Legal & Incorporation Checklist

• Limited company in the UK, LLC or C-corp in the US, depending on your fundraising path
• Register IP in the business, not your personal name
• Split equity with a written founders' agreement
• Set up vesting from day one — even if it's just you
• Your future investors will not fund a mess, and cleaning one up costs 10x what preventing it did

Pick the structure for where you're going in three years, not where you are today.

• NDAs only where real confidentiality matters — otherwise they slow relationships down
• Templates from reputable legal SaaS are fine for Stage 0; splash on a lawyer for anything with equity or ongoing liability

Every contractor signs an IP-assignment agreement before they open a file. Every customer signs terms of service before they pay. Every co-founder signs a shareholders' agreement before you open a bank account.

• Data protection (GDPR, CCPA) applies from your first signup — not from your first 1,000 users
• VAT/tax registration depends on turnover, but you want to know your threshold and approach before you hit it, not after
• Insurance: professional indemnity and public liability are cheap enough to have from day one
• Ignoring any of these creates a tax or legal liability that compounds invisibly

The rule: boring compliance, built in early, buys you the right to sleep.