Clerky: We help startups and attorneys get legal paperwork done.
I wish all smaller startup that is being acquired by big fish would start their blog by stating what they do first. So that hopefully we get a little bit of context of what is being sold and what it might add in the future.
Every single time I had to click around and look at what they do and what are their competitors to help understand the company.
theowaway213456
It's the second sentence of the blog post.
echelon
When faced with a wall of text, I make a decision to either find the homepage (which I did this time) or click back to the HN discussion.
I've been bitten far too many times by low info density wall of text.
I think this is many people's algorithm.
john_strinlai
>When faced with a wall of text
wall? it is less than 400 words, separated over 5 paragraphs. is that what counts as a "wall" now?
your comment is longer (49 words) than it takes to get to the answer of what clerky does (45 words).
echelon
The paragraphs descend below the page fold. The paragraphs in view have 10 lines of height and a hero image takes up the first half. It's a bad shape.
The one question I want answered is "what is Stripe buying?" I know the prose is typical acquisition copy. I can figure out the strategy myself once I know what was bought.
anthonypasq
youve spent 100x the time arguing about the point as it would have taken you to read 2 sentences further.
for someone who goes on about how busy and valuable your time is, you are making some interesting decisions
echelon
I suppose it's a very human behavior to speak out against the communicated preferences of others.
Maybe I'm wasting your time now.
antonvs
> wall? it is less than 400 words, separated over 5 paragraphs. is that what counts as a "wall" now?
It seems to be, yes. The Twitterization of discourse.
andunie
Thank you, yes. I wish that too. I had never heard of this Clerky before now.
HPMOR
Clerky is great, Stripe is really buying all of the great product companies. I feel like with Clerky and Stripe Atlas they, Stripe now controls all of the early incorporation infrastructure now. This feels deeply problematic.
rattray
I've used https://delawareinc.com/ to incorporate several companies over the years, and always had a good experience. Their website looks pretty old-school but it works well and their service is very prompt.
So I wouldn't Stripe controls all of the early incorporation infrastructure – just the flashy stuff (which I'm sure is great too).
(disclaimer: former Stripe employee)
ElProlactin
Yeah, it's not even close. Stripe Atlas is a very small part of the market. It doesn't mean the product isn't good but every year, over a million new businesses that are formed and of those that are incorporated, I'd guess that a very small fragment are incorporated through Stripe Atlas.
forshaper
Most businesses in the state I live in, as well as the states around me (what someone in SF or NY would call flyover) are handled by a registered agent (trivial, not even in a fee to become an agent in most states, just a valid local address) or the owner.
tbh I still don't understand why anyone bothers paying anyone or anything to do the paperwork, it's not like Federal taxes
antaviana
Why would you pay someone to do Federal Taxes? Are they difficult to do in the US?
forshaper
Yeah, few things are as complex for a business in any industry that has ever gotten caught in the nation's political sights. For example, if you provide some sort of VoIP service, there's levels of nested rules that fill books, in part due to the breakup of the Bell System later coming into full contact with the internet. Plenty of carve outs, loops, and all manner of grandfathered elements for everyone.
The only thing more complicated than Federal taxes is environmental regulation. Everything else is simpler.
georgel
> controls all of the early incorporation infrastructure
You don't need to rely on Stripe to do anything. There are other payment gateways, and you can file things yourself (or hire someone).
Do they make things very easy and accessible for a smaller fee than doing it yourself, yes.
brianwawok
In fact Atlas and their push to be a C-Corp is a bad play for us small timers
ElProlactin
A C corporation can still make a lot of sense for a small business depending on the nature of the business and the interests and needs of the owners.
C corps can offer a lot of advantages in terms of shareholder and employee benefits, particularly around healthcare, and QSBS is a huge benefit for qualified businesses and owners who might one day sell the business.
gnfargbl
...unless you're based in a jurisdiction like the UK, where an LLC may not get the same tax treatment as a C-corp (Ltd companies being the norm here).
techsystems
What are some good alternatives to Stripe for people to pay for your stuff?
Unsure how much I trust my searches for this kind of stuff on the web lately
reddalo
Adyen is similar to Stripe, and it's an European company. But they select their customers, so you need to contact them, you can't sign-up "diy".
schnebbau
> Stripe now controls all of the early incorporation infrastructure now. This feels deeply problematic.
Lol, no.
Firstbase, Doola, Capbase. Not to mention all the old school cos that will help you incorporate in their state.
phtrivier
No idea about the products, or if it is "good news for founders, and bad for consumers" as is unfortunately sometimes the case.
But thanks for wording the press release as "company X acquired company Y", and not some weasely lingo line like "Y is joining the X family".
tash_2s
this
akrolsmir
Oh awesome! I love Stripe Atlas overall for the fast/excellent UX, but Clerky supports PBCs and a higher degree of customization (eg useful for incorporating for https://manifest.is since we had previously agreed on an informal equity split with a bunch of people).
