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Operations

Forming a Company

Forming a Company

Starting a company is a lot more intimidating than it needs to be. In reality, the process is surprisingly straightforward and can be completed in less than a day.

I’ve been thinking about forming Wizard Workshop as an LLC for a while. The hesitation came from not knowing whether I’d pursue outside funding or bootstrap it myself, and how those choices might shape the company’s early structure. After some reflection, I decided to move forward with bootstrapping and inviting community support along the way.

This blog is part of that process. I’ll be sharing what I’m learning, how the company is growing, and the tools and strategies I’m using to bring it to life.

Filing the LLC

I used Northwest Registered Agent to register Wizard Workshop LLC in Colorado. I wanted to use their service so that I could have them as a registered agent with their address on file. This helps create a layer of privacy between myself and the company. After filling out the form, I had confirmation and documents in just a few hours.

  • Colorado LLC filing fee: $50
  • Northwest Registered Agent: $39

Getting an EIN

Once I had the Articles of Organization, I went to the IRS EIN Assistant and got the company’s EIN for free. It took less than ten minutes and gave me a downloadable PDF instantly. No reason to pay someone else to do it.

Setting Up Banking

With my EIN and formation documents ready, I applied for a business bank account at Mercury.

They cater to startups and offer a simple application process with no fees and have API access I can integrate with setup. Within a few more hours, I had a fully active bank account ready to go and transferred $250 to help kick things off.

Domain, Email, and Admin Tools

I registered wizardworkshop.studio and set it up with Google Workspace for business email and drive.

It includes:

  • An email address I can use to create logins
  • Google Sheets and Forms I can use for automations and integrations (App Script is great!)
  • 2TB of data on Google Drive, I can use it to backup all my company files.

Stripe and Ghost for Monetization and Publishing

With banking in place, I connected Stripe to accept payments and donations. Then I launched Ghost to power the company blog and future paid content.

Ghost gives me:

  • A clean platform for publishing
  • Membership and subscription support through Stripe
  • A central space to share progress, ideas, and updates

I setup some subscription tiers to start allowing folks to support my work:

  • Free – Access to all public newsletters
  • Early Supporter – $10/month — Full content access + Discord community invite
  • Super Supporter – $100/month — A monthly 1:1 call with me to chat about games, AI, creativity, or anything you’d like
Join Now

I also setup a one time donation page:
👉 Donate via Stripe

Claiming the Social Accounts

Once the core company infrastructure was in place, I started securing social media handles for consistency and presence across platforms.

Here’s what I’ve registered so far:

It’s early, and each platform will need it's own strategy and content plan.

To tie it all together, I deployed LittleLink, a free and open source alternative to Linktree.

It’s hosted on Cloudflare Pages with zero cost and instantly updates when I push changes to GitHub. It acts as the single point of access for all my socials, the blog, and donation options.

You can check it out at:
👉 https://links.wizardworkshop.studio/

Startup Costs (So Far)

Item Cost
LLC Registration (CO) $50
Northwest Registered Agent $39
Domain (wizardworkshop.studio) $31.18/year
Google Workspace (email, admin tools) $14/month

We’ll be using as much open source and free software as possible. But things like AI credits, creative software, and infrastructure do cost money. If you want to help support what I’m building, you can subscribe to the blog, donate via Stripe, or just share the project with someone who might be curious.

Thanks for reading.