Creating a Startup

Questions

1. You have all founded companies surrounding web development, and I have watched you become successful over the years. Can you think back to the moment you made this decision and why?
2. What is it like leaving a good paying corporate job and going out on your own?
3. What Challenges did you face?
4. If you have a partner what was it like negotiating a business that you created?
5. How do you make everyone happy when you start that partnership?
6. Did you need to establish a percentage between your partners, how did you determine this so it was fair?
7. How did you structure your company? C Corp, S Corp, LLC
8. Did you use A lawyer or Online (Stripe, Legal Zoom, incfile)
9. What state did you incorporate in?
10. Business Tools your using
11. Pre-sales documents, like Statement of Work. (PandaDoc)
12. Accounting (Deskera, Quickbooks, FreshBooks)
13. CRM (Deskera)
14. Have you ever sold your startup?
15. If you have, was that challenging emotionally?
16. Would you ever consider selling your current company?
17. You each seem to have both a product and services, can you talk about how you calculate the pricing within each?
18. To get more business and revenue flowing do you find yourself adding 1099 employees at times to cover a sale?
19. Do you have people doing the selling, or do you find that people are often reaching out to you for your services?
20. Are you still programming?
21. Do you do your own podcast editing?
22. Do you produce your own videos?

Video Chapters & Timestamps

Jump directly to any segment of Creating a Startup on YouTube using the timestamped chapters below:

• 00:00: Introductions
• 00:00: Aaron Frost
• 00:00: Ali Spittel
• 00:00: Kelly Vaughn
• 00:00: Tyler McGinnis
• 00:00: How do you decide when it’s time to make the jump to freelancing?
• 00:00: Tyler - How UI.dev started
• 00:00: Ali - Full time job with a side business
• 00:00: Frosty - Dealing with partners
• 00:00: Contracting
• 00:00: How to decide the type of business. (LLC, S Corp, C Corp)
• 00:00: Do you need a lawyer before incorporating?
• 00:00: Where do you find clients?
• 00:00: Learn to brag
• 00:00: Vet your clients
• 00:00: NDA’s
• 00:00: Services and contracts
• 00:00: Customer Service
• 00:00: BlackCat LMS
• 00:00: Accounting Software and “business stacks”

Resources, Links & Official Documentation

• Watch on YouTube: Creating a Startup Full Video (plus Subscribe to CodingCat.dev)
• :02:55 - Ladybug Podcast: https://www.ladybug.dev/
• :04:45 - Atomic Habits: https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299
• :05:22 - Financial Intelligence: https://www.amazon.com/Financial-Intelligence-Managers-Knowing-Numbers/dp/1591397642
• :06:05 - Start Freelancing Today: https://startfreelancing.today/
• :06:55 - Shopify Blog: https://www.shopify.com/blog/how-to-start-a-business
• :07:34 - Stripe Atlas: https://stripe.com/atlas
• :08:28 - Incfile: https://www.incfile.com
• Show Pick: Stripe Atlas (picked by Alex Patterson)
• Show Pick: IncFile (picked by Alex Patterson)
• Show Pick: Start Freelancing Today by Kelly Vaughn (picked by Brittney Postma)
• Show Pick: Shopify Blog, How to start a business (picked by Brittney Postma)
• Show Pick: Favorite TikToker (picked by Aaron Frost)
• Show Pick: Ladybug Podcast (picked by Ali Spittel)
• Show Pick: Atomic Habits (picked by Kelly Vaughn)
• Show Pick: Financial Intelligence (picked by Tyler McGinnis)
• Aaron Frost Guest Profile & Episodes on CodingCat.dev
• Aaron Frost on GitHub
• Ali Spittel Guest Profile & Episodes on CodingCat.dev
• Ali Spittel on GitHub
• Kelly Vaughn Guest Profile & Episodes on CodingCat.dev
• Kelly Vaughn on GitHub
• Tyler McGinnis Guest Profile & Episodes on CodingCat.dev
• Tyler McGinnis on GitHub
• Stripe Developer Documentation: Payment intents, webhooks, subscriptions, and billing architecture
• MDN JavaScript Reference: ECMAScript specifications, Web APIs, and runtime fundamentals
• Google AI for Developers Documentation: Multimodal models, structured outputs, tool calling, and agentic workflows

Related CodingCat.dev Tutorials & Podcast Episodes

• Creating Great Ecommerce with Jamstack: We sit down with Flor Antara and James Vidler to talk all about Ecommerce and the solutions for Jamstack.
• Build a Custom No-Code App in 90 Minutes: Curious about no-code app building? Dive in as we explore Adalo vs Bubble, micro SaaS ideas, and real talk on launching products without code. Drop your thought...
• Firestore for Unity and C++: We talk with Patrick Martin from Firebase all about game development and how Firebase's Firestore is now available in Beta.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What are the main takeaways from Creating a Startup?

Creating a Startup is hard! Learn from the experts who have created great startup companies. Everything from an LLC to Stripe's new C-Corp tool Atlas. 1.10 - Creating a Startup: https://codingcat.dev/podcast/1-10-creating-a-startup 1:08 - Introductions
1:13 - Aaron Frost
1:56 - Ali Spittel
2:48 - Kelly Vaughn
3:56 - Tyler McGinnis
6:50 - How do you decide when it’s time to make the jump to freelancing?
10:50 - Tyler - How UI.dev started
12:30 - Ali - Full time job with a s Throughout this podcast, Aaron Frost and Ali Spittel and Kelly Vaughn and Tyler McGinnis breaks down real-world implementation details for Stripe, JavaScript, AI so developers can apply these patterns directly in production.

How do you implement Stripe best practices in production?

When adopting Stripe and JavaScript in a production stack, start by validating your configuration against the Stripe Developer Documentation (Payment intents, webhooks, subscriptions, and billing architecture). Focus on incremental adoption, automated testing, and observability so your team can measure performance and developer velocity improvements at each stage.

Where can I watch the full Creating a Startup walkthrough and find related code resources?

You can watch the complete video session for Creating a Startup on the CodingCat.dev YouTube channel. For a deeper dive into Stripe, check out our related guide: Creating Great Ecommerce with Jamstack.