About halfway there….

• “L” is for lawyers. You know when you go in to get your car fixed and you have no basis to judge good vs. bad work, fair pricing vs. getting ripped off? The best way to avoid that feeling when dealing with legal representation is to ask your friends for a recommendation. Then, if you feel you are being screwed, then your friend was probably taken too. I think you should find a lawyer you are comfortable with and expect that they’ll get your incorporation / by-laws done right. Assuming this is your first venture, you probably won’t have too complex of a situation. If you seem like a good risk, the legal firm may defer fees until the first financing…and, on closing the round, you’ll have to pay your fees and the VC’s legal fees. Needless to say, those will be hefty bills. Some people choose firms on their reputation with the venture community. Your law firm can definitely make introductions with prospective investors, but I believe that you can’t pick a firm based on this. Chances are that the “named” partner isn’t going to be calling up all their venture friends for you unless the deal is sizzling hot (at which point, many firms are calling you). Expect that your firm will make some introductions based on a suggested list that you and your lawyers work on…and that you need to utilize your network to find additional interested parties.
• “M” is for microsoft office and meebo. At least the PC people at Coupa all run Office. While I’ve tried out some other packages including open source ones in the past, they still don’t compete with Office. Sure, they make take up more space/resources, but it’s worth it. IM is a necessity, expecially when we didn’t have office space. Meebo is a handy cross-protocol website for IM.
• “N” is for Nintendo Wii. The startup months are going to be a ridiculous amount of work. You need some outlets for your health, the team’s health and group camaraderie. For the Coupa team, we have Movie Mondays (about once every 6 weeks) and a Nintendo Wii. While I don’t get out on the real course often anymore, I did make the cut at the Riviera Open at 10pm on Saturday.
• “O” is for Office. Find a good office space through your network. Some use Craigslist, but I find that deals aren’t great there. Maybe one of your buddies has sublet room in their startup or some other special situation. For us, i wanted something that wasn’t expensive (i’d prefer to pay our employees better than our landlord) and didn’t want to be tied into a long lease.
• “P” is for Payroll. Sooner or later, you’ve got to start payroll. Before you get started, you’ll need an EIN # which is your federal employer number and you’ll need to apply for a state one. There are different levels of services the major guys (ADP, Paychex) provide. Another option was Bank of America’s Business Services Group, which white labels a payroll service from Paycycle. You get a hefty discount if you go with BofA, but it doesn’t allow you to do direct deposit outside of BofA accounts. So, we ended up with going direct to Paycycle. Their Plus service runs you about $43/month for 5 employees, with big discounts for first 3 months. Good stuff and it is pretty easy to export stuff from Paycycle and import it into Quickbooks.