Let’s say you just started a new business—congratulations! When you contribute to your new business at the outset, as well as when you contribute again at a later point, that capital contribution and those of the other owners need to be tracked somehow. Enter the Capital Account. A Capital Account is a general ledger used … Read more
Who has time to read those pesky terms and conditions anyway? As it turns out…they are worth paying attention to, particularly if you are in a position to be writing them or using them on a website. If you are a new business owner starting up a website, terms and conditions should matter to you. … Read more
Welcome back to our discussion on 501(c)(3)’s, inurement, and excess benefit transactions! If you missed the last post that provided an overview of the rules related to this topic, you can find the link to the previous post here. Now that the overview is out of the way, here are some ideas on how to … Read more
I’ve gotten this question in various forms from about 10 clients in the last month – so, as it is at OGS, we write a blog post about it. This is the way. If you’re raising money from outside investors at your company, there are tons of things to think about, so please do not … Read more
It is the end of the year, which means many of you are setting goals for 2022. Good for you! But it is also the time to make sure that your internal realities align with those goals. Goal setting is fabulous. Creating new action steps is fun and while reviewing what you have may not … Read more
I am a self-professed #TrademarkNerd. I think they are interesting beasts. They combine business, law, social science, and, of course, shopping. When a lot of people think about trademarks, they think about what the company owns and does with it. That’s fair. Companies spend a lot of time, money, and effort on their trademarks. But … Read more
At the beginning of the year, I gave myself a personal challenge of wearing the same dress for 100 days. Yup, one single dress. I pared down my closet and found reasons to wear cute tights and leggings even if I was just sitting at my desk at home. During that time, I explored ideas … Read more
I called the customer service line for my utility provider the other day and had a moment of confusion when I was addressed as “Samuel J. Kavalier.” The name I heard was not “Sam,” the name by which friends and family have known me for as long as I can remember, and the name I … Read more
On July 1st, the threshold requirements ramped up for Illinois schools and the software vendors that provide them services under the Illinois Student Online Personal Privacy Act (SOPPA). Most of the new requirements fall within the purview of the schools, such as maintaining a publicly available list of all software vendors providing software to … Read more
Time flies when you’re having fun. In November & December 2018, I wrote a series of posts about ownership dilution in the context of startup fundraising – it seems like it was yesterday – but apparently it was more than two years ago! If you’re interested in checking out those posts, they’re available here and … Read more