Hoping that now they'll have the best of both worlds!
codemog
What’s with all these acquisitions? Stripe realizing it’s going to slowly become PayPal 2.0 because infinite growth doesn’t exist?
hibikir
Doing just payments is a really low margin industry, and the larger the contract you are after, the lower the margins. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to try to sign up startups, as their growth is your growth. And to win in the startup market, you don't win by lowest costs, but by how much generic work you can save them. Cut their headaches, and they'll be happy giving you a wider cut.
Thus, a million little acquisitions to make the possible Stripe bundle for small companies stronger, as they become the moat. The opposite of, say, the Adyen play, when you want to lower your own costs, and make money on tiny margins to do processing for really large companies.
whazor
My analysis is that Stripe wants to own the costs of running a startup. They would get a complete picture of both sides of the business: what money comes in and where it goes.
There are also a couple of advantages. They can take money directly from revenue before it leaves Stripes and without any processing costs. They can also invest into startups through credits and financing. And finally, their exposure to bankruptcy risk can drop as well.
nkotov
If they buy Mercury - it's game over.
anthonypasq
Why would payments be low margin? You're making a small amount on each transaction, but to you thats essentially all profit no?
benatkin
AI is making it a low-moat industry too. It's a lot quicker to build some API docs, a behavior tracking JavaScript library, and some fraud detection, with LLMs.
disgruntledphd2
> some fraud detection
Fraud detection is really, really, really, really hard so I would probably stick with someone like Stripe for this, as they have so much data that they can do a really good job.
And fundamentally, the moat for Stripe isn't just the front-end APIs, it's all the work that they do (and there's a lot) in connecting together financial infrastructure. Even if you could wave a magic wand and generate all the code Stripe has (which you can't, currently) then you'd still need to build out all the partnerships, which is a lot of work.
Disclaimer: former Stripe (though only a tourist), still hold some of their shares.
testbjjl
I think about their IPO and what seems and likely still is a promising offering seems a little less so with AI offerings. I also wonder if these businesses, suffering from the same AI uncertainties are a good value?
fny
I think the aim is to become the agent for commerce.
amelius
Like a regulator. Great!
If you don't like a government regulating a market then you haven't seen a company do it.
vxxzy
we will soon be in the last month of q3
CodeCompost
I'm getting Gordon Gecko vibes.
sickcodebruh
Clerky is great. I used it a few years ago and not only was the web product as advertised, they were quick to answer questions and give advice where they could for years after. I hope they keep doing well within Stripe.
nezaj
+1 to Clerky being a great product. Was super useful for us when incorporating and after as well
swampthing
Thank you!
written-beyond
Chose Clerky over Atlas, never regretted a thing. I recommended it to everyone, pushing through atleast 3 more founders.
gkoberger
Huge congrats to Clerky. They've been doing thins for a very long time, and have awesome support + a solid product (that just... does what it's supposed to do). Congrats Darby and team!
swampthing
Thank you Gregory! I've always been a fan of ReadMe too :)
davidsojevic
Congratulations to Darby, Chris, and the team!
Clerky is an absolutely amazing product and the team there are equally as amazing.
swampthing
Thank you, and thank you for being a part of our journey!
Computer0
I really can't bring myself to put myself behind stripe. Maybe it's because of how the Paypal people turned out. Maybe it is just a dirty business to be in.
mslate
Clerky when I last used it nearly a decade ago was lead generation for Delaware's business franchise tax.
Nothing ever came of my incorporated business (no spend, no revenue) and I received extremely menacing "collections" physical mail over many months about delinquent business incorporation franchise tax payments and escalating fees + fines (which I never paid).
The experience left me a very negative opinion of Clerky (and Delaware).
swampthing
Sorry to hear you had a poor experience. Just for clarity, we don't get anything out of the Delaware franchise tax. We'd certainly rather it not exist. But the franchise tax and the late penalties, and the fact that there is a minimum tax even if your corporation didn't do anything, are just part of Delaware law.
jnyst1985
Stripe buying founder relationships at incorporation… smart move I guess?
andunie
Stripe and Clerky are two companies that wouldn't exist of it wasn't for the existence of draconian government regulations.
Imagine how much capital and work hours society would be saving.
lbriner
That's not true. We will always have laws and to someone without the training, the legal side is best left to professionals.
chupchap
I think Stripe is looking at companies using their services and identifying companies to acquire. This reminds me of Facebook looking at data from pixel data to identify apps with heavy usage they could acquire.
tagalog
Used Clerky ten years ago to make my company. Great experience!
evtothedev
I've used clerky to incorporate a company, and I *loved* it, and I've recommended them to many people.
That said, I wonder if this reflects how much people are using LLMs for generating legal boilerplate, rather than using lawyer-generated boilerplate (i.e. clerky). As in, this is another version of Stack Overflow losing traffic.
alberth
I thought Atlas was pretty comparable to Clerky.
