Home / Articles / Start a company: the UK, where it takes an afternoon, Portugal, where I learned the hard way, and Lithuania, where I would like to go next

Start a company: the UK, where it takes an afternoon, Portugal, where I learned the hard way, and Lithuania, where I would like to go next

By Dinis Cruz · 2026-10-19 · article v1.0.0 · newsroom v0.12.128 · startupscompanieseuropegen-z-bookarticle

Abstract: If you are an entrepreneur, start a company, as soon as you have a bit of revenue to put through it. It is more professional, it lets you register for things and keep your work and your intellectual property in one place, and above all it is something a founder has to learn: how companies work, how to read a balance sheet, how shares and the rules between shareholders are set. There is no magic to it. A company is governed by a set of contracts, which today we can read in detail, draw as infographics and make sure are in our favour, and the founder who understands them can bring the rules of the game instead of being played by them. Where you do it matters. In the UK it takes an afternoon: £100 online, model articles by default, and very little to do until you start making real money. In Portugal, forming one is just as quick, but keeping one costs a certified accountant every month, by law, even with no trading, which is why I am closing mine. Lithuania looks as if it has thought this through, and its e-residency is where I would like to look next. I count what I paid in Portugal as the cost of learning. And the first thing to do with the company is the same as before you have one: sell.

In short

• Start a company. As soon as there is a bit of revenue to put through it.
• It is something a founder has to learn. Balance sheets, shares, and who controls what.
• A company is a set of contracts. Read them, and bring the rules of the game yourself.
• The UK: an afternoon. About £100 online, and little to do until the money is real.
• Portugal: the hard way. Quick to form, but a certified accountant every month, by law.
• Lithuania: next. It looks as if it has thought this through.
• Count it as the cost of learning. And then do the first thing: sell.

Why start a company

If you are an entrepreneur, you should start a company. A lot changes once you have one. It is much more professional. It is the beginning of the journey. You can open accounts and register for things as a business. It keeps things close and connected: the work, the money, and any intellectual property or other assets, managed as the company's and not scattered across your personal life. You will get no credit at first, and that is right: why should anyone give credit to a business with no history and no revenue? What matters is that you are now a company.

But the main reason is that it is something you need to learn. As a founder, you need to know how companies work. You need to be able to read a balance sheet. You need to understand how shares are created and given, and what happens to them. And the best way to learn that is to do it, sooner rather than later, and to pay a little for the lesson.

My recommendation on timing is simple. As soon as you have a bit of revenue, start the company, because you need somewhere to put the money through. Before that, the alternative every country has is the sole trader: in the UK you register for Self Assessment once your trading income passes the £1,000 trading allowance; in Portugal you open your activity at the tax office, online and free, and in the simplified regime you do not need an accountant. Either way, the point is to start creating revenue and to look as professional as you can. Ask Claude to design you some business cards you can print, and a website, while you are at it.

A company is a set of contracts

There is no magic behind a company. Some readers may not have worked inside large organisations, but I have seen how they work from the inside, and they have far more companies than you would think: financial companies have many, and so do companies you would not expect to. They create them for liability reasons and to reduce risk, to separate what gets sold from what does not, and to segment the business. You can have several companies of your own, for the same reasons.

The most important thing to understand is that a company is governed by a set of contracts: its articles of association and the agreements between the people who own it. Those contracts are the rules of the game. There are a few things the law does not let you put in them, but for most practical purposes you can put all sorts of clauses there, and you can see both kinds in the tech world: clauses that favour the founders, and clauses that favour the investors or the acquirers.

Today we can read those contracts in detail, turn them into infographics, and check that they work in our favour. So I think they should be, first, as simple as possible, and second, on your terms. When the conversation turns to funding and investment, you want to be the one bringing the company and bringing the rules of the game. You want to control them, not be played by them.

And remember that companies get bought and sold, and so do their shares. I have seen acquisitions done by creating another company. What matters in the end is the share ownership, the allocations, the rights, and who controls what. Part of the founder's journey is learning that, or having someone next to you who knows it. When investment comes, it should come when you are profitable, with product-market fit, and executing; sell, don't issue is how I think that deal should look.

The UK: the one I know well

The UK is where this is easy. My first UK company was created when I was still at university. A friend and I had got a project, and the client told us they could not pay us unless we were a company. That sounded complicated. We went to the local business group, they told us to go and create one, we did, and we got paid. How cool is that? And because we were a company, other things became possible.

It is still that simple, and the facts as they stand today:

• It is fast and cheap. Registering online with Companies House costs £100 (it was £50 until 1 February 2026), and "your company is usually registered within 24 hours". Formation companies will do it for you and help with the name and the paperwork; the basic packages cost little more than the fee, and the fuller ones cost a few hundred pounds, which is roughly what I remember paying.
• The rules come by default. If you do not write your own articles of association, the model articles for a private company limited by shares apply: a set of shares, the directors, and how decisions are made.
• You say roughly what you do. You choose a SIC code that identifies what the company does.
• You prove who you are. Since 18 November 2025, every director has to verify their identity with Companies House.
• Then very little, until the money is real. Each year you file accounts and a confirmation statement (£50 online), even if the company is dormant. With no revenue and a few costs, an accountant can do it quickly and charge you a little. Miss the date and the first penalty is £150, so do not, but it is nothing dramatic. When there is profit, you pay Corporation Tax on it: 19% on profits up to £50,000.

