California LLC or dodgy Delaware company to avoid $800 fee?

If incorporating in Delaware were illegal, half the companies in the United States would be in jail.

you should just go as a sole proprietor. That has the benefit of, you know, not being fraudulent.

Delaware corps are responsible for the 800 fee if they are in California.

I have not used these guys but is an interesting startup - www.startupdocuments.com Jason Calacanis from Launch likes Walker law.

Brett Bringardner from Corvusstartups.com says do it yourself from the Del website. I took a look, seems easy and cheap.

An option to consider is converting to an S corp. Unlike sole proprietorship, S corp gives some legal protection from personal liability claims - as does your LLC. If you are pitching investors, or have investors whose opinions you are concerned about, stay with the LLC. S corps and sole proprietorships are often perceived as amateurish, which can hurt your bargaining power with regard to valuation and other terms.

You'll have a $250 DE annual fee for an LLC, more for a C-Corp. Plus another $150 for a registered agent in DE since you won't be a resident. So factor in whatever costs you have setting up LLC/C-Corp plus the DE state and registered agent fees, and make a decision. Now either way, you will be much better off with a Delaware entity than a California one.

There are a lot of cheaper registered agents in Delaware all around $50 a year:

http://www.delawareregisteredagent.com

Depends, if you want to get it setup correctly then I think it's worth paying a lawyer, or a tech-enabled law platform to do it right. I mean, you're planning on being successful so you don't want a shoddy platform to build your company on.

I hear good things about the Clerky folks, they're pretty popular amongst the YC set: https://www.clerky.com/