Keep more of what your LLC earns — with a plan you could defend on a bad day.
Founder Move helps newly formed single-owner service LLCs make and document the tax, payroll, and owner-compensation decisions that quietly cost owners tens of thousands over their first three years.
See if it's time to look at S-Corp
Free tool. No email required. About three minutes.
Forming the LLC was the easy part.
Your LLC is real. Your first invoices are going out. Now the decisions start piling up — how to pay yourself, whether S-Corp makes sense yet, when to elect if it does, what a defensible salary actually looks like, which deadlines the IRS won't move for anyone.
Most owners in your position take one of two paths:
- Wing it. Pay yourself with owner draws, hope S-Corp is a "next year" problem, and find out at tax time that "next year" was already this one.
- Hire an accountant who doesn't really want the work. Pay for setup, get a checklist and a login, and still have to make the judgment calls yourself.
Neither of those gives you what actually matters: a dated plan for year one, an S-Corp readiness decision you can explain, and a reasonable-salary number you could put in front of an examiner without flinching.
Judgment, sequencing, and documentation — not software setup.
Founder Move isn't a payroll tool. Payroll platforms are free to set up and Gusto is very good at that part; when the time comes, you'll use Gusto and I'll make the introduction.
What you're paying for is the layer underneath:
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An honest S-Corp readiness call
Whether the election is worth it at your revenue, and if so, when to file so the timing works in your favor.
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A reasonable-salary number you can defend
Grounded in real occupation and geography data, documented in writing, and sized to your profit rather than pulled out of a template.
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A dated year-one plan
The sequence of decisions, filings, and payroll starts, mapped to your formation date and your first full year of income.
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Human guidance while you execute it
The questions come at odd hours; you get real answers, not a ticket queue.
Founder Move never operates your payroll account. You own the platform, you own the filings, you own the records. What I hand you is the thinking.
This is for a specific kind of owner.
A fit if you
- Just formed (or are about to form) a single-owner service LLC — consulting, professional services, creative, technical, advisory.
- Expect to invoice $70,000 or more in your first full year.
- Want the decisions made once, in writing, so you can point at them a year from now.
Not a fit if you
- Have taken outside investment or plan to. This work assumes a solo owner keeping the profit.
- Have multiple members or partners. Different tax path, different decisions.
- Are looking for someone to run your books, cut your paychecks, or file your return. Those are jobs for a bookkeeper, a payroll provider, and a CPA — not Founder Move.
If your expected income for year one is under $50,000, S-Corp usually isn't the right move yet. In that case the free tool below will get you further than a paid engagement would.
Start with the reasonable-salary question.
Almost every other decision — whether to elect S-Corp, when to run first payroll, what to leave in the business — depends on what a reasonable salary looks like for what you actually do, where you actually live, and what you expect to earn this year.
There's a free tool for that. Three minutes, four inputs, a real number and a range you can work from. No email. No account. No follow-up sequence.
Depending on where your profit lands, the tool will show you the honest next step — including "don't buy anything from me yet" when that's the right answer.
When it makes sense to work together.
If the salary tool points you toward paid help, that's a conversation, not a checkout button. Every engagement starts with a short call — enough to see whether the timing, the numbers, and the fit are right on both sides.
There's no standard package price on this page on purpose. What you actually need depends on your formation date, your income trajectory, and how much of the year is still in front of us. Some owners need a one-time readiness plan; some need a year-one concierge relationship; some need a compliance calendar and nothing more. I'll tell you which one you are before I quote anything.
Who's behind this.
I'm Mark Carpenter. Two decades of building operational systems in software taught me that the difference between a business that keeps its earnings and one that quietly bleeds them is almost always the setup — the decisions made in year one that nobody thinks to revisit in year three.
Founder Move is where I do that work for other owners. Not a CPA, not a bookkeeper, not a payroll company — a practitioner who's set up the same stack enough times to know where the money actually leaks and how to document the decisions so they hold up later.
Founder Move is a Michigan LLC. If we work together, you're working with me — not a team, not a marketplace, not a queue.
— Mark