According to the World Bank, the average number of days required to set up a business is just 19-20 days. This is the world average but in some countries like the USA, UK, and New Zealand, you can set up your business in under 5 days. For the UK, it’s around 5 days, in the USA it’s 4 days but for New Zealand, it’s just 1 day. This has got me thinking, what would be the things that are done in those days that bring a business to life? Here are some of the tasks you would need to do.
Select an address
Whether you are a small business that is operating from a shared office, or a micro business operating from your own home, you must have an address. It’s also why so many virtual business companies are choosing to go with virtual addresses whereby they have a PO Box and somewhere their real-world mail can be sent. Every business needs to have some kind of address. This is so the regulators and the government has somewhere to go and contact you. You cannot be a solely virtual company without an owner or address. Your business address doesn’t have to be made public (unless you are a ltd co), but you will need to disclose to industry standards entities, the government, and investors.
Select the size
The next thing on the list is to choose the size. It’s important to understand the size groups in your own country but typically, they are the same in most European countries. About 1-10 is a micro-business. About 10-50 is a small business. A medium-sized business is 50-250 employees. Anything over 250 employees is deemed a large business. If you have multiple locations around the world, you are deemed a multinational business and your taxes will be a little more complex. Why is size important? For that very reason, taxes. If you are a large business you will be in a different tax bracket than a micro business.
Get registered
The next thing you need to do is work on registering a company. This brand does it all for you. They register your brand name, operating name, your VAT and GDPR. They also register what type of business you are in terms of size. This is crucial for your tax regime and regulations. Some laws that apply to large businesses won’t apply to small businesses. Another thing is, if you are a financial company, there will be various standards applied to you such as the corporate governance code, Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II and Basel III, etc. However, if you are a manufacturing business, standards such as ISO 9001 will apply to you.
If you can do these things before you decide to get registered, your business may be up and running in as little as 5 working days. For some people, that is as fast as they need their company to go into business to seize on an opportunity.
Good Luck!
For more business advice have a look at some of my recent blogs here.
This is a collaborative post
