Register Only After First Revenue | Generated by AI
Question: Given the Guangzhou company registration guide, what should my first step be?
Answer:
Honestly? The first step is not registering anything. Based on your own playbook (revenue experiments before launch, mortgage at 900K), incorporating now would be premature — you’d take on ~2,000–5,000 CNY/year in costs plus monthly bookkeeping compliance for an entity with no revenue to run through it. A dormant Chinese company is a liability, not optionality.
So the actual sequence:
Step 1 (now): Get to first revenue without an entity. Personal income from side projects — GitHub Sponsors, overseas SaaS payments via Stripe/Paddle (merchant-of-record handles invoicing), consulting paid to you personally — none of this requires a 有限公司. Your trigger to incorporate is a concrete blocker: a Chinese client who needs a fapiao, a payment processor that requires a business license, or revenue high enough that personal income tax treatment becomes worse than corporate. Until one of those appears, registration is procrastination disguised as progress.
Step 2 (parallel, zero cost): Pre-clear the two human dependencies. The registration itself takes a week; the things that can’t be rushed are (a) the supervisor — you can’t be both 法人 and 监事, and your wife is the obvious candidate, which per your own playbook means the conversation happens through demonstrated results, not a pitch. And (b) bank account lead time — the article notes ~1 month advance booking, and banks are strict with virtual-address companies. Neither costs money to prepare; both cost weeks if you start cold.
Step 3 (when the trigger fires): Register in ~1 week for under 2K. Virtual address + agency (1,300–3,500 CNY), name format 广州+字号+科技+有限公司, keep 经营范围 tight to what you actually invoice for, set registered capital modestly (100K–500K CNY is normal for a solo tech company — remember you’re liable up to the subscribed amount), and outsource bookkeeping at ~1,800–3,200 CNY/year from day one since zero-declaration filing is mandatory regardless of revenue.
One thing worth verifying before Step 3, since you’re at a bank on a contract arrangement: check your contract for moonlighting/conflict-of-interest clauses. Being a 法人 of a company is public record (searchable on 企查查/天眼查), and some bank contracts prohibit outside directorships. A workaround people use is having the spouse be 法人 — but that makes the family-buy-in conversation load-bearing, not optional.
So concretely, this week: pick one of your existing tools (ww, iclaw, zz, or an AI service idea) and put a payment link on it. That’s the first step. The company registration is a one-week errand you run after someone tries to pay you in a way that requires it.