Seven things I wish I knew before starting my tech company

I started a tech company a few months ago. AURACO PTY LTD, trading as CTRLSZE. One person, one laptop, a domain, and a stack of late nights. Most of what I now know would have saved me weeks if someone had told me earlier — not because the information is hidden, but because you don't know what you don't know to ask. So here are the seven things I wish I'd known on day one.

Some of this is Australian-specific. Most of it isn't. All of it is the kind of advice I'd give a friend over coffee, not the polished version a consultant would charge you for.

1. You don't need Google Workspace to have a domain email

I almost paid Google $7/month per inbox to get hello@ctrlsze.studio set up. Then I found Cloudflare Email Routing, which forwards any email sent to your domain to your existing Gmail (or any inbox), for free. I have hello@, support@, press@, and a handful of others, all forwarding to one Gmail. Zero dollars per month.

For sending, I use Gmail's "send mail as" feature so replies look like they come from my domain. Anyone replying to me sees hello@ctrlsze.studio, not my personal Gmail. The setup takes ten minutes once you know it exists.

Google Workspace is great if you have a team that needs shared calendars, Drive, and admin controls. For a one-person company, it's $84/year for problems you don't have. Start with Cloudflare; upgrade when you actually need to.

2. The domain doesn't have to be a .com

Contrary to popular belief, a .com isn't always the gold standard—sometimes, it's just noise. Even when the .com for my studio was sitting there available, I walked away from it. I chose ctrlsze.studio because it's more than just an address; it's a descriptor. While a .com is generic and tells the user nothing about your industry, a specific TLD like .studio, .design, or .dev does the heavy lifting for your brand from the very first glance. Google treats these extensions with the same weight in search rankings, so the only reason to default to a .com is if you're still living in 2005.

Don't just settle for what's "standard"—choose the extension that actually defines what you do. .studio for a studio. .design for a design practice. .app for an app. .ai if you can stomach the price tag and the connotations. .dev for developer tools. .co if you want something close to .com but actually available. The TLD is part of the brand; it should do work, not just sit there.

3. Always ask the LLM how to do it better before you commit

This one is the meta-lesson, and it's the one nobody talks about. Every time I was about to sink hours into a workflow — a manual deploy process, a spreadsheet for tracking expenses, a complicated folder structure for clients — I stopped and asked: "Is there a better way to do this? What are people who do this professionally using?"

Roughly half the time the LLM surfaced a tool, pattern, or approach I'd never have found on my own. Cloudflare Email Routing came from that. So did using Resend instead of building my own SMTP setup. So did the host-based subdomain pattern that lets one app serve every product I'll ever build. So did a dozen smaller things that compound.

The trap is committing to a workflow because it's the first one you thought of. The fix is a thirty-second question before you commit. Sometimes the LLM tells you the way you were going to do it is already correct. Sometimes it tells you there's a better tool, a free tier, or a pattern that does ninety percent of the work for you. Either way you save time.

4. You probably don't need to register a Pty Ltd yet

In Australia, the default founder advice is "register a Pty Ltd." That's ~$500 to ASIC, plus ongoing accounting work that's genuinely complicated, plus annual review fees. Most of the advice you read assumes you'll do it on day one.

You probably shouldn't. As a sole trader you get an ABN for free, register a business name for $42/year, and you're legally trading the same day. You can invoice clients, accept payments, sign contracts, and run ads — all under your own name or the registered business name. Tax sits on your personal return. It's much simpler.

You'd register a Pty Ltd when you actually need one: taking on investors, hiring employees, wanting personal-asset protection because the work is risky, or revenue is high enough that the tax treatment matters. I registered AURACO PTY LTD because I plan to ship products that handle user data and take payments, and the liability separation matters for that. If I were just doing consulting or writing, I'd still be a sole trader.

Talk to an accountant before you decide either way. The twenty-minute consultation is worth more than any blog post, including this one.

5. Free tiers will get you further than you expect

Some honest numbers, for the studio you're reading right now:

Vercel hosts the site on the free Hobby tier. The Postgres database runs on Neon's free tier — 0.5 GB, plenty for a few thousand subscribers. Resend handles transactional email free up to 3,000 emails per month. Cloudflare DNS, email routing, and basic protection are free forever. Plausible analytics is free during trial; Umami is free if you self-host. The only things I pay for are the domain and the ASIC business name, which together cost less than $40 a year.

I'll start paying for things when I have customers. Not before. The temptation is to look like a real company by paying for enterprise tools on day one — Slack, Notion Enterprise, Linear, Mercury, the whole stack — but the free tiers of those tools, or their open-source equivalents, cover the work of one person doing their best thinking. Spend money when spending money would unblock revenue. Until then, free tiers are not training wheels — they're the actual product, just sized to what you're actually using.

