Dear ...

Understand that there is a difference between a great startup and a small business.

When it comes to putting up legal structures in your business, registration is only one out of the several other things that you ought to consider.

There are lots more (which many people ignore to their detriment)

When people come to me with requests to register their businesses with the CAC, I always ask them some preliminary questions...

One of them is...

Do you want to build a proper business with suitable systems and structures or do you just want to register so that you can operate a corporate account with your company name?

As weird or offensive as this question might be to some...

It is actually very important.

You need to know what you are doing.

The reason is that if you want to build a great business, you will have to look beyond the registration.

Setting up a Proper business goes beyond registration or product development alone.

You are most likely thinking about IP Protection, equity split, share vesting, employees, IP assignment Agreement, co-founder relationships, stock options, investments, and investors, etc.

Smart startup founders understand that these things are significant issues that must be addressed early enough...

They understand that once the company is registered, a new entity is born.

They also understand that without a proper legal structure in place, they could be shooting themselves in the leg.

When it comes to legal( and I think other important things too), prevention is cheaper than cure!

So they would rather deal with these issues at the early stage even before they embark on registrations of the company with the CAC than fighting fire later on...

When they should be all focused on growing their thing.

Of course, you can also bypass all of these and just go on straight to register or incorporate your business with the CAC...

But like I said...

The kind of legal structures and systems that you put in place in your startup is a function of whether you want to build a great business or an unstructured side hustle.

Which in itself is not bad...

But the returns and end results are usually miles apart!

Talk to us today and let us know how we can help.

To your #LegalSense

-Barinaada.