What a Founder Should Actually Do in the First 30 Days

The first month after starting a company is mostly spent on things that feel productive. A logo. A landing page. A name for the Slack workspace.

Here is what actually needs doing, and roughly when.

Week one: the money and the paperwork

Open the current account and get the share capital in, each shareholder paying from their own account. Two later deadlines depend on this being done properly, so it is not a week two job.

Appoint your auditor within 30 days of incorporation. Every private limited company needs one from year one, whatever the revenue.

Write down who does what between the founders. Not the equity split, the daily reality: who owns sales, who owns the product, who signs things.

Week two: the conversations

Talk to ten potential customers. Not a survey, not a form. Calls or meetings, where you ask how they solve this today and what it costs them.

This is the single highest value thing in the first month and it is the one most founders push to "after we build a bit more". The building goes better after the conversations, not before.

Week three: the agreements nobody enjoys

Get a founders' agreement signed, with vesting over four years and a one year cliff. Everyone is friends now. The agreement is for the version of you in two years when someone wants to leave.

Assign intellectual property to the company in writing, including anything you built before incorporating. Investors check this line by line, and fixing it retrospectively is awkward.

Week four: the filings with real penalties

Two deadlines catch people out and both carry money:

• Share certificates within 60 days, with stamp duty paid.
• INC-20A within 180 days. The declaration that you have started business, backed by the bank statement. Miss it and it is ₹50,000 for the company plus ₹1,000 a day for each director.

Also apply for DPIIT recognition. It is free, takes an afternoon, and opens the three year tax deduction later.

What can wait, honestly

A logo beyond something readable. A CRM. An ESOP pool with nobody to give options to. Business cards. A big website. Any tool with an annual contract.

None of these has ever been the reason a company worked or did not.

The one habit to start now

Put every recurring deadline in a shared calendar in month one: director KYC in September each year, the annual filings after your AGM, TDS by the seventh, GST if you are registered.

Almost every penalty a young Indian company pays is for being late, not for being wrong. A calendar fixes that for free.