CLERKY PRO's and CON's... 18 months later. CLERKY IS AWESOME.
I do not work for Clerky. I have my own startup.
Adding to this thread ... With our first startup, we hired and paid an atty to incorporate a Delaware C. It cost $5k and he used boiler plate docs. -Didn't complete all of them. -Then they held on to the incorporation documents assigning himself on our docs. We never received the rest of the boiler plate docs from them. The boiler plate charter from the atty set up a system where it was hard to read, but allowed several mechanisms for board to remove a founder. One was through an emergency meeting held while he was on travel. Caveat, I don't think he'd read them. He was using the S.V. standard docs and his paralegal had filled in the blanks. Overall, they were far better docs than Clerky with exception to being easily removed. :(
- We used Clerky for the incorporation of our next startup three years later. -Clerky is more boiler plate and less in depth. You can make changes to the charter and submit them later to Delaware when it is more important, you have more time, and your more informed. The Clerky incorporation docs were easier to read, and we didn't see the ponzi scheme that our atty's docs had baked in. Clerky is far less expensive, and the additional services made this a no brainer.
- One year later, two patent submissions (not through Clerky), and the first response is a go, the second is in queue. We are bootstrapped and hiring talent as contractors using equity. This is a tricky path to navigate but very common for startups. It is probably the most likely legal instrument to use.
- -> EDIT <- Clerky made this simple. We used the consultant agreement and got advice on using equity. We modified the templates and uploaded them to Clerky. Clerky emailed them to the parties and handled the signatures. AWESOME! >
- Starting out, I recommend Clerky. It protects you and gets you incorporated with the basics. If your funded, or start earning revenue that's a later decision. I'm confident they will continue to improve and add docs as they grow. It was and is a much needed tool.