That is what happened with The Cyber Boardroom, the first of the companies behind my recent work. There was not a lot of trade in its first year, and we submitted the accounts. The UK only starts to care when you start to make serious money, which is how it should be.

It is also easy to change. You can dissolve companies, join them, be a director of one. I started a startup with some other people; we worked on it, and eventually I decided to leave. That was fine. It is all pretty straightforward, and that is exactly why it is a good place to learn. If the UK were still in the European Union, I would simply say: start your company in the UK.

Portugal: the one I learned the hard way

In Portugal, forming a company is not the problem. Empresa na Hora forms one on the spot, at a single counter, for €360. The problem is what it costs to keep it.

When I set up a company in Portugal, for MyFeeds, I found that I immediately had a cost of 200 to 300 euros a month for an accountant. I could not believe it. My strategy, probably not the best one, was to go back to my accountant after a couple of months and say: come on, I am not trading, I am not taking any of your time, let us renegotiate. He told me a long story, and I even asked other accountants. Long story short, it is the law.

The law is two provisions together. The corporate income tax code says companies "são obrigadas a dispor de contabilidade organizada", are obliged to keep organised accounts (CIRC, article 123), with no threshold for companies. And the statute of the certified accountants reserves to them the signing of the accounts and of the tax returns based on them (Estatuto da OCC, article 10). So a company with no trading still needs a certified accountant to sign off its filings: the periodic VAT return, quarterly for a small company, and the annual returns. That means two or three thousand euros a year, before you have sold anything.

My 200 to 300 euros a month is towards the upper end; published prices for a new small company run from about €150 to €300 a month. But the point stands. In the UK a company with no revenue costs almost nothing to keep; in Portugal it costs thousands a year. So I am closing it, and I have learned my lesson.

Lithuania: the one I would like to go to next

That is why I am now looking at starting a company in Lithuania. What I like is that they seem to have thought it through and mapped it out.

The memo said e-citizenship; the right name is e-residency. Lithuania's e-residency has existed since 2021: it costs €90 for three years, you give your biometrics in person once, and it gives you a Lithuanian digital identity and a qualified electronic signature for the government's e-services. A small partnership, the MB, needs no minimum capital; a private limited company, the UAB, needs €1,000 since May 2023. Every company needs a registered address in Lithuania, and its annual accounts are filed even when it does not trade. I have not found a requirement for a certified accountant.

What I do not know yet is how much of the company can be done remotely, end to end, with the e-resident card alone; the sources disagree, and a bank account is its own step. That is what I would like to find out, by doing it, and I will write it up when I have. Estonia is the country that built this road first, and judo for small countries is the case for why every small country should: the plumbing that lets a talented person form a company and sell to the world is an opportunity for a country, and in most of Europe it is still custom built. Ironically, today, the countries that make it easy have a competitive advantage over the ones that do not.

The cost of learning

I view all of this as a cost of learning. In the UK the cost was small; in Portugal I lost some money. But we all spend money on all sorts of things, so you might as well spend it on learning. If you look at everything you spend money on, the things where you learned something are the better ones.

So my recommendation is: start a company as soon as you can start trading, because the most important thing is not the company. It is to start selling, to start experimenting, and to start being profitable, so that the company pays for itself. That is the other half of this pair: can you sell it?

What this does not claim

• This is not legal or tax advice. It is my experience, with the rules checked on 19 October 2026.
• The Portuguese cost is my experience. Published prices are a range; mine was towards the top.
• The legal requirement is read from two provisions. Neither one says, in those words, that every company must hire a certified accountant; together they mean it.
• Lithuania is a consideration, not a decision. Nothing is registered, and remote formation with e-residency alone is not confirmed.
• The UK prices change. The incorporation fee doubled in February 2026.

Where this comes from

A voice memo from me on 19 October 2026, written for this newsroom and for the book, Generation ZX Developers (GenAI Startup Edition), whose chapter on the company itself has been waiting for exactly this. UK: GOV.UK, register your company, Companies House fees from 1 February 2026, Companies Act 2006, section 20, identity verification, dormant companies, late filing penalties, Corporation Tax rates, sole traders. Portugal: Empresa na Hora, CIRC article 123, Estatuto da Ordem dos Contabilistas Certificados, CIRS article 28, Zaask's price guide. Lithuania: e-Residency of Lithuania, GoVilnius on company types. Related: can you sell it?, sell, don't issue, the expert founders, judo for small countries. Written up and checked by this site's agent, newsroom.writer; the editorial responsibility is mine.

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