Is there an advantage to fund your company with a personal loan vs equity?

NIcole is right. When I first started my business I thought I was saving money by doing my own bookkeeping. It took me much longer than it would take a bookkeeper - all time that I was not spending on marketing or billable activities. And in the end I made errors which made the initial work of the bookkeeper longer. I now have a consistent routine. My bookkeeper picks up all my material monthly and does my books in less than 2 hours. Very worthwhile.

If your looking for financing and not wanting to give up equity you could try to get venture debt. Check out Hercules http://www.htgc.com/ and their competitors these companies can provide big loans. Be ready to provide a lot of info on your company and your financial health. Be aware these companies exist to make money so make sure you end up with payments you can handle. You'll also have loan covenants which will outline certain financial performance metric you'll need to hit. If you miss covenants your loan terms will change for the worse and it can even end up with bank taking control of your company. Obviously a worst case scenario, but you need to be aware and make sure you are very comfortable with the covenants you agree to. - mike

There are a lot of moving parts to this question. First, you need to determine in which states you have "nexus" and then determine do those states require you to charge sales tax, as each state has different rules. As an example, MA requires salesforce.com to charge sales tax to MA customers but does not require newyorktimes.com to charge sales tax. The difference is that users can manipulate data on salesforce.com vs. neworktimes.com is read only. This example can only be applied to MA, Arizona, Illinois, New York, Texas, Pennsylvania and Washington State (as of now). There are also "click-through" and "affiliate" nexus rules that need to be considered. Be careful, as state and local taxation has become a very hot due diligence issue in M&A transactions. So, if you plan to sell your business in the next few years, you want to get this right. Also, the Officers and Directors are personally responsible for uncollected Sales tax. You are best to get an expert to review your sales tax compliance, as it is a very specialized area and changing constantly. I am not an expert, but know of some firms that offer this service at a very reasonable rate. Feel free to call me. Thank you, Joe Faris Accountalent Management Corp. 45 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel (978) 621-0759 Fax (978) 278-1517 Website: www.accountalent.com LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/farisjoe/ Twitter: @accountalent

Delaware C-Corp I usually Delaware is the best choice for any startup looking for fundraising with a US focus. However, if you are a remote and global team, an overseas or foreign corporation or US tax purposes might make sense. You'd have to talk to an advisor who can dive into your situation, but it would be more difficult for the US owner come tax time, as he'd likely have to file form 5471 to the IRS for any controlled foreign corporation, and form 90-22.1 for any foreign bank accounts. There are a lot of other concerns I didn't hear you raise that entrepreneurs usually have and ask me about, namely banking and merchant accounts/ payment processors. In terms of accepting online payments, any US corporation or LLC is far and away the best option for a company. It's difficult to suggest without knowing more about the company but you might explore Delaware, Wyoming, Hong Kong and other offshore jurisdictions for your legal entity. Each tend to have positives and negatives and there is no one size fits all solution. I do write about issues of incorporation quite regularly on my website FlagTheory.com - so you can read those articles for free, or we can schedule a call - Clarity.fm/incorporation when you have specific questions. Thank you and hope this was helpful!

Assuming this is a search campaign, you should be able to see if any new competitors are regularly showing for your keywords. I would also investigate if CPCs have changed (or just conversion rate), how your impression share has changed, and how your average position has changed. If their campaigns are profitable, they will probably continue to run them. Your best bet in the meantime is to optimize your CPC, CTR (helps with CPCs), and conversion rate. You have the history and experience, which should be to your advantage against a new competitor.