Unless you have some big assets that makes you personally worth suing or, frankly, you are doing something slightly dodgy that you want some separation from, th

Unless you have some big assets that makes you personally worth suing or, frankly, you are doing something slightly dodgy that you want some separation from, then I would only form the company once you are making a few $1000 profit. When you create the LLC you will have filing costs, anual LLC costs ($800/year for a CA LLC), accountants fees... You basically don't want to be paying those until you have income to offset them. You mentioned forming a company to do several side project with the view that if one takes off it will be already set up for investment and growth... well don't forget that all of your other side projects will be in there too and so investors will own those ideas too. You might decide that if a given business/side project is worth having an entity then it's probably worth having its own entity in its own right.