new entity name, filing it away somewhere, etc. typically takes more time.

I've only ever used Stripe Atlas, but there's other alternatives. Atlas gives you a bunch of free credits with their partners and is pretty quick to get through, but you might be paying a hundred or two premium over doing it all ad hoc.

Would you know if I already started a project on my personal account can I still move it to a new LLC account?

Also, assume I already have an LLC then how do I indicate this account is an LLC? Can you sign up as an organization on Firebase?

You sell it to an LLC and draft a bill of sale/invoice.

I’d only feel comfortable with a new account at Firebase explicitly in the LLC’s name, and keep my personal name/identity far away from it.

It’s not hard to get an EIN (a few clicks online and free), open a bank account (my credit union turns this around in a day or two), fund it, use debit card as billing method.

I’m not positive… I would imagine you’d need to transfer ownership. Like if I have an iOS app under my personal dev account then start an LLC and someone sues me for whatever reason, I think it would be hard to argue the LLC actually owns the app, but IANAL. You can generally sign up for most of these services as a team or business but I’m not familiar with firebase. It being Google though I’d assume they support business accounts

A pain point will be you’ll need to wait for your new LLC to get a DUNS number + apply for an Apple developer account. (Whilst you’re at it, set up Apple Business Manager too.) Realistically you will want a domain for that LLC that has email, so set that up too.

This is the way.

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