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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   13194 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 13, 2026

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My $0.05 of Not Legal Advice because I Am Not Your Lawyer, agreed a 501(c)(3) would be a Bad Thing for TheMotte's mission. A sole proprietorship, i.e., functionally what you have now, would also be a Bad Thing if there is expansion because (God forbid) someone decide that they want to sue, well the sole proprietor of a sole proprietorship has no "corporate veil." That is to say there is no shield between the business (TheMotte) and the sole proprietor (you). Your personal assets are liable to forfeiture for restitution. Bankruptcy becomes common in sole proprietorships that have litigation become prohibitively expensive (a good bet) because there is no corporate veil.

So what might be a good fit would be a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). An LLC is not required to have a Board, it can in fact have whatever ownership and leadership structure (subject to some restrictions) you so choose. It can have a board, or it can be a Single Member LLC (exactly what it sounds like), a Multi-Member LLC (also exactly what it sounds like), a Closely Held LLC (multi-member but small and increased rights of all members to prevent transfer of ownership shares), or a multitude of other options.

Even forming an LLC is not a guarantee of course, courts can "pierce the corporate veil" in the parlance, meaning they can decide that the actions of the corporation's ownership/leadership are so egregious that they can be held liable as individuals, but a competent attorney should be able to provide a list of what not to do to avoid this. If the Dictatorship decides that increasing scale is a good idea, then I would strongly recommend consulting with an attorney specializing in small business regulations to determine the best path forward.

I admittedly hadn't consciously thought of doing an LLC, but you're right, good idea before scaling up.

I've actually got two companies (one LLC-as-S-corp and one C-corp) and am about to start a third anyway, this is ground I am reasonably familiar with so the actual doing-of-it isn't a big deal, and thanks for the reminder that I should do that :)

Once an attorney is involved, the economics of a small venture turn infeasible very quickly.

This is true, but it's also reasonable to add it on a list of checklist things to do when the small venture is threatening to no longer be small.

I think if I had to set up a schedule:

  • Do the reimplementation
  • Deploy it
  • Add one or two experimental subcommunities
  • If these simply don't work even for the existing audience despite picking the best possible options, okay, this didn't work, can it, otherwise . . .
  • . . . LLC time
  • Add some more carefully-chosen subcommunities
  • See if we can start growing
  • If we can't figure out how to grow, okay, this didn't work, can it, otherwise . . .
  • . . . time to talk to an attorney
  • Keep growing

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