The biggest thing I worked on this week was finalizing my website (ChooseAMovie.app) and adding the Stripe integration so the site can actually take payments. It took a lot of troubleshooting and back and forth with Claude Code, but I finally got everything set up and working.
This week on the academic side, we talked a lot about legal structure. Once I'm taking money and storing user data, I need to start thinking about liability and protecting myself as a business. I learned about being a sole proprietorship, an LLC, or a corporation, and wrote an essay on what made sense for my site. I was initially leaning towards being an LLC since I'm handling payments, but an LLC ended up costing around $100 to file in Idaho, while being a sole proprietorship is pretty much free. Since the site is brand new and I'm not really making a lot of money, I decided to start as a sole prop and keep my costs low so I can test it out. I can always form an LLC later once there's more money flowing and more risk to protect.
Overall, this week was great because I feel like I am actually getting into the creation of my business and I'm starting to get really excited about it!