By Gina Bongiovi, on June 18th, 2013
How To Choose Your Business Address
I’m Gina Bonjovi, and I’m a lawyer who works with start-ups and small businesses. In this video series, I’m walking you through the steps on how to start a small business in Las Vegas. We already covered naming your business so if you missed that video it’s on the link below the like button. Now we’re going to talk about how to choose your business address.
This seems like a silly issue, but it can actually have some ramifications.
You want to keep in mind the business address you register with the secretary of state is public record. If you’re doing anything that you might have people who don’t really like you very much, you might not want
Continue reading How To Choose Your Business Address
By Gina Bongiovi, on May 2nd, 2013
I’m Gina Bongiovi. I’m a lawyer who works with startups and small businesses. In this video, I’m going to discuss how you choose a name for your business. While it may seem like a very easy thing to do, that you just choose your name, it’s actually not. You have to take a lot of things into consideration when you’re first naming your business, and a lot of those decisions depend on information that you probably don’t have, like your exit strategy. Even though it sounds a little strange to be talking about your exit strategy when you’re trying to start your business, it’s really important.
For example, if you plan on eventually taking your business national, you probably don’t want to have Las Vegas,
Continue reading How to Name Your Business
By Gina Bongiovi, on April 24th, 2013
I’m Gina Bongiovi. I’m a lawyer who works with startups and small businesses. Whether you’re in the startup phase or whether you just have an idea rolling around in your head you might want to turn in to a business one day, you need to know how to start a business in Las Vegas. If you’ve done any research, you have found out that the process is pretty complicated and involves a whole bunch of steps; you have to go to a bunch of different agencies, you have to figure out a name, you have to figure out what entity you want to be, you have to figure out what sort of tax permit you need from the state, how you want the IRS to
Continue reading How to Start a Business in Las Vegas – Video Series
By Gina Bongiovi, on January 22nd, 2013 A few weeks back I was a coach for Startup Weekend. Basically it works like this: a bunch of entrepreneurs get together Friday night and each has a chance to pitch his or her idea. The group as a whole narrows the field to about a dozen ideas and the people whose ideas were not chosen redistribute themselves among teams. Then the teams work tirelessly over the next 52 hours to develop the idea into a working prototype which they then pitch, as a group, to a panel of judges. The judges can include venture capitalists, consultants, and angel investors. The team that won last year just garnered about $750,000 in funding. So this is a big deal.
Over the course of the weekend, the same
Continue reading Who Owns a Group Project?
By Gina Bongiovi, on November 13th, 2012 
I often get calls from people wanting to incorporate in Nevada because they’ve been told that Nevada allows anonymity for business owners, usually through what’s called a nominee service.
Because this is a HUGE risk for businesses, I need to clear this up.
Nevada does not provide anonymity for business owners. When you form an entity, you are required to disclose the names of the manager or members if an LLC or officers if a corporation. This information is published on the Nevada Secretary of State’s website.
Some companies will provide what’s called “nominee service” where the company lists itself as the manager/member/officer to provide the actual business owners with privacy. Notably, no law firm that I can find will provide this service.
Appointing a nominee is
Continue reading Nominee Service and Anonymous Owners
By Gina Bongiovi, on September 26th, 2012 My client had hired LegalZoom to form his LLC last November. When he called me last week for help with getting his local licenses, I discovered the Initial List of Members (which was due 30 days after the Articles of Organization were filed) had never been filed. Therefore, his entity had been in default for almost the entire first year. Luckily, he hadn’t started operating yet so he hadn’t been refused an account by a supplier, merchant services company, or bank.
To make things worse, he had to pay $175 in late fees to the state.
If you’re going to have LegalZoom form your entity, make sure they finish the process, or that you know where their services end.
Tricky, tricky.
By Gina Bongiovi, on June 22nd, 2012 Yay! Believe it or not, Clark County and the Cities of Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas have agreed on something. I know, right?
A June 21, 2012 press release announces the first phase of multijurisdictional licensing for contractors!
The insanely maddening process of having to go to each jurisdiction to secure a separate license and pay separate fees has been simplified. I’ll wait while you pick your chin up off the floor.
Thanks to the implementation of a central database that the jurisdictions share, now contractors can go to one place and pay their fees and submit their applications and…wait for it…the office will forward the application and fees to the proper jurisdiction. No more bureau-hopping, which is like club-hopping except with elevator music
Continue reading Streamlined Business Licenses for Contractors
By Gina Bongiovi, on June 13th, 2012 “Why do I need a business plan? Writing one is so difficult and I don’t have time!”
A business plan is the blue print for your business. It tells others the projected course of action for your business over a period of time.
If you are in need of OPM (Other People’s Money) for your business, a business plan is critical. Banks, lenders, and investors will thoroughly examine your plan in order to decide whether or not to finance your business venture.
A well-executed plan will describe your business including: the market conditions, the industry, your competition, plan of operations, marketing strategies, problem-solving strategies, and management policies.
The financial projections may be the most important component of the plan. Institutional lenders and sophisticated investors will expect to see the following in your plan:
an income statement, a
Continue reading Why Do I Need a Business Plan?
By Gina Bongiovi, on May 8th, 2012 Now, if you are a loyal reader of my blog, and I’m sure you are (wink, wink)…you read my article on the benefits of incorporating. And if you’ve done some homework, you’ve discovered that Nevada is a pretty friendly place to incorporate your business. In addition to having no state income tax, and relatively low business licensing fees, along with a Secretary of State who’s not only a total badass but also highly motivated to make Nevada the next Delaware, Nevada continues to improve the business climate with developments such as the Series LLC.
With our tragically depressed housing market, investors are swooping in and buying multiple properties at once. Traditionally, in order for a landlord to protect those investments, each parcel would have to be placed in
Continue reading What is a Series LLC?
By Gina Bongiovi, on May 2nd, 2012 
I sometimes get calls from people asking whether they should incorporate. When I am somehow able to stifle my automatic “YES YOU SHOULD!” knee-jerk reaction, I calmly provide some semblance of a well-reasoned argument in favor of incorporating.
Now, to clarify, by “incorporating” I don’t necessarily mean forming a corporation. I simply mean forming an entity so that you are no longer operating your business as a sole proprietor. The choice of entity includes a corporation, LLC, LLP, LLLP, and some other more obscure entity forms that I have yet to run across. The two most common entities I deal with are the corporation and the LLC. For either a corporation or an LLC, you start with registering the entity at the state level and obtaining a state business license.
Continue reading To Incorporate or Not to Incorporate?
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