A falsifiable test

The Networked Revenue Engine

▶ Play these as cards in Entity Wars

The conviction: if you open enough orgs and plan hard enough, a network of entities becomes a revenue engine. But "engine for what?" Pick an objective — take-home, capital raised in a given year, throughput, lowest tax, asset protection — and the same recipes reorder completely. The simulator runs the same business through each structure and ranks them honestly, charging the real cost of every entity.

Objective — what does "winning" mean?
Cash that legally reaches the human, after taxes and the cost of every entity.
Over what horizon?
Underlying business
Net business income
$200,000/yr
The Lean Operator
A single LLC with an S-corp election and a reasonable 40% salary. No holding company, no trust, no extra filings to feed. It raises almost no outside capital and protects nothing beyond the one veil — but for pure owner take-home at a healthy income it is very hard to beat.
LLC/S● operating
Operating LLC (S-corp elected)
Take-home
$602,200
Capital raised
$455,000
Throughput
$1,455,000
Asset protection
1 pts
Year-by-year
YearNet business incomeOwner from ops (after tax)Donation costOverheadTake-home
1$200,000$122,640-$0-$2,200$120,440
2$200,000$122,640-$0-$2,200$120,440
3$200,000$122,640-$0-$2,200$120,440
4$200,000$122,640-$0-$2,200$120,440
5$200,000$122,640-$0-$2,200$120,440
Leaderboard — Owner take-home (cumulative)
The Lean Operator is #2 of 8 for this objective.
1The VC RocketshipBEST$609,000
2The Lean Operator$602,200
3The Startup Stack$590,000
4The Founder Stack$575,700
5Single plain LLC$566,468
6The Over-Engineered Stack$539,968
7The Impact Engine$494,000
8The Family Wealth StackWORST$458,200
The Mission Ecosysteminvalid
The Grant Engineinvalid
The Community Stackinvalid
Decisions
The verdict (5-yr take-home)
PASS — the network beats one LLC
Beats the single-LLC baseline by $35,732 over 5 yr.
Network owner take-home$602,200
Baseline (single plain LLC)$566,468
driver: S-corp election: payroll tax avoided on the 60% distribution portion
Assumptions — every rate the model uses
Personal ordinary income (top marginal)37.0%
Self-employment / payroll (to SS wage base)15.3%
Medicare (above wage base)2.90%
Social Security wage base$168,600
QBI deduction (pass-through)20.0%
C-corp / PBC corporate rate21.0%
Qualified dividend rate20.0%
Foundation excise on investment income1.39%
Foundation mandatory annual payout5.0%
UBIT rate / commercial-share threshold21.0% / 20.0%
S-corp reasonable-salary floor40.0%
Annual overhead per entity (the cost of complexity)
LLC$800/yr
LLC/S$2,200/yr
C-Corp$3,000/yr
Hold LLC$1,200/yr
Series$1,500/yr
501c3$8,000/yr
501c4$6,000/yr
Priv. Fdn$12,000/yr
DAF$500/yr
PBC$3,000/yr
Coop$4,000/yr
Trust$2,500/yr
CLT$9,000/yr
Capital-raising capacity (× net business income / yr at peak)
C-Corp7.0× (eq 6/oth 1)
PBC4.3× (eq 3.5/oth 0.8)
LLC1.2× (eq 0.6/oth 0.6)
LLC/S0.7× (eq 0.2/oth 0.5)
Hold LLC0.4× (eq 0/oth 0.4)
Series0.4× (eq 0/oth 0.4)
Trust0.0× (eq 0/oth 0)
Coop0.6× (eq 0.1/oth 0.5)
501c33.0× (eq 0/oth 3)
501c41.0× (eq 0/oth 1)
Priv. Fdn0.5× (eq 0/oth 0.5)
DAF1.2× (eq 0/oth 1.2)
CLT1.8× (eq 0/oth 1.8)
Ramp by year: Y1 ×0.4 · Y2 ×1 · Y3 ×0.85 · Y4 ×0.6 · Y5 ×0.4 · later years ×0.3. Capital is summed across every entity in the network; issuing preferred stock boosts a C-corp/PBC's equity leg ×1.6.
Asset-protection points per entity (+1 per extra asset-isolating LLC)
Hold LLC3 pts
Series3 pts
Trust3 pts
Priv. Fdn2 pts
CLT2 pts
LLC1 pts
LLC/S1 pts
C-Corp1 pts
PBC1 pts
Coop1 pts
501c31 pts
501c41 pts
DAF1 pts

This is a deterministic model, not tax or investment advice. Take-home is real cash; capital-raising capacity and asset-protection points are coarse planning ratios, not market data. Overhead runs high on purpose: a network must earn its complexity. Exempt entities return $0 to the owner by law; pulling money back out is self-dealing/inurement and is rejected as invalid. Changing the objective changes the winner — that is the point.