Hi everyone! I'm one of the cofounders of Clerky :)

We've gotten a ton of questions from founders over the years - this handbook is what we always wished existed, so that we could point people to it. There are already a lot of great blog posts by attorneys out there, but we thought it was also important to have something that (1) helps founders build a solid foundation of knowledge rather than piecemeal, (2) covers the terminology and practices used across startup law firms (thanks to our incredible editorial board), as opposed to one attorney or one firm, and (3) is kept up-to-date as laws or market practices change.

We're very excited to be finally sharing this with the community - please let us know what you think!

A few notes:

* This is very much aimed at startups of the type that might apply for YC one day, seek angel or VC money, etc. Obviously there are many other kinds of businesses, but it's really hard to write something that is broadly applicable, unfortunately. My apologies in advance to founders of other types of businesses.

* The content that we have has been thoroughly vetted, by more top-tier startup attorneys than you can shake a stick at. That said, the scope of the handbook in terms of topics covered should be considered a first cut, as should the presentation. We have many articles on the todo list, and also have some ideas for how to better present some of the more complex concepts.

Finally, feel free to use this thread as an opportunity to ask any general questions you might have about legal issues for startups - my cofounder Chris and I (we're both startup attorneys) will do our best to answer. Some of our editorial board might pop in from time to time too!

A few thoughts on the Handbook:

1. Law can be a morass and who then can you rely on when trying to understand it via online resources? Well, for startup legal issues, the answer now is the Clerky Handbook: thoroughly and carefully vetted by those who have lived and breathed this stuff for decades while working in the trenches with founders of all stripes. If you want reliability, you can’t ask for better.

2. The Handbook has scope limitations and that is understandable: to be useful for founders, the core part of the Handbook must by definition be strictly bounded or it loses effectiveness by injecting more nuance and complexity than is needed to convey the fundamentals. If the need is there (and I assume it will be), nuance and complexity can be added with adjunct materials.

3. To date, the Clerky founders have done a superb job of taking legal complexity and turning it into simple and streamlined processes - how to do a Delaware C-corp, how to do convertible notes, etc. This Handbook extends this to the idea of simplifying legal understanding, which is no small feat. In the end, it may look simple and easy but this is incredibly hard to do and all the more reason the accomplishment is to be commended.

4. The hand of YC seems to hover in and around most startup innovations of the past decade and this Handbook is no exception. So many barriers to founder success have come down in recent years and founders have YC to thank for much of this change. Add this Handbook to advances in which it has had a role.

5. The startup world is an amazing place. One advance after another, nonstop over many years. Now add this online resource to the list as a great reference platform to which many quality people have contributed. As it grows and develops, it will do great service for the common betterment now and for many years to come. Great work and kudos to those who drove this effort!

This is awesome. For anyone who's starting a company, Clerky is by far the best way to do all the legal legwork. I've used a number of companies to try to save time (including Stripe Atlas, which is kind of a disaster) and wish I'd just done everything through Clerky.

I'm a huge fan of Clerky and have been ever since one of the Founders spent an incredibly long time answering questions from aspiring founders on Reddit. I learned an immense amount just reading his responses and am a much more informed person as a result.

Consequently, I'm far too big of a fan to critically evaluate their work. Shit, I'd give their grocery list rave reviews...:)

But seriously, thanks for publishing this. I can't count how many founders struggle with the kind of information that your handbook covers. This is an absolutely wonderful gift.

Take good care of yourselves and best of luck!

This is really great. One feature request: it'd be great to be able to view the whole handbook as a one page document (e.g. I want to save it to Instapaper to read later) or as a complete PDF.

Love this. As a founder with an engineering background I often struggled with all sorts of legal terms and concepts. And it always seemed that people made me feel dumb every time I asked something like: "what's the difference between between LLC and Inc", or "what is a stock option?".

I think that in fields outside of science and engineering people are more quick to judge you when you make seemingly simple questions...

So thanks clerky team!

This is great--I like the style and the level of detail. My inner pedant also appreciates "Sometimes mistakenly referred to as a CIIAA Agreement."

One minor suggestion: you have foreign qualification on the "Process" page but you might create a separate topic area reviewing when and why this is required. It's something that an early stage company can easily overlook. Ditto for local business licensing.

As others have mentioned, Clerky is great.

We incorporated our company via Clerky and did our bit of angle investment stuff through them, as well as some of our other contractors IP paperwork.

I recommend it to anyone who asked me about doing a startup.

Two questions, I am about to incorporate and I am thinking about doing it in Wyoming instead of my home state of NY, what does Clerky think? And how can I buy some Clerky stock?

Hopefully you'll keep developing this (add more articles & whatnot), because the usefulness is definitely 10 out of 10.

Just so you know, your site doesn't properly redirect at this URL:

https://clerky.com/

Hey guys, love the concept. Just wanted to see when or who could use the contractor agreements? I would love to get those set up now.

Suggest 'US only' in title.

Two questions, I am about to incorporate and I am thinking about doing it in Wyoming instead of my home state of NY, what does Clerky think? And how can I buy some Clerky stock?