General notes about how to compensate people when you don't have much money, paying people as employees vs contractors, etc.

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You pay no taxes on investment money. May want to pay us contractors, 1099 rather than W2 that way we don't have to pay employer taxes which he said are around 9%. Relatively standard thing to do. Government doesn't usually like it because companies like Uber can hire their drivers as contractors and then they don't have to cover health insurance etc. but they only reason they don't like it is because of the risk the employees take on, so if you're voluntarily doing it for your own startup then they don't care. They did it for their company.

Should pay lawyers and others in small amounts of equity. 0.5% - 2%, 0.5% being a good deal. Then they will get paid once you raise a round of like $500k or make that much in revenue, and if you don't raise a round, they don't get paid.

Our Gmail thing may be one innovation we can claim as a barrier, like a trade secret, because it costs too much to start off the bat with the existing services and if we end up starting our own mail server then we will have an advantage due to costs which nobody else will.

Can pay advisors like 0.1% - 0.25% of equity.

NC innovation fund. $250k.