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Should I get a lawyer to incorporate a startup that will seek military/gov't contracts?

Hi All, I need a referral to a small business attorney for incorporation. Please let me know if: 1) You know one 2) You know someone who would know one (I'm happy to chase people down) Thanks. Corporate structure: TBD. May take investment, may not depending on if we win contracts soon enough. C, S, LLC Location: TBD. Delaware, California (San Diego), Washington DC, Washington State (Seattle)... Team: #1: Former Navy SEAL. Harvard MBA, US Naval Academy. Experience in startup biz ops, software/services biz ops, I-Banking (Trading). www.linkedin.com/in/patlarsen1 #2: Former helo pilot, UChicago MBA, US Air Force Academy. Experience in I-banking (M&A), software biz dev. www.linkedin.com/in/andrewsridhar #3: CTO. Salesforce, Bing, Amazon…

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Raad Ahmed, Founder at LawTrades. 500 Startups. Product guy answered:

Hi there,

Congrats on the new venture! Seems like you're making some awesome progress already.

If you're looking to incorporate a startup, feel free to check out a company I started called LawTrades (http://www.lawtrades.com) -- in short, we help startups get legal stuff done.

We work specifically with startups and connect them to experienced startup attorneys who are available on demand and usually 60% cheaper than a traditional law firm.

Aside from the incorporation, you can find help on contract negotiation, making your business structure "investor friendly", securing IP, executing a convertible note and more.

Always free to connect with an attorney to get a feel for him/her.

Hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions.

Joseph Peterson, Names, Domains, Sentences and Strategies answered:

Review a list of military contracts that have been awarded recently to smaller players. How many of them were not incorporated?

I don't pretend to know the answer. But as an ex-submarine officer myself, I know how much uniformity and checked check boxes matter within military culture. Any application ought to scrupulously match the pattern of previously accepted applications.

So if you don't find any unincorporated startups being awarded mission-critical military contracts, then you wouldn't want to be the 1 applicant to stand out. If, on the other hand, you do find unincorporated startups receiving contracts in similarly important areas, then perhaps incorporating matters less than I think it might.

My gut feeling is that incorporating shows stability and seriousness. Those are things the military definitely pays attention to, since it wants all its systems to be very robust. Being contemporarily cutting edge is far less important than being durable.

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