What does Clerky do that Atlas doesn’t to justify the acquisition?
clerky2026
I tried establishing my startup with Stripe Atlas in 2020 and it was a total trainwreck. Nothing worked right, nobody had a fucking clue what was going on, dead ends everywhere.
I gave up and went with Clerky, paid them $800 lifetime fee, and had things done the same day. A few years later I needed to change the name of my corporation and their support made it an absolute painless breeze.
So, I understand things change over 6 years, but Stripe Atlas was vaporware garbage when I attempted to use it.
My comment was poorly worded, what I meant was they have both lifetime and recurring customers. Their team is insanely good, specially their email support.
Seems like the easiest way to grow Atlas.
baggachipz
Stripe, the Bending Spoons of commerce-related sites.
apercu
I feel like I am repeating myself a lot lately, but I think that the "middle class" of software/tech companies is being eroded as fast as the middle classes of North American societies. The oligarchs just buy everything since they can no longer innovate.
kshahkshah
A competent administration would bring about an antitrust suit here I feel.
I wish all smaller startup that is being acquired by big fish would start their blog by stating what they do first. So that hopefully we get a little bit of context of what is being sold and what it might add in the future.
Every single time I had to click around and look at what they do and what are their competitors to help understand the company.
I've been bitten far too many times by low info density wall of text.
I think this is many people's algorithm.
wall? it is less than 400 words, separated over 5 paragraphs. is that what counts as a "wall" now?
your comment is longer (49 words) than it takes to get to the answer of what clerky does (45 words).
The one question I want answered is "what is Stripe buying?" I know the prose is typical acquisition copy. I can figure out the strategy myself once I know what was bought.
for someone who goes on about how busy and valuable your time is, you are making some interesting decisions
Maybe I'm wasting your time now.
It seems to be, yes. The Twitterization of discourse.
So I wouldn't Stripe controls all of the early incorporation infrastructure – just the flashy stuff (which I'm sure is great too).
(disclaimer: former Stripe employee)
tbh I still don't understand why anyone bothers paying anyone or anything to do the paperwork, it's not like Federal taxes
The only thing more complicated than Federal taxes is environmental regulation. Everything else is simpler.
You don't need to rely on Stripe to do anything. There are other payment gateways, and you can file things yourself (or hire someone).
Do they make things very easy and accessible for a smaller fee than doing it yourself, yes.
C corps can offer a lot of advantages in terms of shareholder and employee benefits, particularly around healthcare, and QSBS is a huge benefit for qualified businesses and owners who might one day sell the business.
Unsure how much I trust my searches for this kind of stuff on the web lately
Lol, no.
Firstbase, Doola, Capbase. Not to mention all the old school cos that will help you incorporate in their state.
But thanks for wording the press release as "company X acquired company Y", and not some weasely lingo line like "Y is joining the X family".
Hoping that now they'll have the best of both worlds!
Thus, a million little acquisitions to make the possible Stripe bundle for small companies stronger, as they become the moat. The opposite of, say, the Adyen play, when you want to lower your own costs, and make money on tiny margins to do processing for really large companies.
There are also a couple of advantages. They can take money directly from revenue before it leaves Stripes and without any processing costs. They can also invest into startups through credits and financing. And finally, their exposure to bankruptcy risk can drop as well.
Fraud detection is really, really, really, really hard so I would probably stick with someone like Stripe for this, as they have so much data that they can do a really good job.
And fundamentally, the moat for Stripe isn't just the front-end APIs, it's all the work that they do (and there's a lot) in connecting together financial infrastructure. Even if you could wave a magic wand and generate all the code Stripe has (which you can't, currently) then you'd still need to build out all the partnerships, which is a lot of work.
Disclaimer: former Stripe (though only a tourist), still hold some of their shares.
If you don't like a government regulating a market then you haven't seen a company do it.
Clerky is an absolutely amazing product and the team there are equally as amazing.
Nothing ever came of my incorporated business (no spend, no revenue) and I received extremely menacing "collections" physical mail over many months about delinquent business incorporation franchise tax payments and escalating fees + fines (which I never paid).
The experience left me a very negative opinion of Clerky (and Delaware).
Imagine how much capital and work hours society would be saving.
That said, I wonder if this reflects how much people are using LLMs for generating legal boilerplate, rather than using lawyer-generated boilerplate (i.e. clerky). As in, this is another version of Stack Overflow losing traffic.
What does Clerky do that Atlas doesn’t to justify the acquisition?
I gave up and went with Clerky, paid them $800 lifetime fee, and had things done the same day. A few years later I needed to change the name of my corporation and their support made it an absolute painless breeze.
So, I understand things change over 6 years, but Stripe Atlas was vaporware garbage when I attempted to use it.
Seems like the easiest way to grow Atlas.