After the successful registration with the chamber of commerce PosiTim is now also registered with the "finanzamt" and has received its German and European tax codes. In addition we also registered with ESA on
EMITS portal. So we are now fully ready for business and things are looking quite good for 2010!
PosiTim has meanwhile acquired two customers. One customer is the
European Space Agency (ESA). PosiTim delivers two experts to the navigation support office of the
European Space Operations Centre (ESOC). One is a true GNSS expert who has the technical lead of the GNSS activities in the ESOC navigation support office. The other is a Low Earth Orbiter (LEO) expert who is in charge for precise orbit determination (POD) of the ESA Earth Observation Missions, ERS-1, ERS-2, and ENVISAT.
We can not disclose uur second customer at present. However, this is also a big customer and we are working on a really exiting project that will go live in 2010. Until then we can not disclose any details about this exiting project.
The only scary part for early 2010 is our cash flow. ESA is in the middle of switching to SAP and everyone who has had such an experience knows that delays are unavoidable. So the first payments in 2010 may, or rather most likely will, be delayed. So the first 4 to 6 months of 2010 may be a bit tight. However, with our other customer an imporant milestone will be in February which, if all goes well, should resolve our cash-flow issues.
For now what remains is to wish you all a merry Christmas!
Labels: ESA, ESOC, LEO, POD, start-up
On November 30, 2009 PosiTim was successfully registered with the chamber of commerce in Darmstadt located in the German state of Hesse. PosiTim is now officially "in business" and is no longer "in Gruendung". There are still a number of administrative "hurdles" to be taken but they are all on their way and under control. This registration to much longer then was expected as one of the main reasons in Germany to introduce the "UG" was to reduce the amount of time needed to set up a company. So in principle the registration should be a matter of days but it took almost 2 months. On the positive side one must say that the process is simple and smooth, one just has to have a little patience.
Labels: start-up
On October 1, 2009 the founding papers for PosiTim were signed at the Notary office in Darmstadt, Germany. As legal form a so called UG, short for "unternehmergesellschaft" was chosen. This company form is practically identical to the well known GmbH (Gesellschaft mit beschraenkter Haftung). The main difference is that for an UG the starting capital is much lower. This makes the UG comparable to the "Ltd" (Limited) company structure in the UK. This is the main reason it was introduced in Germany. Many people were founding UK based Ltd companies because the starting capital for a GmbH is rather high (EURO 25000).
The official wording of the company is now: PosiTim UG (haftungsbeschraenkt) i.G.
The term "haftungsbeschraenkt" is not part of the abreviation UG contrary to the GmbH abreviation which does include this. Therefore, it is mandatory to include this discription with the name.
The abreviation i.G. means "in Gruendung" which indicates that we are still busy setting up the company and not all the legal steps (hurdles?) have been taken.
Anyway, the first of October 2009 was a big step for PosiTim! We are now truly a start-up company and can and will now start to build up our GNSS business.
Labels: GNSS, PosiTim, start-up
