zoombapup
11th August 2009, 10:17
Hi all,
I'm in a bit of a pickle and this looks like a promising place.
I'm just getting rolling a startup videogame development studio. I've been doing the development part for many years, but its been more than twenty years since I last ran a business.
Anyway, for the most part my staff and I will work from home. Our products will be sold via digital distributors. In fact almost all of the business of running the business will be electronically based.
Now here's my problem. To actually form a company I need a business address. To order goods from Sony I need a business address. But I really dont NEED a business address because of a couple of reasons:
1) Everything is virtual. We all work from home, we all develop from a shared system which is based in the USA, essentially everything is done via the internet.
2) Our products take upwards of a year to develop. Which means for the first year of trading we are essentially doing nothing with an office other than accepting mail every now and then when we make purchases.
3) Once we are actually selling our products, we simply dont need a physical location to do anything either way. Although I much prefer working with a team in a physical location, I dont plan that for the first 2-3 years of trading.
So, I'm looking for alternatives. Ones that will allow me to form a company legally, but not require huge sums of money for services I simply dont need. Most office spaces are too expensive for no benefit to my business. Virtual offices from what I understand are not acceptable to companies house?
Ideally, I'd like to do some kind of trade-in-kind deal with a local company that already has offices. By that I mean that we could develop some software for them (I'm pretty much experienced in all fields of software development, but the more entertainment oriented the better). I.e. a flash game to promote the partner, a bit of web-dev stuff to make thier site better.
Anyway, as you can see, I'm open to anything really. Just thought I'd ask if anyone had any ideas.
Thanks,
Phil.
I'm in a bit of a pickle and this looks like a promising place.
I'm just getting rolling a startup videogame development studio. I've been doing the development part for many years, but its been more than twenty years since I last ran a business.
Anyway, for the most part my staff and I will work from home. Our products will be sold via digital distributors. In fact almost all of the business of running the business will be electronically based.
Now here's my problem. To actually form a company I need a business address. To order goods from Sony I need a business address. But I really dont NEED a business address because of a couple of reasons:
1) Everything is virtual. We all work from home, we all develop from a shared system which is based in the USA, essentially everything is done via the internet.
2) Our products take upwards of a year to develop. Which means for the first year of trading we are essentially doing nothing with an office other than accepting mail every now and then when we make purchases.
3) Once we are actually selling our products, we simply dont need a physical location to do anything either way. Although I much prefer working with a team in a physical location, I dont plan that for the first 2-3 years of trading.
So, I'm looking for alternatives. Ones that will allow me to form a company legally, but not require huge sums of money for services I simply dont need. Most office spaces are too expensive for no benefit to my business. Virtual offices from what I understand are not acceptable to companies house?
Ideally, I'd like to do some kind of trade-in-kind deal with a local company that already has offices. By that I mean that we could develop some software for them (I'm pretty much experienced in all fields of software development, but the more entertainment oriented the better). I.e. a flash game to promote the partner, a bit of web-dev stuff to make thier site better.
Anyway, as you can see, I'm open to anything really. Just thought I'd ask if anyone had any ideas.
Thanks,
Phil.