What's new in our software:
- We've given your perks directory a whole new look. It's now easier than ever to see all your perks and find the ones you want for your startup.
- You now have more fine-grained control over who reviews and gets cc'd on paperwork. Now, when you set someone to always review or observe paperwork, you can set whether that should be for everything or only some kinds of paperwork. No more manually removing people each time!
Plus, we've added some new perks:
We're thrilled to announce a brand new help center just for attorneys and paralegals!
More attorneys than ever are using Clerky to help their clients. We realized there was a need for a dedicated space where attorneys and their staff could find answers to their questions. With our new help center, it's now easier than ever for attorneys and paralegals to learn how to use our software.
So what's inside the help center? We've provided detailed answers to common attorney questions, with step-by-step instructions, screenshots, example scenarios, and video tutorials. You can peruse articles by category – for example, "Teams" or "New Clients" – or you can search the help center for your particular question. Many articles also include how-to videos that will guide you through our UI.
If you're a startup founder, this new help center is great news for you, too! You now have a place to direct your legal team when they have questions about Clerky. Help them get up to speed faster than ever, so you can get back to building your startup.
Ready to learn more? Check out our new help center now!
What's new in our software:
- Our post-incorporation setup products now automatically calculate purchase prices of shares. No more worrying about messing up the calculations!
- Automatic reviewers now have both edit and review access on document sets. Now, when you assign an automatic reviewer for a team, they'll be able to do more.
- It's now possible to remove finalized document sets from your dashboard. Use this feature to delete test document sets or ones where the paperwork is no longer valid.
- When sending out signature requests, you'll now get autofill suggestions straight from your Clerky address book. No more searching through your inbox for the right email address to copy and paste!
- You can also now preview how your signature request email will look with a personal message. No surprises – know exactly how your request will appear before you press send.
Plus, we've added some new perks:
- Y Combinator – event invites, resources, advice, and even offers for funding
- Slack – 25% off upgrades to Slack Pro or other Business+ plans
- Crunchbase – 10% off your startup's first year
- Slab – 40% off your startup's first year
- Notion – 6 months free of Notion Plus and Notion AI
- Gusto – 6 months free of any Gusto plan
- Zendesk – 6 months free of Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Sales CRM
- Payoneer – $100 cashback after receiving $1,000 in payments
- Founder Shield – 30% off brokerage fee
- Aranca – save up to 40% on an audit-ready 409A valuation
- Porter – $10,000 in credits lasting 12 months
We’re excited to announce a new add-on — managed 83(b) elections!
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What is an 83(b) election? </br>Many startup founders and employees make 83(b) elections with the IRS to minimize and simplify taxes on shares they receive. Our handbook article on 83(b) elections is a great resource if you’re interested in learning more.
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With our managed 83(b) election add-on, you can file an 83(b) election without touching a single piece of paper, going to the post office, or filling out USPS forms. We’ll handle all of that for you.
More importantly, our process is designed to minimize the chance of problems in legal due diligence for financings and acquisitions. This goes well beyond the basic steps for making an 83(b) election.
Specifically, we’ve designed our process to optimize for evidence showing you made the 83(b) election:
- We don’t just mail the 83(b) election with Certified Mail service, we’ll use Priority Mail class and make sure the Certified Mail receipt is physically postmarked by the USPS.
- We’ll request a physical return receipt from the IRS. If we don't receive it, we'll submit a PS Form 3811-A to get delivery information for the return receipt from the USPS.
- We'll ask the IRS to send a date-stamped copy of your 83(b) election back and include a self-addressed Priority Mail envelope with Certified Mail tracking.
Once evidence of the election comes back, we’ll scan and upload it to your account. If you want, we’ll store the physical evidence in secure file storage so you don’t need to worry about where to put it. And if you ever need the physical evidence, we’ll mail it to you via your choice of Registered Mail (the most secure service the USPS offers) or Priority Mail (faster than Registered Mail).
This all goes beyond the bare minimum necessary to file a valid 83(b) election. But making a valid 83(b) election is different from being able to prove it. And being able to prove you made a valid 83(b) election to a court is different from being able to quickly convince people in legal due diligence that you did. Given how much could be at stake, we think it makes sense to take these extra steps to minimize the chance of a problem.
