March 5th - We signed up to the waitlist the instant we heard about it
April 8th - Received an invite. They gave up a form to fill out online where we had to upload some IDs and other details.
April 10th - The docusign (digital signature) email documents came along with a legal/tax guide. We filled that out on Apr 19th.
We ended up delaying for a while discussing the tax implications since we're moving from a low tax (Hong Kong) to much higher tax (Delaware C-Corp) area. Unlike Hong Kong, taxes in the US appear much much more complicated and intimidating. Ultimately for our startup, we weighed the benefits and decided to go ahead.
May 16th - Decided to go ahead with the incorporation and signed all the forms (via docusign)
May 17th - Get 15k AWS credits emails (super cool)
May 19th - Our Stripe payments account was opened "You can now accept payments via Stripe" Email
May 19th - "Welcome to SVB Bank" email with login details
May 25th - "Your Company is now incorporated" w Certificate of Incorp attached
June 4th - "Your Company now has an EIN", which a number ID to file taxes
June 21st - SVB Bank asked us to print out a few docs to sign. Basically to confirm we received the EIN.
And that's it. In most cases, it only takes a few days once you've signed the forms to be able to start taking payments via Stripe US (so you get the cheaper Stripe US fees rather than the more expensive international fees).
As an international, we ended taking a while to decide if a US incorporation was the way to go. There's 2 reasons we hesitated:
1) Stripe released a beta in Asia where you can accept payments in many Asian countries. No more Braintree/Paypal crap so you don't need to have US bank account to use Stripe and the Stripe API.
2) American taxes are pretty high (compared to HK), and there seems to a lot more rules and paperwork required.
For us, what pushed us to go ahead despite our reservations was that we spent 1 week in SF (for our YC interview). We didn't get in, but we scheduled a lot of meetings while we were there and we realised if we were to raise any sort of significant funding, a Delaware C-corp is a prerequisite.
It would seem odd SV Bank opened the business bank account prior to the EIN (though maybe Atlas had the EIN and delayed sending it to you for one reason or another).
Can I ask what the game plan is for the annual DE C Corp compliance? Specifically do you know how much your DE franchise tax will be (did you determine how many shares were created or did Atlas)? Do you file your own DE annual report or does Atlas? Do you know who your DE Registered Agent is and the annual cost moving forward?
I'm thinking I could easyily offer those services, but it is not clear if Atlas does/plans to.
We have to file everything ourselves but we do have a few guides available from PWC and Orrickk? via Stripe Atlas that we're following as best as possible.
I have no idea what level of support Stripe Atlas will provide going forward, we have not heard anything in that regards, so we have enlisted friends in these professions to help us out.
If you do end up provided all these services in one place, let us know. It'll make my life a lot easier
I know this sounds trite, but you typically want to incorporate with either 10 million or 100 million shares (10 million being much easier to deal with) initially. Imagine giving someone .25% equity - this means you will give them 25 shares, which is a bad idea for multiple reasons, from rounding making a big difference in vesting (you vest .52 shares every month) to it not sounding impressive. You're not BRK.A.
Just make sure to pay via Assumed Par Value Capital Method.
So, the only reason why you incorporated in the US is because it is required from a funding PoV, right? Aside from that, I can't really see any reason why you would want to run things through a high tax US entity, in comparison to the sweet deal you're getting in HK (tax wise).
It's a tradeoff. If I had a lifestyle trading business, the corporate tax rate in HK is 0% (17% for revenue derived in HK, 0% for non-local revenue).
On the other hand, funding in this part of the world is pretty depressing. I have a collection of term sheets we keep to remind ourselves how bad it could've been. Personal liability, right to veto future investments, majority board control... you name it.
So we're trading higher taxes + crazy amounts of compliance, for a more managed and predictable funding process in the long run.
April 8th - Received an invite. They gave up a form to fill out online where we had to upload some IDs and other details.
April 10th - The docusign (digital signature) email documents came along with a legal/tax guide. We filled that out on Apr 19th.
We ended up delaying for a while discussing the tax implications since we're moving from a low tax (Hong Kong) to much higher tax (Delaware C-Corp) area. Unlike Hong Kong, taxes in the US appear much much more complicated and intimidating. Ultimately for our startup, we weighed the benefits and decided to go ahead.
May 16th - Decided to go ahead with the incorporation and signed all the forms (via docusign)
May 17th - Get 15k AWS credits emails (super cool)
May 19th - Our Stripe payments account was opened "You can now accept payments via Stripe" Email
May 19th - "Welcome to SVB Bank" email with login details
May 25th - "Your Company is now incorporated" w Certificate of Incorp attached
June 4th - "Your Company now has an EIN", which a number ID to file taxes
June 21st - SVB Bank asked us to print out a few docs to sign. Basically to confirm we received the EIN.
And that's it. In most cases, it only takes a few days once you've signed the forms to be able to start taking payments via Stripe US (so you get the cheaper Stripe US fees rather than the more expensive international fees).
As an international, we ended taking a while to decide if a US incorporation was the way to go. There's 2 reasons we hesitated:
1) Stripe released a beta in Asia where you can accept payments in many Asian countries. No more Braintree/Paypal crap so you don't need to have US bank account to use Stripe and the Stripe API.
2) American taxes are pretty high (compared to HK), and there seems to a lot more rules and paperwork required.
For us, what pushed us to go ahead despite our reservations was that we spent 1 week in SF (for our YC interview). We didn't get in, but we scheduled a lot of meetings while we were there and we realised if we were to raise any sort of significant funding, a Delaware C-corp is a prerequisite.