A few years ago, some friends and I entered a local government innovation competition, made a "bid", gave a presentation and were selected to deliver a proof of

A few years ago, some friends and I entered a local government innovation competition, made a "bid", gave a presentation and were selected to deliver a proof of concept. We incorporated pretty much immediately upon being advised of our selection for the PoC. This involved ~AU$600 for government fees and incorporation services. We then retained a lawyer to provide us with a shareholders' agreement (~$1500) and obtained our legally required workers' compensation insurance (~$500). We didn't sign the contract for the PoC until that point. Conveniently, the rules of the competition allowed us to expense all that to the customer... As for why we chose to incorporate - the majority of my team are somewhat risk-averse and legally-minded, and even though we were and remain close friends, we wanted to formalise our business structure to help manage any potential for disagreement later down the track. As it turned out, our government customer was very happy with the PoC and was interested in engaging us further, but their timelines didn't match up with ours and we ultimately decided to take the $12,500 prize money, open source our PoC code and move on to regular megacorp/government careers. Had we chosen to continue on, however, having a corporate structure would have been an absolute, non-negotiable necessity for taking on a proper government contract. During the period our company was active, we never got an accountant - I learned more than I ever wanted to know about how to fill out an Australian corporate income tax return, with pen and paper...