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- Hacker News
- Stripe buying founder relationships at incorporation… smart move I guess?by jnyst1985
- 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).
by mslate - 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.by swampthing
- 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.by Computer0
- 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!by gkoberger
- Thank you Gregory! I've always been a fan of ReadMe too :)by swampthing
- Congratulations to Darby, Chris, and the team!
Clerky is an absolutely amazing product and the team there are equally as amazing.
by davidsojevic - Thank you, and thank you for being a part of our journey!by swampthing
- +1 to Clerky being a great product. Was super useful for us when incorporating and after as wellby nezaj
- Thank you!by swampthing
- 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.by sickcodebruh
- What’s with all these acquisitions? Stripe realizing it’s going to slowly become PayPal 2.0 because infinite growth doesn’t exist?by codemog
- I'm getting Gordon Gecko vibes.by CodeCompost
- we will soon be in the last month of q3by vxxzy
- I think the aim is to become the agent for commerce.by fny
- 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?by testbjjl
- 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.
by hibikir - 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!
by akrolsmir - 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".
by phtrivier - thisby tash_2s
- 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.by HPMOR
- > 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.
by schnebbau - > 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.
by georgel - 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)
by rattray - 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.
by ksec - Thank you, yes. I wish that too. I had never heard of this Clerky before now.by andunie
- It's the second sentence of the blog post.