An LLC Deserves a Better Beginning.

In 2025, I didn’t know how to form a U.S. LLC. I hired someone to form Enterobiz for me in New Mexico and paid far more for the LLC alone than FilingOak charges today. I got my LLC, but that was basically it. I was left trying to figure out what came next.

I learned how to prepare an SS-4 and had it rejected multiple times. I still remember my hands shaking while trying to work out what I had done wrong. Eventually my EIN was approved, and I learned how to call the IRS and obtained a 147C letter myself. At the time, I didn’t even know what a CP575 was because the person who had formed my LLC had never sent one to me.

So I kept digging. I read the actual documentation. When it came time to apply for Stripe, I didn’t go looking for tricks or shortcuts. I worked through Stripe’s real requirements, made sure Enterobiz and its documents were legitimately presented, and Stripe approved Enterobiz within one business day.

Then I landed my first LLC formation client, and I was shivering with anxiety again. The state portal rejected my international card, so I set up a fintech bank, routed the Stripe funds into it and tried again. The payment went through, but the filing was declined and the state fee was non-refundable.

That wasn’t my client’s mistake, so I didn’t want to make it their problem. I paid the next filing fee from my own pocket and filed again. This time a minor correction was required. I handled it within my authorized role, corrected the filing and resubmitted it instead of throwing the work back at the customer.

The LLC was approved, and then I handled the EIN.

The next order still made me anxious, and so did the ones after it. But repetition changed that. State portals stopped feeling mysterious. SS-4s stopped frightening me. Corrections became things to solve instead of things to fear, and IRS calls became part of the work.

I went from an anxious founder trying to understand the system to someone who genuinely enjoyed the part most people probably consider boring: state filings, SS-4s, corrections and IRS follow-up.

The problem was that the way I delivered the service had become a burden.

I was doing too much manually. A Stripe notification could wake me at 2 a.m. and I’d turn on my laptop just to tell someone their order had been received. I manually chased signatures, answered WhatsApp messages myself and didn’t even have a proper client workspace. Documents that deserved a secure home were moving through email and WhatsApp because I hadn’t built somewhere better for them to live.

That bothered me for two reasons.

It was exhausting for me, and it wasn’t the standard I wanted for the customer.

I didn’t hate the work. I hated the burden I had built around it.

I didn’t need to abandon the expertise I had spent so much time developing. I needed a better way to deliver it.

That experience led me to build FilingOak.

FounderVault gives the work a proper home. Maya handles routine assistance that doesn’t require me. Founders can provide the information FilingOak actually needs without turning every order into another chain of messages. Documents, progress, customer actions and support each have somewhere they belong.

And I get to spend more of my time on the part I discovered I actually enjoy: the filing work itself.

FilingOak wasn’t shaped because I started as some superhero who already knew everything about LLC formation.

I didn’t.

I made mistakes, lost money, got things rejected, learned, corrected them and kept digging until I understood the problem better and found a better way to handle it the next time.

That’s how FilingOak is still being built.

Rehan Anjum
Founder, FilingOak