Write down what your company should become before you sign anything

Turning a business into a limited company is mostly paperwork.

Except for one page. That one's the hard part.

In November I wrote to our advisory firm. We wanted Foxnice to operate as an SL, a limited company, from 1 January 2024.

They explained the steps. A share capital of 3,000 €. A list of everything the company would do, now or in the future. And a name. Or rather five, in order of preference, in case the first ones were taken.

Five names for a company that already had one. It felt like being asked to christen your own child again.

But it got me thinking. A new legal company is a chance to decide what it is, not just copy what it was.

"Websites" was the easy answer

Then came the question every company has to answer at birth. What does it do? The corporate purpose.

The easy answer was "websites". It's what most people think we do.

But that's not all we do anymore. And it's definitely not all we want to do.

So I sat down and wrote Yeray a list. I called it "Things we do or want to do, Foxnice S.L."

Websites, built to measure and optimised for mobile. Custom web applications, with their own backend and APIs. E-commerce and payment gateways. Maintenance, support, performance and security. SEO and analytics. Consulting and digital strategy. Selling digital and physical products.

Part of that list was our present. Part of it was a bet on our future.

Nine days later I sent Yeray a shorter version. One line had grown: selling and renting digital and physical products.

Two words. A whole idea of where we might go.

Who you're allowed to become

Confession: this kind of thinking is very easy to put off.

There's always something more urgent. Clients, servers, tickets. Deciding what the company should become can feel like a luxury for people with free afternoons.

And writing "web applications" next to "websites" can feel a bit like pretending. PagoCRM was real, but young. Is it honest to put something like that in the foundations of a company?

I think that's exactly what the list is for. You don't just write down who you are. You write down who you're allowed to become.

A company becomes what you write down before you're too busy to decide.

If I had to do it again, I'd do the same thing in the same order. Everything we do today, including the small services nobody sees on the website. Everything we want to do, including the things we've only ever talked about, because if it's not on the list you'll have to come back for it. And then share it with your partner before anyone else. If you don't agree on the list, you don't agree on the company.

The names and the capital matter less than they seem. The names, choose ones you'd still like in ten years. The capital, keep it honest for the business you actually have.

No investor will ever ask us for a vision document. Nobody forces us to plan.

That's the freedom of a bootstrapped company. It's also the risk. If we don't decide where we're going, the next urgent client will decide for us.

This list is how we choose, on purpose, what the services should be paying for.

The legal form is just a form.

The list is what we'll actually become.

P.S. Coming up with five names for a company that already had one is harder than it sounds. Writing the list was harder still.