Okay, I want to write about this as frequently as possible to encourage myself to maintain momentum, so I'm gonna try and start outlining the steps of what I've been doing so far.
The first thing I did in pursuit of creating the LLC was getting an email set up with an @dolithiel.com domain name, technically this was taken care of well in advance of the LLC's creation, but that's why it's the first thing I did, isn't it?
The process was pretty simple assuming you have some basic DNS knowledge, as well as iCloud, and AWS accounts. For those of you without the requisite technical knowledge, Domain Name System (DNS) is a tool used globally to resolve domain names like blog.dolithiel.com to IP addresses that your computer can reach via the internet. You can think of DNS as akin to a phone book or your contacts app, you look up the name you desire and get a number that can be used to reach the desired person or service. In this case the MX records you establish on your DNS server allow for any user searching for an @yourdomain.com address to determine that iCloud is the correct place to forward emails to if they want to reach their desired contact.
To get an email set up for your company the way I currently have there are two (simplified) steps to follow.
1. Register a domain on R53 or another DNS registry, see here for instructions
2. Set up DNS records to forward to iCloud email servers, see here for instructions
After this setup I had an email with the @dolithiel.com domain that I wasn't really using for a few months, but eventually after some talking with people whose advice I take very seriously I decided to start an LLC to experiment with what it's like to have a company.
Registering the LLC was a bit more complicated and I imagine it varies a bit state by state, it's also probably much more common knowledge, but I'd like to outline what I did for you anyways.
The process of manually filing the LLC formation with the state seemed like it would be fairly slow, and my dad had previously mentioned using Rocket Lawyer in the past. I compared the pricing there with a few other options and with the new user discount they give it was about $80 cheaper than the next option after the registered agent fee. I followed the process they presented to me for about 30 minutes and filled out some basic questions about the intended industry, my role, how many owners there would be, etc. Since I'm the only person involved with the LLC and there's only one role to be mentioned the questions were pretty easy to get through. I put down "Technology product development, services, and research" or something to that effect for the industry. I wanted to give myself wiggle room to play around with different ideas for what the company could be as outlined in my previous posts, and I figured that was the best way to give myself that space.
Basic requirements for an LLC are that you have it registered with the state, have a person and industry for it, and have a non PO box address in the state where you're filing for it to be created. You can use a service called a "Registered Agent" for official mail forwarding and to have a non PO box address available in the state you want to file in. I used the registered agent service that Rocket Lawyer provides so that I wouldn't have to have my address as the official one for legal documents sent to the company.
I paid $125 for the registered agent fee, $100 for the LLC filing with the state, and $50 for Rocket Lawyer's fee on top. Overall, $275 for the business creation and $13 for the domain name, these were really simple to accomplish and could easily be done in a single night if needed.
So that's where I was at as of late December, it took about 2 weeks for the business registration to complete and I received an email at my @dolithiel.com address to inform me that it was an official entity. I've been taking things slow for the last few months, I'm currently pretty busy with my real job, school, and a lot of side projects, but I've recently made a fair bit of progress on some activities with the LLC that I'll try and cover that here soon.
For anyone reading this, is there anything I'm doing wrong or anything you'd suggest I do differently? Please let me know below or at dylan.brothers@dolithiel.com with any comments.
Thanks for reading!
- Dylan