Does setting up a company for your own improves credibility?
The key here is that you are defacto running your own company no matter if you acknowledge it or not.  In the end these questions have the goal of deciding if you can and will repay the loan.  Presumably you filed taxes on your income.  These can be shown to the loan officer as proof you have the ability to repay your loan. Running your freelancing as a business has advantages of being able to deduct normal expenses for running the business from your revenue. I am not sure how business cards improves your credit worthiness as they can be had for $10 in about an hour.
You need to hire a veteran product marketing manager who can help you position and message your product, and will also be connected to whatever ecosystem you operate in.  Then you need to find and hire a talented Marcom person.  Products never sell themselves, no matter how good.  And people would rather buy average products from an established company that they know will be there in a year, then a great product from a company with no credibility.  A good marketing team will help you build credibility and brand for you.  Don't be that CEO who thinks he/she knows how to message and pitch their product.  Because that is always ultimately a failing strategy, proven over and over. &gt;They especially The Atlantic does investigative journalism. Vice on the other hand does investigative journalism on the level of Buzzfeed.   The Atlantic is a magazine publisher. They publish curated content. They do not produce that content.  Buzzfeed was started as a viral lab to track viral content, then it developed into a internet media production house. That's why they try to produce viral content, but have a general reputation for creating clickbait. The most legitimate part of its reporting is that it actually pays reporters to go to things like the Whitehouse Press junkets. Its revenue is about ~$150M a year.  Vice is a broadcast company worth over $4B. Its revenues exceed $1B a year, particularly due to its lucrative deal with HBO. The fact that HBO charges premium prices for access to this content should be enough to distinguish it from outlets like Buzzfeed (which is completely free and open to access). Vice is a producer of content and not just a publisher/broadcaster of information. You've falsely equated them in quality to buzzfeed, perhaps by correlating that they are both recent upstarts.  &gt;I mean this linked piece is shallow to say the least.   Correct. I'm very skeptical of anyone reporting on a report that they, themselves, co-wrote, while touting co-founding an advocacy organization as somehow being a qualifier/credential. I would normally consider this to be paid content, although it is unclear if the writer paid for Vice to publish it. The quality of the image editing was also very poor. Of course, I doubt this content would ever make it into the more premium Vice communication channels, specifically I doubt this content would be covered in any capacity on HBO. That's why I said, at some point, that the quality of its reporting is inconsistent and sometimes quite dubious.  &gt;Why you think Vice does quality work is beyond me. The only possible reason is you are their main demographic.   It's not because it appeals to me. As someone well-versed in media politics, I ensure that my media diet is diverse and broadly sourced. The reason that I think some of their work is good is because I actually read it and think some of it is actually credible and worthy of my time. It's very clear that you do not find Vice news credible, so you want to act like your perceptions are equal in value and accuracy with my perceptions of it. The problem with your logic is that I actually am exposed to its content while you self-select not to expose yourself to it. I like some of it, because I find that some of it has a reasonable basis underlying the claim and I can't get the news anywhere else. So, you think our perceptions are equally accurate although mutually exclusive (i.e. we disagree with each other) or you think your perceptions are more accurate than mine (most likely due to a confirmation bias), but the reality is that my perceptions are broadly based considerations based on a much larger sampling of their content while your perceptions amount to an opinion derived from a first impression glance. "My favorite line:   ""Companies should generate enough profits to justify the price that shareholders are willing to pay for its shares. Once shareholders are no longer willing to pay up for those profits, they should invest that money elsewhere.""   This person loses all credibility right here." I believe that the same message could be sent without shutting the company and putting thousands of people on unemployment and hurting shareholders. Dissolving the company would only hurt everyone except the people responsible who almost certainly have golden parachutes in their employment contracts.  How about penalizing them by assessing an extra cyber-breach tax on their revenues? Or seizing stock options and assets of the top level execs and only releasing portions after X many months without a security breach? Or use the fines to fund an initiative that companies need to be bonded against data loss with the rates set by security experts doing audits on the companies?  There are plenty of ways to improve the situation without putting them out of business. At the very worst, the company should be put up for sale to be taken over by a holding company that can manage the process of bolstering their security instead of just liquidating assets which would only hurt the innocent bystanders in the incident. No. There's no personal responsibility per se if you set up a corporation, but if you don't have a track record a creditor will likely insist that you personally guarantee the debts of the corporation. Beyond that, personal responsibility would be the result of a piercing of the corporate veil, which is something the courts are unlikely to do unless there is indicia of fraud or the like. There are also some statutory provisions that can lead to personal liability of a corporation's directors (e.g. unpaid wages), but I don't think that's really what this thread is getting at. My entrepreneurship prof said that in most cases if you really believe in your product/idea and it is differentiated from what exists already, you can afford to have someone steal your idea and try to make a go of it because you should still be able to do a much better job of it than they can, and their heart isnt in it the way yours is.   I think ultimately it really depends on the product though. You definitely don't want to try going 2nd to market against someone with superior resources unless you can 100% beat their version of the product by a good margin (either on price or quality and hopefully both) and you can scale up quickly I'm not necessarily saying that VC is the way to go.  It works for some, not for others.  Personally, if my company idea takes off, I'd try to avoid it if at all possible.  However, the article was written in a way that any point she had in her post was overshadowed by her bitterness and excessive obscenities that it comes off as unprofessional and not worth reading.  It takes away from the valid points therein. The question is not whether CFA charterholders are better investment managers but rather whether starting (or having completed) your CFA will land you a better job. It's been my experience that it does, which is why so many people pursue it