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Comment by koolba | Hacker News Reader

Interesting angle. For a while I've wondered why nobody does a tech/startup version of "Company in a box". This looks like it's exactly that. Incorporation, payment processing, the works.

Is Stripe getting a cut of the eventual revenue from the service providers that are providing the offerings? What's the incentive on their side? Or are they just hoping to scrape by on the transaction fee revenue (which are way less than people think they are because they pay out most of it upstream[1]).

Also, what's the expiration on the $15K of AWS credits? The usual one year or longer?

[1]: If you're wondering why just think about how you get "1% cash back on all purchases!".

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Nope, we're not looking to make money off the incorporation, though we of course hope the companies become successful Stripe customers!

The $500 is above market rate for an LLC + US bank account. Do you think this cost will be revised down sometime in the future? Another challenge is that some folks can get in serious trouble (ie. imprisonment) with their local government for even having a foreign bank account. This is because local governments see it as a drain of foreign currency reserves like the USD/EUR, which are much needed by the country in question for imports. So this info needs to be kept top secret. What measures does Stripe take to prevent this kind of info from leaking?

Above market rate? As someone who has vigorously engaged in this process for literally years (due to the needs of myself and also my friends), the best I have ever seen is $800, which is the service I ended up using. Do you have any examples to point to?

A few places offer "Company in a box" but without the automatic bank account (e.g. search google for any "Register a company" keywords or even the more startup focused https://www.clerky.com).

The most amazing this here is obviously the automatic bank account integration. The last time I set up a SVB account I had to drive to their Santa Clara office, meet someone, convince them I'm not a hack fraud (lol, tricked them on that one), then fax over paperwork, then wait a week for things to get enabled. Just a lot of friction before even getting started on the real goal of setting up a business account for accepting iOS platform payments. (side note: let's hope the SVB web interface has gotten better since then. last I checked, it felt like a scaled up 1996 web app... kinda awful all over, but it got the job done.)

This offering does sound like it's more focused on helping non-US people to just start processing US payments easier and not expressly around startups (a la clerkly). It skips some startup-isms we all know and love (83b forms not expressly mentioned, does it allocate "startup levels" of default stock during incorporation, etc), and a big thing not mentioned: it doesn't register you as a foreign entity in a non-delaware state. You'll get a nastygram from your state tax office if you don't register as a local foreign entity (they'll scrape IRS details about you to figure out which companies exist in their state but aren't registered). Registering as a foreign entity is different for every state (more fees) and sometimes more BS ("you must notify the public of your new corporation by paying for notices in two (2) newspapers for six (6) weeks to complete this process" (that could be just for actual corporations and not foreign registrations though)).

Looks like an amazing offering overall, and it's always amusing to see how AWS throws credits all over the place. If Google could wise up to it (assuming it's not an Amazon promotional exclusivity contract), they should be throwing 4x-10x AWS-sized credits at all the same targets too.

I'm wondering how Atlas compares to Clerky. You mentioned 83b forms, default allocations, and foreign entity registration... Anything else to consider?

You could compare the clerkly offerings https://www.clerky.com/offerings to the currently beta stripe offerings https://stripe.com/atlas/faq#What-documents-will-be-created

Both systems are ways to get you bootstrapped as quickly as possible, but you should always lawyer up to verify the rest. The clerkly offerings go a bit deeper into employment/contracts, and Stripe could actually knock those out too by adding just a few more template forms over the next few months.

(not affiliated with either, just keeping up with the quickest/easiest/legalist ways to start organizations as hassle free as possible)

Yea, that's a very accurate guess - the way to think about it is that Stripe Atlas will more or less do the bare minimum necessary to get you processing payments on Stripe (though they put you in touch with folks to handle the rest).

Clerky's more of a full-package solution from the legal side of things (but obviously not on the banking / payments side).

There's also no need to apply for Clerky - anyone can just sign up and get it done immediately.

The most curious part about Stripe Atlas is they are just ε away from doing it all themselves now. Doesn't take giant leaps of the imagination to see where it could be headed next.

The whole "apply" stage is probably just because it's a new service. Don't want to have 10,000 people jumping on your as-yet-unproven process without a gating mechanism.

Part of the reason for this is that most banks, due to the Patriot Act, require a physical presence in order to fulfill their interpretation of their Know Your Customer duties. Am curious to see how Stripe plans to get around this as the precious few services currently on offer are of the 'friend of a friend' wink-wink nudge-nudge type.

To answer your question of why nobody's done a "company in a box" - the gating difficulty is in getting banks to accept companies more or less carte blanche, which gets even more difficult when international companies / founders are involved.

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