Creating a Drupal Co-op - the Ins and Outs

How do you manage the risk of hiring full time staff? How can your one-man-shop ever take on large projects? You should consider a co-op.

A cooperative of Drupal professionals is a great way to focus a group of developers, project manangers, and business analysts to work together on projects as they become available. Working as a sole contractor limits the kinds of projects you can work on. Building a co-op can allow you to have the flexibility to come together and move apart as needed. This session will discuss...

  • Forming an LLC in the United States
  • Options for structuring a Taxable entity
  • Employees vs Contractors
  • How does "Pass Through" work?
  • What do you need to get a bank account?
  • Tools and tips to pull the entire package together

Saunders has 18 years of project management experience at a variety of shops ranging from the Western States Arts Federation as Senior Director of Technology, pingVision as Senior Web Producer, one of several Principals in Vintage Digital, Senior Director of Technology at Examiner.com, as CTO for Trellon LLC, and is currently the COO of 5 Rings Web. He writes at Dogstar.org regularly - mostly on the business of open source and Drupal.

Schedule info
Status: 
Proposed
Session Info
Speaker(s): 
Track: 
Business + Strategy
Experience level: 
Beginner

Comments

This would be great to see especially now that I've been part of starting a company from scratch. I am curious how the co-ops manage to share the risks/rewards of working together.

I think that a lot of freelancer / lone wolf poeple in the Drupal world could go after much bigger jobs, and for various reasons (often fear the responsibility of having employees) are afraid to go the corporation route. I think this could be a very good talk, and I'll attend.