I Hugely Regret Using Stripe Atlas
New top story on Hacker News: I Hugely Regret Using Stripe Atlas I signed my company up through Stripe Atlas thinking it would be more convenient and save me time, boy was I wrong. It's been a time suck dealing with this company and their banking partners, I would recommend other founders who value their time to avoid this service. I've created an LLC in Delaware before using certain other googleable companies and it's gone completely smoothly, so this isn't my first rodeo. First problem, Stripe will create a new, separate Stripe account for you to use with Atlas. So if you already had some transactions (hope you do if you're forming a company) then you're going to need to migrate them. For my company, they just created another account with exactly the same name and just one capitalization difference, pretty confusing. Migration is likely automatic with a cool company like Stripe, right? Nope, they only can migrate your customers -- everything else, subscriptions, coupons, tx data you need to write a script and DIY! Have fun wasting an afternoon updating all your API keys and re-testing too. Side note, if you had special things like the Stripe startup school discount applied to your account, you'll lose it on Atlas. Unless you open up another support ticket with Stripe and wait for a couple weeks. Second problem, if you form a c-corp Stripe will create an account through SVB (Silicon Valley Bank) for you. You can go ahead and read the reviews on that bank yourself, but the biggest annoyance for me was a $25/mo account maintenance fee. OK, not atypical for a business bank, but most banks don't have a $25k+ min. balance for that fee! I do care about $300/year for my company when I specifically payed for Stripe Atlas thinking it would be more convenient and save me money. Third problem, want to switch to Azlo bank so that at least you don't have to pay monthly fees? That's great except Azlo will tell you that you need to talk to Stripe to do that, and surprise Stripe will tell you that... https://bit.ly/2HhbXjZ