This post is part of my series on starting from scratch and building it all in public.
Total startup cost: ~$1,000–1,500 upfront, and ~$200/month upkeep. This includes putting yourself on W2 payroll (sans wages), which you want in place from day one.
Zen Business
Great feedback from fellow founders about speed, quality, addons, and support.
Covers state filings, beneficial ownership reports, and registered agent services.
The “Filing + Tax Advice” addon at $99/mo is great for getting started.
Stripe Atlas = vendor lock-in; Carta Launch doesn’t cover basic legal compliance. For the uninitiated: always make a Delaware C-corp. Get your SIC and NAICS codes right.
Chase
Excellent baseline support for things like ACH, treasury, and wire transfers.
Widespread branch network is useful when things inevitably go wrong.
Plays well with most vendors, like QuickBooks and Rippling for expenses.
Mercury and Brex are popular alternatives; my knowledge there is dated.
Carta
Industry-standard cap table management that’s trusted by lawyers and investors.
Grows with you from founder stock, SAFEs, and options to 409As and Series A+.
Built-in document templates, data room, and investor relations are excellent.
Stripe
Their billing portal saves time; their APIs are built for a good developer experience.
Webhooks, observability tools, audit logs, and first-class test environment support.
Rippling
Handles onboarding, offboarding, HR compliance, and has great legal templates.
I’m a big fan of their LMS, Perf Management, and Workflows for HR automation
Supports most countries for overseas payroll which is otherwise a total nightmare.
Once you have 2+ FTEs, their ASO and PEO are great: benefits, workers comp, etc.
Bonus: it provisions the two things Google Workspace doesn’t: 1Pass and devices.
Rippling lets tech founders handle HR, ops, and compliance correctly from day one.
