Suggestions
Mike Bosserman
Cofounder at Discern
Mike Bosserman is a co-founder of Discern, a company specializing in automating legal entity management for businesses. He has a background in finance and has held key roles in various organizations throughout his career.
Bosserman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from the University of Richmond. He also studied International Finance at the Copenhagen Business School and completed courses at Excelia.
Prior to co-founding Discern, Bosserman served as the Chief Revenue Officer and VP of Growth at MANTL. He also led business development and growth initiatives at TransferWise.1 Earlier in his career, he gained experience in investment analysis and management at Valar Ventures Management LLC and Spider Management.1
Discern, the company Bosserman co-founded, is a Compliance Operating System that provides automated Registered Agent services, filing automation, and digital solutions for entity management.23 The company was founded by Bosserman along with Raj Patel and Simon Moschou.3
In October 2024, Discern announced that it had raised $4.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Walkabout Ventures.3 The company has been growing rapidly, with over 100 customers and a 23% monthly growth rate as of Q3 2024.3
Bosserman is known for his expertise in legal entity management software and financial services, making him a valuable resource in these fields.
Highlights
It's faster to transfer AUD from Australia to a USD Chase account (instant) with Wise than it is a US-based Schwab account to the same chase account (some unknown number of days less than 5). I literally just tested this by accident.
When I worked at Wise, local payment rails were already the blocking item on speed, but that it still amazes me whenever I experience it.
Wise has built a truly exceptional product. Just awesome. cc Nilan Peiris
Will return to normally scheduled programming on state compliance shortly. Apologies to the fans who saw my name pop up and expected to read about franchise taxes or other esoteric filing drama.
We made Discern to automate this stuff, but if you want to handle your entity compliance yourself instead, here’s how I would do it:
-
Figure out who your registered agent is. They are definitely sending you invoices, but if you can’t remember still - a good place to start is to ask your lawyer - they probably assigned it to you in the first place.
-
Get a list of your state registrations for all your entities. Presumably you already have this, because at some point you registered your legal entity in those states. If you don’t - you have a few options: you can (a) ask your Registered Agent - you’re paying them for each state (b) use a database like OpenCorporates (c) search the secretary of state websites for your company (d) wait for angry mail. If you don’t know where you’re registered, it’s going to be hard to meet those compliance obligations.
-
Put all of those registrations in a spreadsheet, and add a column with the date your periodic report is due. I used “periodic” here, because sometimes it’s not every year. NY, for example, is biennial. I would add that detail in a notes column, as you will surely forget. Don’t know when things are due? Again - the secretary of state websites will typically tell you somewhere.
Sometimes the due date calculation is a little complicated. It may be something like - first time reports are due 90 days after registering, then on the one year anniversary of registering thereafter. Take your time on this step. I wouldn’t rely on your Registered Agent’s reminders for this, as they are OFTEN wrong.
Other filings, e.g. franchise taxes, also impact your standing so you’ll want to add those dates as a separate column.
-
Add a column with a link to the SOS filing website, as you file them. Trying to find where exactly to file is a huge waste of time if you do it every year. If you have used any state websites, it’s not obvious (web 1.0 is generous).
-
Now - go create calendar reminders for the first year. Bonus points if you create smart recurring invites that map to your actual due dates, so you don’t have to do this again. Invite other people who will help you remember to do them.
-
Start filing. As you file things, it may help to keep the information you’re using in the spreadsheet, e.g. addresses. You will be re-entering it over and over again.
-
When you get evidence back - put it in whatever cloud storage you use with some kind of sane naming convention. It typically costs money and time to have the state send you evidence on a one-off.
That’s it! Simple.
Now - if you don’t want to do this, you can pay the same amount you’re currently paying your Registered Agent for Discern, which will replace your Registered Agent and automate everything I’ve described above.
There is no implementation time - we hand over an account ready to use. We’ll even tell you where you’re registered in the first place. Seems like a no-brainer. Raj Patel Simon Moschou Josh Diamond Jordy Albert Carleigh Lake