Starting today, if you’re a startup founder, you’ll be able to leverage all the thinking and expertise we've put into 83(b) elections. Our managed 83(b) election add-on will be available when you form a new startup or add a new co-founder through Clerky. Your employees can use it too, when you issue them restricted stock using our equity compensation products. And if you're a startup attorney, you can rest a little easier knowing your clients on Clerky can file their 83(b) elections the way you would.
Enjoy!
While many founders use Clerky on their own, many use it with their attorneys. Startup attorneys are able to use our software to review, comment on, and correct the information founders enter. They can stay in the loop on everything their clients do, and even change the underlying form language used to generate documents. Hundreds of startup attorneys are already using these features to work with their clients on Clerky today.
Today, we're excited to announce a new account type built just for startup attorneys helping founders on Clerky: Attorney accounts.
With Attorney accounts, startup attorneys get access to a private workspace for their firm or practice. Workspaces come with tools to help startup attorneys keep everything they're doing with clients organized, as well as collaborate with other attorneys or paralegals at their firm.
Attorney accounts get access to the same products regular accounts do, plus an advanced set of attorney-only products. These products are not available to regular accounts, because they are more difficult to use correctly without an attorney. Startup attorneys will be able to invite clients to use any product they have access to, or use them directly if they prefer.
We’re particularly excited about the remedial products now available to help attorneys fix issues with companies formed through other online services. These issues were a huge motivation for starting Clerky. We started Clerky to help founders avoid those issues in the first place, and are proud to now be able to help fix some of those issues as well.
Attorney accounts are completely free (it still costs money to use the products, of course). If you’re a founder, share this blog post with your startup attorney and tell them to sign up! If you are a startup attorney, you can sign up for an account here.
We hope Attorney accounts will be useful for startup attorneys, and ultimately benefit startups by reducing the cost of getting legal paperwork done. We have a lot more features planned around this, so stay tuned!
Today, in partnership with B Lab, we're excited to officially launch support for Delaware public benefit corporations on Clerky.
Delaware PBCs are increasingly common with founders who want to run their startups not only for the benefit of stockholders, but also the broader public. While regular Delaware corporations are required to maximize stockholder value, Delaware PBCs must balance that interest against one or more specified public benefits, as well as anyone it materially affects. For founders, this means more freedom to use their startup as a force for good, which we are proud to support.
This launch marks the first time PBC startups can do the complete set of formation paperwork that investors and acquirers look for, entirely online. And as with regular startups, PBC startups that form on Clerky can go on to use our complete suite of products for fundraising and hiring as they grow. We're excited to bring to PBC startups our unique focus on doing paperwork correctly, in order to help avoid legal issues down the line.
We are also thrilled to be working with B Lab to help our PBC customers go on to become certified B Corporations. In order to be certified by B Lab, B Corporations are held to rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Certification as a B Corporation is a great tool for communicating values to potential customers, employees, investors, and partners.
Delaware enacted the legislation enabling PBCs four years ago, at the urging of B Lab. Back then, companies electing for PBC status were large and established, like Method, Kickstarter, and Plum Organics. Increasingly though, founders are incorporating their startups as PBCs from the start. Some startups that have already used Clerky to form as PBCs are:
- Crowdbotics uses machine learning and on-demand software engineers to automate software development. Crowdbotics was founded by Anand Kulkarni, a serial entrepreneur who led his previous startup through Y Combinator to raise over $20 million in venture capital financing.
- FreeWill provides users with a friendly and intuitive way to create high-quality legal wills, completely free. These tools make charitable giving within wills easier than ever, and the company aims to raise $1 trillion globally for nonprofit organizations. FreeWill is funded by Highland Capital Partners and Dorm Room Fund (run by First Round Capital), and was founded by Patrick Schmitt (former Head of Innovation at Change.org, a certified B Corporation), Jennifer Xia, Helen Zou, and Alexander Leishman.
As more founders aim to start PBCs, we're also developing resources to help them along the way. To that end, we've updated our Legal Concepts for Founders handbook to include an article about PBCs and B Corporations, and are happy to announce the addition of Rick Alexander, the Head of Legal Policy at B Lab, to the editorial board. Rick is widely recognized as one of the world's leading experts in Delaware corporate law.
We're excited to make it easier for founders to use their startups as a force for good, and are very much looking forward to seeing the impressive impact they will have.