Legal Status of USA/UK Start up forming

I and a partner wish to set up a company. One of us lives in the UK and the other in the USA. We both want to make sure we are one legal entity so we can sell shares, or if the start-up was bought out, we'd both be entitled to the proceeds. We'd hate for a situation to arise where one of us has no legal standing if the company was bought out.

How do I go about setting up an international startup between the UK & USA where all directors have the same rights & legal status?

AFAIK, you can set up a UK Ltd company with overseas shareholders and/or directors. You will need at least one UK address to use as the "service address", so that Companies House, HMRC, etc can send you post.

Creating a Ltd in the UK is trivial (see here ) and you can structure the shares however you see fit, for example, 100 shares, split 50:50, etc.

It may be possible to create a US company using a similar structure, but I suspect it will be more complex and more expensive.

As always, IMHO, YMMV, IANAL, etc.

Establish the company in either the UK or the US; both countries happily allow shareholders in their corporations to be foreigners. I have set up companies in both the US and the UK and have found that the paperwork is far less in the US.

I would recommend having an experienced startup lawyer create your initial paperwork, this stuff is so simple and standard for them that most startup lawyers are happy to defer their compensation for the initial paperwork if you promise them that you'll pay them when and if you raise a large round of financing (and if you don't raise financing, they eat the cost, which is negligible).