6. Buy the domain before you tell anyone the name

I told two friends about an early product idea before I'd bought the domain. The next day, the .com was registered by a squatter. Coincidence? Possibly. Cheap lesson? Definitely.

Domain squatting bots watch trademark filings, ASIC registrations, public Twitter mentions, Hacker News comments, and probably a few channels I don't know about. If you say a name out loud in a public-ish place and the domain is available, assume someone might register it before you wake up the next morning.

Order of operations: buy the domain first, then the social handles (Instagram, TikTok, GitHub, Twitter — ten minutes total), then register the business name, then tell anyone. The whole sequence costs under $50 and takes an hour. If you skip the first step you risk having to either rebrand or pay a squatter four figures, and neither is fun.

7. Ship legal pages on day one, even with templates

Privacy policy. Terms of service. Cookie policy if you use any tracking. Refund policy if you take payments. I procrastinated on these for two weeks because they felt like a lawyer problem. They aren't — at least not on day one.

Apple won't let you submit an app without a privacy policy. Stripe won't let you take payments without terms of service. The Australian Privacy Act has specific requirements if you handle personal information. Newsletter platforms generally require a visible unsubscribe and a privacy policy URL. There are templates from credible sources — the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner publishes guidance, Termly and similar tools generate decent starter policies. Use a template, ship the page, refine it later when something changes that requires a real lawyer.

The procrastination cost is real. I sat on a finished website for a week because the legal pages weren't written. Once I gave myself permission to use a template, the pages took an hour and the site shipped that night.

What ties these together

If there's a thread through all seven, it's this: most founder advice is written for the wrong stage of company. It assumes you have a team, a budget, an investor, a lawyer on retainer, a Google Workspace admin. Most people starting a tech company today have none of those things and are using AI tools to compress what used to take months into weekends.

The advice that works for that mode of operating is different. It's cheaper. It's faster. It assumes the LLM is your co-founder, the free tier is your stack, and you'll add complexity only when complexity earns its keep. None of this is new — but it's scattered across forum posts, niche blogs, and individual founders' Twitter threads. Hopefully having it in one place saves someone a week.

Frequently asked

Do I need a registered company to start a tech business in Australia?

Not on day one. As a sole trader you can apply for an ABN for free, register a business name for $42/yr, and start trading immediately. You'd register a Pty Ltd later — when you take on investors, hire employees, want personal-asset protection, or your revenue justifies the extra accounting work. Most founders set up a Pty Ltd before they need one and pay accountants $1k+/year for paperwork that wasn't required yet.

Is Cloudflare Email Routing actually as good as Google Workspace?

For receiving and forwarding, yes. For sending from your domain, no — Cloudflare's email routing is forward-only. The standard pattern is to use Cloudflare to forward incoming mail to a free Gmail address, then use Gmail's 'send mail as' feature to reply from your domain. Google still has to verify your domain ownership via a TXT record, and there are some edge cases with bounce handling, but for a one-person business it works perfectly and saves $84+/year per inbox.

What's wrong with just using .com?

Nothing — but a good .com costs hundreds or thousands of dollars on the secondary market, and most of the .com names you'd actually want are taken. Newer TLDs like .studio, .design, .app, .ai, and .dev are usually available, often communicate what you do more clearly, and rank just as well in search. Google has stated repeatedly that TLD does not affect ranking. The only downside is some users still type .com out of habit, which you can fix later by buying the .com as a redirect once you're earning.

How long can I really run on free tiers?

Longer than you'd guess. Vercel's Hobby tier covers most studio sites and small SaaS apps until they have meaningful traffic. Neon's free Postgres tier covers the first few thousand users. Resend gives you 3,000 emails/month free. Cloudflare DNS and email routing are free forever. Plausible has a free trial; Umami is free to self-host. You can build, launch, and run a real business for under $30/year (just the domain) until you have actual customers. Don't pre-pay for scale you haven't earned.

What legal pages do I actually need?

For a website that collects any user data (including newsletter signups): privacy policy and terms of service. If you accept payments via Stripe: refund policy. If you ship to the App Store: privacy policy with specific data-handling disclosures. If you're in Australia: privacy policy compliant with the Privacy Act 1988 if you handle personal information. Templates are fine for v1 — refine later. Don't let perfect be the enemy of shipped.

Notes from the build will keep landing here. The next post is on the specific AI workflow I use to ship faster — the prompt-refinement pattern that did more work than anything else.