From Idea
To First Revenue.
Launched Right.
Launch Industries is a Seattle, Washington startup studio for founders going from idea to first revenue. We form the entity, write the operating agreement, file the EIN, build the financial model, package the pitch deck, set up the books, and onboard your first hire, all under one roof.
We are not a self-serve filing service and we are not a law firm. We are the team founders call when they want a partner from day zero: someone who's launched 1,100+ businesses, knows when to bring in an attorney, and stays on call through the first 90 days of operating.
What Startup Support Covers
Nine focus areas, one team. Pick the engagement that fits your stage, or combine them into a full idea-to-first-revenue launch.
Entity Selection
LLC, S-Corp election, or Delaware C-Corp. We help you pick the structure that fits your goals (cash flow vs. payroll tax savings vs. raising venture capital) instead of defaulting to whatever your cousin's friend filed.
State Formation & Registered Agent
WA Secretary of State filings, foreign qualifications in other states, and a Seattle registered agent address so service of process and SOS mail never get lost in someone's PO box.
EIN, DOR & B&O Registration
Federal EIN with the IRS (ITIN-assisted for non-US founders), Washington Department of Revenue, B&O and excise tax accounts, city business licenses, and any industry-specific endorsements you actually need.
Founder & Operating Agreements
Operating agreements, founder agreements, vesting schedules, and the conversation co-founders are putting off about equity splits, IP assignment, and what happens if one of you wants out.
Capital Strategy
Honest read on whether you should bootstrap, take an SBA loan, raise from friends and family, court angels, or aim for institutional venture. Most founders don't need VC, and we'll tell you when that's the case.
Business Plan & Financial Model
A defensible 3-year financial model (revenue build, cost stack, hiring plan, cash runway) plus the narrative business plan that lenders, landlords, and investors actually read.
Pitch Deck & Investor Materials
Investor-ready 10 to 12 slide deck, one-pager, data room outline, and the rehearsal time to make sure you can answer the questions inside the deck.
Brand & Website Foundation
Name, mark, voice, and a real website you're not embarrassed to put on a card. Pairs with our /services/branding and /services/websites teams when you want a full launch.
First Hire & Contractor Onboarding
Offer letters, contractor agreements, IP assignment, Gusto payroll setup, I-9 collection, and the basic policies you need before the first paycheck clears.
How We Engage With Founders
A four-step engagement with deliverables at every stage. Transparent pricing, transparent timelines, transparent ownership of what gets done by whom.
Discovery
A free 90-minute working session. We map your idea, your founders, your runway, your timeline, and the real reason you're starting this business. By the end you have a written punch list and a fixed-fee quote.
Foundation Setup
Entity formed, EIN issued, agreements signed, bank account opened, accounting stack live, and the operating documents your future investors and CPAs will ask for. Two to four weeks for most founders.
Launch Readiness
Brand, website, pitch deck, financial model, and the introductions you need to land your first customers or your first capital. We rehearse the pitch, pressure-test the model, and tighten the story.
First 90 Days
We stay on call for the first quarter. First customers, first invoices, first hires, first payroll run, first 1099 cycle. By day 90, you're operating on systems you understand and own.
Common Startup Use Cases
Where founders tend to find us, and where our playbook is most dialed in. If you see yourself in one of these, we've shipped this exact engagement many times.
Side Hustle Going Full-Time
You've been selling on the side. Now you're leaving the W-2 and need a real entity, real books, and a real revenue plan that pays the mortgage by month six.
Raising Your First SBA Loan
We package the business plan, projections, and lender narrative the SBA Preferred Lender wants to see. Most clients close 7(a) or community advantage loans inside 90 days.
Friends-and-Family Round
Convertible notes or SAFEs, properly documented, with a real cap table on day one. Nobody wants the awkward Thanksgiving conversation about whose check counted as equity.
Contractor to LLC Transition
1099 income, side projects, and freelance work moved into an LLC with an S-Corp election so you stop overpaying self-employment tax. Includes Gusto payroll and reasonable-compensation analysis.
