Mindly.Social LLC. was created in December of 2022 after the Mindly.Social website was operating for 8 months as mostly a side project. In November of 2022 we went from a small little Mastodon server of just close friends and to a community of over 30,000 users. During this massive influx of users I realized this little side project wasn't a project anymore and I had to treat it seriously because I had a lot of people who were now investing their time, energy, and some of them even donated money into this community and now it's my job to make sure it didn't go anywhere.

Effective December 10, 2022 we became a real company. The Articles of Incorporation were filed, an Employer Identification Number was received from the IRS, our PayPal and bank accounts were updated, we registered a DMCA agent with the US Copyright Office, and we got most of our infrastructure and services moved over to their own accounts. The goal for all of this being that Mindly.Social is no longer just my project, it's a legitimate business entity that can survive without me.

I still have a lot to do, like documenting everything about the infrastructure, management, and getting my co-admin up to speed on all of the things I've learned and setup on the fly. I need to get the rest of the moving parts setup on their own accounts so that everything is completely separate from my own personal stuff so that there's no overlap or confusion on where my personal projects end and Mindly.Social begins. This is all important because the following tasks need to be completed in order for me to feel comfortable about Mindly.Social's future:

1. Mindly.Social needs to be transferable - In the event this grows beyond my ability to safely and effectively manage, I need to be able to ensure that it can be handed off to somebody I trust in a clean transition with zero impact to the users. This could mean handing off to my co-admin, having a family member take over, or some other transfer. The bottom line is that the community cannot rely on just me.

2. Mindly.Social needs to be completely separate from the rest of my life - The moment users started donating money to help support Mindly.Social financially, I took on the responsibility of properly managing those funds. I vowed that 100% of the money received would go towards the operation of Mindly.Social and to me that means not spending a penny of it on myself. I don't receive any payments or a salary or anything like that from Mindly.Social and keeping things separate ensures that remains the case. Mindly.Social has its own PayPal and bank accounts to ensure no mistakes happen either.

3. Mindly.Social needs to be independent - While I'm the current owner and a lot of the current rules and policies are in place because of my decisions, now that we have over 30,000 users it's no longer about me. I have a small team in place that we discuss changes before they are made and when possible I even poll the community for feedback before changes are made. The whole reason I created Mindly.Social was to get away from "corporate social media", but a single person deciding the fate and direction of a community isn't the solution either.

Why form an LLC?

After all of that backstory about why I did what I did, here are some bullet points as to why I picked an LLC:

• Liability - Any platform with user submitted content can be a legal and financial liability, an LLC protects me somewhat from being liable for what others post.
• Simplicity - An LLC is one of the easiest forms of corporations to create and manage.
• Familiarity - I've registered 3 LLCs to date so I'm already familiar with the process and requirements.

I'd like to mention that this LLC is (hopefully) just temporary. Ideally, I'd like to register as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization because I'd like to start focusing more on charity work and building Mindly.Social into more than just a community where people chat and make friends, but also put some of that energy to helping people in need by doing things like spreading awareness of social programs, coordinating charity drives, and hosting fundraising events. There are a lot of steps involved with forming a 501(c)(3) though so this will be a lengthy process for me to navigate.

What does this all mean?

In reality, it just means I'm serious about Mindly.Social and I am doing everything I can to ensure it stays around for as long as the community will allow us to.

What doesn't this mean?

It doesn't mean the following:

1. We will not be "going corporate" - we will not try to sell you anything, harvest your data, cover the site in ads, or anything like that.
2. We will not be getting rich - our current "business model" (if you can call it that) is that 100% of the money received is spent on keeping the site only.
3. We will not be bought - we're not gearing up for some VC firm to come invest in or buy us out.
4. We will not be a faceless corporation - Transparency is key for me and I don't plan to have some PR firm between me and the community.

Parting thoughts

When I first started working on forming the LLC, I laughed to myself because the whole point of Mindly.Social was to get away from "corporate social media" and here I am forming a CORPORATION for my social media platform, oh the irony! I was so worried about the optics I didn't even make a big flashy public announcement or anything like that. Ultimately this was needed for the various reasons I mentioned above, but as I also mentioned this is just a temporary measure. The main goal being to form a 501(c)(3) which hopefully both removes the "corporate" stigma and allows Mindly.Social to do some good work in the process.

-Joe (KuJoe)