> The legal piece on this is vital but almost in tow, as it were. A standard Delaware C corp is the only option, which is adequate for a start but will clearly not meet the needs of a potentially huge number of founding teams that may have differing circumstances.
I know a C corp is the bay area standard, but at least in the midwest many startups still begin as LLCs for simplicity. I hope the Atlas team considers this for future work.
does stripe support personal bank accounts? I have a U.S personal bank account but I don't live in the U.S. nor do I'm a U.S. citizen, in my country there isn't anything as awesome as Stripe, the bank infrastructure here is pretty bad and non existent for online payment processing of credit cards. All my clients will reside outside the U.S. but I want to use U.S/Stripe as a proxy for getting paid.
While we include a new bank account when you incorporate through Atlas, you can update your Stripe account to use a different bank account—like your personal account—if you prefer. That said, using a checking account over a personal bank account might make more sense for your business; you'd want to get advice on this to decide the best setup for you.
Make sure to consider exchange rates and costs for wire transfers if you want to go that route. I think Stripe charges an additional 2% for transactions in foreign currecies, and US banks will charge another 3% (or more) when you transfer that money to a foreign curreny. And there are lots of hidden fees for international wire transfers -- on a recent tranfer that I received, around 7% was missing and I had no clue where it had gone. Additionally, fluctuating exchange rates might eat a lot of money.
I know a C corp is the bay area standard, but at least in the midwest many startups still begin as LLCs for simplicity. I hope the Atlas team considers this for future work.