Two Co-Founders Forming
Equity split conversation, vesting schedule, founder agreement, IP assignment, and the operating agreement that codifies who decides what. We mediate the hard parts.
Technical Founder + Operator
You can build the product. You need a partner who handles the formation, hiring, finance stack, and the first 10 customers while you ship code. We slot in as fractional ops until you can hire it in-house.
Restaurant or Food Launch
Concept-to-doors-open: entity, food permits, lease review with your attorney, POS and accounting setup, opening cap table, and first hires. We've launched restaurants, bakeries, and commissary tenants across the PNW.
Professional Services Solo Launch
Consultants, coaches, designers, attorneys, CPAs going independent. Entity, brand, website, client contracts, retainer billing, and the QuickBooks setup that keeps you out of trouble at tax time.
Industries We Launch
Vertical-specific filings, capital pathways, and compliance traps we've already learned the hard way. Industry knowledge saves founders months and tens of thousands of dollars.
Cannabis
Washington I-502 licensure, California cannabis equity programs (through our sister brand LaunchMyCannabiz), entity structuring around 280E, banking workarounds, and investor materials that account for the federal-illegal reality.
Food & Beverage
Commissary kitchens, brick-and-mortar restaurants, packaged goods, and food trucks. We know the permit ladder, the lease landmines, and how to build a model the lender will actually fund.
Professional Services
Consultants, agencies, coaches, attorneys, accountants, and other independent professionals. S-Corp election, retainer billing, contract templates, and the systems that scale past the first few clients.
Tech & Creative
Software, SaaS, creative studios, content businesses, and digital-first companies. Delaware C-Corp when QSBS and venture math demand it, plus the cap-table hygiene that survives a Series A.
Entity Selection Guide
The single most expensive mistake we see is founders picking the wrong entity. Here's the plain-language version of the tradeoff.
LLC (Pass-Through)
The default for most solo founders, partnerships, and small operating businesses. Profits pass through to your personal return, no corporate-level tax. Cheap to form (Washington filing is $200), cheap to maintain. Best when you don't plan to raise institutional capital and don't yet need payroll-tax savings. Multi-member LLCs need a real operating agreement, not a template.
LLC + S-Corp Election
Same LLC, but you file Form 2553 to be taxed as an S-Corporation. You pay yourself a reasonable W-2 salary, and any profit above that comes out as a distribution that skips the 15.3% self-employment tax. For most service businesses earning over $50,000 in profit, the savings cover our entire engagement (and then some). Requires payroll (we set up Gusto) and a clean books discipline.
Delaware C-Corp
The right answer if you're raising institutional venture capital, building a tech company aiming at a priced equity round, or want the protections of Delaware corporate law. C-Corps face double taxation (corporate plus dividend), so they're wrong for most cash-flow businesses. But they're the only structure that supports preferred stock, QSBS (qualified small business stock) treatment, and a cap table that can absorb a Series A.
Not sure which one? That's the discovery call. We'll model the tax difference and the legal tradeoff for your specific numbers before you sign anything.
Capital Readiness Framework
What lenders and investors actually look at, in the order they look at it.
The first thing any sophisticated investor or banker checks is whether the cap table is clean. That means no handshake equity, no undocumented promises to early helpers, no founders whose vesting "we'll figure out later." If the cap table looks messy, the deal dies before the pitch. We rebuild cap tables, paper outstanding promises into SAFEs or convertible notes, and make sure 83(b) elections were filed on time.
Next comes the financials. Investors want to see three years of projections that tie to a real revenue build (units times price, or accounts times ACV), a cost stack that includes the team you'll need to hire, and a cash runway that makes the ask credible. SBA lenders want the same model with a debt-service coverage ratio they can underwrite. We build the model, document the assumptions, and rehearse you on the questions the model will provoke.
