Based on your financial expertise, provide your response or viewpoint on the given financial question or topic. The response format is open.

Advantages of Shareholder over Director in new Company
I don't know Australian law, but I will give my US perspective here.  The custom in the US is for officers and directors to be indemnified by the corporation, and that LLCs have an even broader power to indemnify (even to remove the duty of loyalty!).  Moreover, directors will typically be able to purchase D&O insurance to protect them from loss in the event of liability. For US corporations (not LLCs), the duty of care (prudence) requires that directors behave responsibly in weighing major decisions, and consult experts and specialists before coming to rash decisions.  It usually becomes a court case in the context of a large public company in the midst of an acquisition event.  The only people with standing (in the US) are shareholders.  If all the other shareholders are directors, then it may be hard for them to blame you. Additionally, if you are concerned about the propriety of your actions, there may be sources to rely on.  First, discussion with your fellow directors can be a helpful guide (though will not usually immunize you from any accusation of wrongdoing), and disclosure tends to cure almost any accusation of breaching the duty of loyalty.  Second, boards often secure the advice of legal counsel, and sometimes bring on lawyers as members or will outright hire counsel for the board.  Third, there may be services that will provide you with generic advice (e.g. UK Companies House and US-based IOD), which might set you at ease a little bit. I don't know the details of Australian law, as I say.  But my sense of common law countries is that, like the US, they are primarily concerned about negligence (incompetently or imprudently neglecting to understand the business and make informed decisions), disloyalty (fraudulently engaging in self-interested transactions that either hurt the company or should have been offered to the company), and recklessness (not bothering to seek out information).  As long as you are active, informed, engaged, and not engaging in secret deals outside the company (especially deals where either side is competing with the company), then that would be more than sufficient under the US standard. If you are concerned about liability, then inquire into indemnifications by the company (in the US, the company can usually pay all legal costs of directors), insurance, and legal counsel.  I imagine your business partners are no more savvy than you are.  My impression is you are overreacting to relatively rare and exotic expression of corporate law (at least in the US). But I'll close by repeating that I don't know Australian corporate law.