Wow - talk about an optimistic approach to business. I have to say that IMO this is horrible advice. You need a lawyer for equity deals - you'll never convince me otherwise. Your "simple agreement" is fine - as long as it was written/reviewed by an atty w/ experience in this particular subject. Having a partner, dissolving a partnership, firing a partner - those are rarely simple "plug and play from a handbook" type of situations. You need a document that handles everything known to man. The more you spend up front on this one not-simple matter means you spend less down the road.
"If you can't afford to do it right, don't do it at all." You'll potentially save yourself a ton of money and stress if you follow that sentence. Don't start your business if you can't do the legal/tax stuff correctly. Don't go into a partnership if you can't do the legal/tax stuff correctly. Any other advice IMO is just overly optimistic. "But it'll never happen to me and my best mate, Jimmy - we'll be buddies for life!" Of course you will...
i disagree with the sentiment here - specifically "If you can't afford to do it right, don't do it at all." which i've understood to mean "if you can't afford to pay a lawyer [on day one], don't start a company".
to clarify, by "pre external funding" I essentially meant "pre money" - so situations where you're not bootstrapping yourself to the tune of several tens of thousands - e.g. pre-YC, idea-stage companies - when you're just getting started.
example: say if you have between zero - 10k to spend, don't spend it on legal - there's bigger risks/more important things!
i agree you need a lawyer for a proper equity deal - share classes, tax, voter rights.. yuk! but you don't need all that on day one - just an agreement that "if we get to the next stage, we'll be equal partners assuming you do X and I do Y".. ok, and a bit more than that, as i said previously.
i've been through all this, and regret worrying too much about legal/shareholder details in the beginning. sure, we had team issues, guys coming and going, and guess what - they $2k and countless hours we spent on legal did't help at all - and in the end our first shareholder agreement was ripped up the moment we raised angel.
finally, i think anyone starting a start-up has to be optimistic! but optimistic doesn't mean not believing the worst will ever happen to you - i specifically said there's a high chance your team won't survive in it's original form.
[edit: screwed up double-negative in final para..]
Since you mention discountasp.net I wanted to say that, for most people, discountasp.net is the most expensive shared hosting you can find. I've been very disappointed w/ the quality of service from every shared host I've used in the past two years - and by "service" I mean both the speed and the technical support. I'm exclusively an ASP.NET person so I don't have experiences w/ php hosts to compare against.
I've done some posting on elance before and I will suggest to start with the smallest job (i.e. cheapest) first to get used to working with bids and vendors. Start with a logo + business identity for $300-$500, go with only 5-star people with 6+ months of feedback. Once you have that, do a 3-5 page website for $300-$500. By now you should have a good feel for (1) the process, and (2) the people so now's the time to bump it up to a $1000 or $2000 project.
Those places really aren't the place for $2000+ projects IMO.
Actually they can, provided you state that you're looking for that level of work. Many studios operate through these services and simply turn-over the small stuff to the junior developers, or use templates.
In my experience, elance is not the place for large jobs (and I've tried). I would strongly suggest people not start out w/ a large job on elance and instead start w/ smaller piecemeal-type work.
In my opinion 37 signals has the best job board with the best jobs. But personally I think the people applying also expect a better wage\price to come with that. For companies to attract truly the best UI designers I do think they have to pay a bit more for them. Though there are plenty of young cheep talent out there. They perhaps are not the best.
I use TinyUrl and the Wikipedia bookmarklet more than any others: javascript:(function(){q=document.getSelection(); if(!q){void(q=prompt('Wikipedia keywords:',''))}; if(q)location.href='http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search='+escape(q)})()
Here's an amazon.com lookup one as well: javascript:void(q=prompt('Enter%20text%20to%20search%20Amazon.',getSelection()));if(q)void(location.href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/external-search/?keyword='...(q)+'&mode=blended&tag=blogography00-20&Go=Go')
