Ask HN: Incorporate with Clerky vs. Atlas vs. Gust in 2020?

Stripe Atlas had a security incident a month ago that exposed sensitive data such as address and social security numbers. That could be called “business as usual” if not for the way they decided to address it - by offering one year of Experian identity protection. Talking about insulting intelligence. That changed my view about Stripe as a company.

Hi! I’m one of the cofounders of Clerky. I’m pretty sure we offer the most ability to customize things, if that’s what you meant in terms of flexibility. For example, you have the ability to customize the underlying form language to a large degree (though you would only want to do this with the assistance of a good startup attorney, in most cases).

If there’s a specific customization you have in mind, feel free to reach out and we’d be happy to let you know if it’s something our software would support.

I used Clerky in 2016. I found them pleasant and easy to work with. Took the time to answer all of my questions. Prices quite reasonable. Unfortunately, this data point is a bit out of date.

I regularly work with companies that use all of the above. All seem to produce decent documents. You can also compare their sample documents against ones from CooleyGo [1] and the like.

There are things you may desire as a founder that won't necessarily come standard in template docs from Clerky/Stripe/Gusto. Single-trigger acceleration [2] is the obvious example I can think of right now but I'm sure there are others.

Also, be sure to do your 83(b) election ASAP -- definitely within 30 days of incorporation. [3]

(Not a Cooley shill - they just produce good content.)

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[1] https://www.cooleygo.com/documents/

[2] https://www.cooleygo.com/what-is-double-trigger-acceleration...

[3] https://www.cooleygo.com/what-is-a-section-83b-election/

Asides from the Stripe Atlas SSN incident, one good alternative is Blook. https://blook.io/stripe-atlas-alternative

I've used Gust twice and I've been satisfied every time. The slightly more expensive plan also nets you 15k in AWS credit.