Last is the founder story. Who you are, why this problem, why now, and why you specifically. The market-validation evidence (early customers, letters of intent, pilots, waitlists) lives here. So does the team slide. Capital follows conviction, and conviction follows a story that connects your background to the wedge you're driving. We help you write it, edit it, and tell it without flinching.
Tools & Platforms We Set Up For Founders
We're vendor-neutral. These are the platforms we've configured for real founders. If you're already on one, we plug in. If you're shopping, we recommend the right fit for your stage.
We do not take vendor commissions. If a referral link saves you money, we'll use it and tell you. Otherwise, the recommendation is the one that fits your business.
What We Replace, And With What
The before-and-after patterns we see across founders coming through Launch. Sound familiar? Most of these have a same-month fix.
Random LLC formed by a friend who 'knows a guy'
A properly structured WA LLC with a real operating agreement, registered agent on file, and DOR / B&O accounts set up from day one.
Pitch deck the founder made alone at 2 a.m.
Investor-ready deck reviewed by people who've actually raised capital, with a one-pager, data room outline, and rehearsed Q&A.
Gut-feel revenue projections on a single tab
Defensible 3-year financial model with revenue build, cost stack, hiring plan, scenario toggles, and the assumptions documented in plain English.
Informal partnership held together by friendship
Formal founder agreement with vesting, IP assignment, decision rights, drag-along, and a clean cap table everyone has signed.
Sole prop earning $180k and paying full self-employment tax
LLC with S-Corp election, reasonable compensation set, payroll running through Gusto, and an annual tax savings that pays for the engagement many times over.
An EIN application abandoned because the SS-4 was confusing
EIN issued (ITIN-assisted for non-US founders), DOR account active, B&O registration filed, and your city business license in hand.
Security & Confidentiality
Founder conversations are sensitive by default. We sign mutual NDAs on request before discovery, and we treat your business idea, cap table, financials, and investor list as confidential whether or not paperwork is signed. Internal access to client files follows least-privilege rules, with credentials stored in 1Password Business and SSO enforced on every system we use.
We carry working relationships with attorneys, CPAs, lenders, registered agents, and bankers across the Pacific Northwest and nationally. Those relationships exist to help our founders, not to feed us referral fees. We do not take undisclosed kickbacks. If a partner offers us a fee for a referral, we either decline it, disclose it, or credit it back to the client.
Conflict of interest is a real risk in this work. If we have an existing engagement with a counterparty (a competing founder, a potential acquirer, a co-investor), we disclose it before we accept the engagement and let you decide whether to proceed. The default answer is full transparency, even when it costs us the deal.
Why Founders Choose Launch
Four reasons first-time and repeat founders pick us over the alternatives.
1,100+ Businesses Launched
Since 2022 we've helped over 1,100 founders form, fund, and operate their businesses. That volume means we've seen the edge cases (multi-state, immigrant founders, cannabis, food service, nonprofits) and know which corner to cut and which one to never cut.
Seattle Local + National Network
Headquartered in Seattle with deep ties to Washington's small-business ecosystem (SBA, CDFIs, WBC, city economic development) plus partner attorneys, CPAs, and lenders across the country. Local knowledge, national reach.
Full-Stack From Entity to Hire
One team owns the legal entity, the financial model, the brand, the website, the accounting setup, the payroll, and the first hire. No vendor juggling, no hand-off gaps, no 'that's not our department' moments at week three.
Industry Depth
Cannabis (WA and CA equity programs), food and beverage, professional services, and tech each have their own filing quirks, capital pathways, and compliance traps. We've shipped in all of them.
Startup Support FAQ
How much does startup support cost?
Can we just file the LLC ourselves?
Do you replace an attorney?
Can you write our business plan from scratch?
Can you introduce us to investors?
Do you handle equity grants and 83(b) elections?
What about ITIN and EIN for non-US founders?
Do you support nonprofit formation?
How long does it take to launch?
Do you keep working with us after launch?
Meet the Team
The experts behind this service, ready to support your business.
Startup Support Capabilities Statement
Download our one-page PDF overview to share with partners, clients, or your team.