Register With Your State

Let’s walk through the very simple process of how to do it online in Colorado.

Start by going to the Colorado Secretary of State’s website and navigating to the business section.

If you haven’t already done so, you can search for the availability of your business name. This checks whether somebody has registered your business name in the same state.

“Initial startup costs can range from a couple of hundred dollars for single-person businesses, to hundreds of thousands of dollars for big tech startups and brick and mortar stores.” 

If you’ve already done that, skip ahead to “File a Business Document.” From there, select “File a form to create a NEW record.”

The screen to file a new record allows you to file all sorts of different types of entities; LLCs, partnerships, even socially conscious enterprises like cooperatives and public benefit corporations.

For the purpose of this section, we will an LLC. Note that in Colorado you have to include “LLC” or some version of that phrase in your actual business name. Type our business name and then click next.

That brings up our main form to fill out to register our LLC. Notice that in Colorado the fee is $50.

Start with your physical business address and mailing address.

Next, fill in the information for your registered agent. A registered agent is the person who is served with papers if you get sued. Business owners often hire somebody to be their registered agent, but it is something you can do yourself.

Next, verify that the registered agent has consented to being appointed as your registered agent.

For the next step, fill out the information for the person forming this LLC. It’s not totally clear by the language who that is, but a reasonable interpretation is that it is the owner of the business. If you’re a single-member LLC, for example, you’d put in your own name and address

If you are a multi-member LLC, you can add additional members by putting their names and address in a document and attaching it to your form (which comes on the next page).

Now you have to identify the management of the LLC. There are two types of management for an LLC: member-managed or manager-managed. A member-managed LLC means that the member(s) of the LLC is actually managing the company. Manager managed means that you are hiring somebody else who is not a member to manage the company.

Now, you can attach additional information, such as a detailed operating agreement or a list of the other members of the LLC.

If you would like to delay the effective date of your registration, you can do so now.

For the penultimate step, put in your email address so that you can receive notifications when it’s time to update your business information.

Then finally, put in the name and mailing address of the individual causing this document to be delivered for filing. This is different from the person forming the LLC, this is the person (or persons) who is filling out this form.

Then you click submit! After you click submit, you’ll need to enter your payment information to cover the fees associated with registering. Fees vary from state to state, but they are generally fairly reasonable.

As you can see, it is very simple. You can pay a lawyer to do it, or you might be able to get away with doing it yourself. It all depends on your level of comfort.