Thu, 15 Mar 2012

The first business steps any serious entrepreneur should take are the following:

1.    Establish a plan with milestones – this is the first indicator that you are ready to get going and that you have something to really sink your teeth into.
2.    Incorporate the company – to protect you and open up a larger range of tax credits, grants, loans, and equity funding possibilities. This is not expensive or complicated.
3.    Track your time – to claim tax credits, but also see where time is being spent. Again relatively simple and easy to do.
4.    Protect your IP – use confidentiality agreements and/or patents to protect your intellectual property, where appropriate. This step is trickier and could vary considerably depending on the project.

These are the four key steps to get started. Following these steps, the remaining legal agreements and accounting bookkeeping should aspects should be put in place to make things easier over the long term.