taxes, finance, merchant-servicesI think a lot of people would make good use of a service that legally owned their apps. The service would handle bank accounts and business registrations, gather the money, pay taxes and deal with the government bureaucracy, and then get a share of the profits and pass the remaining quantity to the developer through Bitcoin or something like that.
The developer would just develop things without caring about this bureaucratic realm and happily let the service get part of his profits.
Is there such a thing?
The term you’re looking for is nominee company:
Company formed by a bank or other fiduciary organization to hold and administer securities or other assets as a custodian (registered owner) on behalf of an actual owner (beneficial owner) under a custodial agreement.
You can find nominee company formation services using google (e.g. “create nominee company” or “form nominee company”). You can probably find a company that does your accounting on top. If not just hire an accountant separately.
That said, not all states allow a company to have nominee directors, and your taxman may view your operating one as a red flag. Indeed, the company structure is usually associated with tax havens and tax evasion – e.g. Panama, the Seychelles, the UK, Delaware, etc.
As such better outsource the work to a legal/accounting and call it a day if you can afford it.
I don’t think there are single services that you can outsource the entire business operations of your startup to . But you can do this using several specialized agencies. For instance a registered agent can register your business and keep up with state filings to keep it in good status. A chartered acountancy or CPA firm that can manage your books for you. They can record invoices, make payments, prepare taxes and provide financial reports. And there are companies that you can outsource sales and marketing to and they would manage sales efforts and run marketing campaigns and advertising programs for you. The advantage of all this is that you can focus on the side of the business that you enjoy.
There are several downsides to this. Outsourcing can add an recurring payments and there maybe hidden costs, you may not have much control over quality, you may not get confidentiality and security, your business may not get priority, and there may not be coherent big picture of where your business is going since there nobody is paying attention to it. As you a result, your business may not grow as fast or you may miss market opportunities.
Many small companies outsource registration services, book keeping, marketing and other back office works and they keep the services that are key to the business such as sales,support and product development in house. That way they have control over the key tasks that bring in revenue.
Another option if you do not want to worry about the business aspects if find a business development cofounder. He or she can run the business operations while you manage the development process. This kind of pairing is very common in startups.
This is an interesting question. And the other answers are good. I just have one thought to add.
Perhaps what you want to do is get some initial traction with your app to show it’s a viable product. And then see if you can find someone to buy it from you. That could be a set price and/or residual. You’d probably need to come to some separate agreement for maintenance and feature development.
I've heard there's an online service called indinero.com I've heard lots of praises about it, but haven't tried it myself yet (I did ask for an invite).
It will at least take care of accounting and taxes for you. I bet there's a way to just upload your receipts to their servers.
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