Hurdling Through China

Another week begins.

Another milestone reached.

It was a big day in Rightsite history today as we received a copy of our business license from the Commerce Office here in Shanghai. This means we have a company. We are real, and we are legal. Next milestones coming up:

• Receive our chops — we need these for signing official documents. Should get them within two weeks
• Register with the tax office — this is the last major bureaucratic step. It should take one month
• Receive our tax invoices — after we register with the tax office, it should take two more weeks to receive our first book of invoices

So we are on our way to having a fully operational company by the middle of June. Sure, we have a company now. We can legally hire staff, rent an office and enter into contracts with other companies. But we can’t bring in any money until RightSite is registered with the tax office and receives its book of tax invoices (fapiaos). And since we formed this company to make money (not just to give it away), these fapiaos become pretty important.

Since we also need a website to take in money, we are hard at work this week planning and designing our site. On this week’s web development agenda we have some major design issues to resolve

• Page layout — will be deciding the content and style of each page in the site
• Search results display — will plan how to display information when users search our site
• Advanced search — we covered basic search last week, so now it’s time to decide what details users can look for through an advanced search
• Review Requirements documents — after spending all this time gathering our requirements, we are starting to organise these requirements into structured documents. These dox will later be used to begin building the site

Besides the bureaucracy and the geeky tech issues, we have one more intern joining our company this week. Look for an introduction to Carol The New Intern tomorrow, plus a sneak preview of our RightSite layout design.

Until then, happy surfing!

Related posts:

1. Chops Ahoy!
2. Recommended Daily Requirements
3. Designing Our Future
4. The Lucky Winner
5. This Little Piggy Goes to Market