Show HN: Delaware Public Benefit Corporations on Clerky (YC S11)

Clerky continues to impress with its ability to offer cost-effective ways for founders to accomplish sophisticated corporate steps while preserving the high standards to ensure that it is all done right.

As one who has worked with founders for three decades now, I can say that it is far from easy to anticipate the range of things that can go wrong in such endeavors and even more daunting to try to build fail-safe procedures by which to scale such services so as to make them easily accessible to founders.

It might almost be taken as a measure of Clerky's remarkable progress that one can be confident, based on its brand name alone, that this is safe and friendly turf for every founder who wants to go the B Corp route. A very exciting development for founders!

Hi everyone, I'm one of the cofounders of Clerky. We are super excited to be partnering with B Lab to launch this!

For those that may be unfamiliar with PBCs, the high level overview is that they make it easier for founders to build mission-driven companies. With a normal Delaware corporation, you're supposed to maximize stockholder value - but with a Delaware PBC, you're supposed to balance that with the public benefit(s) you chose, and with the interests of anyone materially affected by your company's actions.

B Lab is the non-profit organization that spearheaded public benefit legislation in the US, including in Delaware. They're also the folks that certify B Corporations (some famous ones include Kickstarter, Patagonia, Method (the soap company), and Plum Organics).

This launch is exciting for us because up until now, Delaware PBC startups had no way to get all their formation paperwork done online (there are some incorporation services, but that doesn't give you everything you need as a startup).

If anyone has any questions on the legal details, or in general, feel free to ask :)

We were among the first companies to use this product at Crowdbotics, and our company couldn't be happier. This is a phenomenal step forward for folks looking to bake social awareness into their company's corporate DNA from day one. I'll mention also that the process was almost totally frictionless and Clerky's support was (as usual) phenomenal.

Go Chris & Darby!

This is awesome! I remember when B Corps came out and I was stoked to look into it but it just seemed really complicated so we bailed.

One question - have you talked to any VCs about b corps and what apprehensions (if any) they might have?

Wow, this is great. Props to the Clerky team. If this had existed in 2015 we would have used it, instead we paid a few thousand extra.

For anyone starting a mission-driven company, there's not really any practical downside to incorporating as a PBC, though it's still relatively new and untested. It's much less effort than becoming a B Corp, which you can choose to do afterward.

I see some confusion on terms--

PBC: legal corporate structure in 25+ states and growing, but still uncommon

B Corp: a more widely known certification from B Lab

You can be a PBC without being a B Corp but all B Corps need to become PBCs by a certain year iirc

(We incorporated Nava PBC as the first, and I think only, government contractor that's also a PBC.)