Delaware C Corporation
One platform from incorporation to Series A and beyond.
Form your Delaware C Corp, put the founding legal work in place, manage your cap table, issue equity, and raise on SAFEs, all in one continuous workflow. No stitching together four different tools or moving data between them.
5,000+ companies formed • 150+ countries • Money-back guarantee
Delaware C Corporation
Good standing- Certificate of incorporation filed
- Bylaws and initial board consent adopted
- Founder shares issued, vesting running
- 83(b) elections filed for 2 founders
- Option pool adopted, 1,000,000 shares
- Fully diluted
- 2,480,000
- Open SAFEs
- 3
Trusted by founders, operators, and global businesses in 150+ countries
Four products, one platform
This is what a founder normally assembles to reach a Series A, and every seam between them is somewhere a number goes wrong.
What you assemble today
Incorporation
Document signing
Cap table
Financing documents
What you run instead
Acme Labs, Inc.
One recordIncorporation
- ✓ Delaware certificate of incorporation
- ✓ Registered agent, first year included
- ✓ Business tax number
Founding documents
- ✓ Bylaws and action of incorporator
- ✓ Initial board consent and officer appointments
- ✓ Founder stock agreements, with vesting
- ✓ 83(b) deadline tracked from issuance
Equity
- ✓ Cap table with vesting that runs on its own
- ✓ Stock plan, grants and board consent per grant
- ✓ Employees see their own grant and vesting
Fundraising
- ✓ Y Combinator post-money SAFE, all four variants
- ✓ Routed signature and countersignature
- ✓ Conversion modelled before you sign
No exports, no re-keying, and one answer to who owns what.
Everything happens in the right order
Every one of these has to happen, and it has to happen in this order. Do them out of sequence, or skip one, and the cap table is quietly wrong until an investor's lawyer finds it.
Most of it is ours to do. Where you are needed it is to make a decision or sign something, never to work out what happens next.
- 01
Form the corporation
With the share structure investors expect: 10,000,000 authorized shares at nominal par value, leaving room for founders, the option pool and the round. Registered agent and business tax number included.
- 02
Appoint the board and adopt bylaws
The incorporator appoints the initial directors, then resigns. The board adopts bylaws, appoints officers and authorizes the first share issuance. Skipping this is the most common reason a cap table does not survive diligence.
- 03
Issue founder shares, with vesting
Stock purchase agreements with the vesting schedule you choose. Four years and a one year cliff is the default, because it is what investors expect and what protects founders from each other.
- 04
File the 83(b) election
Thirty days from buying your shares, with no extension. We start the clock the moment shares are issued.
- 05
Adopt the option pool
The board adopts the plan once, then each grant needs its own approval. We run both, so an offer letter never gets ahead of the paperwork behind it.
- 06
Raise on a SAFE
Generate the Y Combinator post-money SAFE, send it for signature, and watch it land on the cap table as an instrument that converts, not a note in a spreadsheet.
The one deadline that does not move
You have 30 days to file your 83(b)
From the day you buy your founder stock. There is no extension, no late filing and no way to fix it afterwards. Miss it and you can owe tax as your shares vest, on stock you cannot sell, in a company that has no cash.
Most tools will issue your shares and leave the deadline with you. We start the clock at issuance, tell you what to send and where, and record it against the company.
Shares issued
4 March
Tracked per founder, from the purchase date on their own agreement.
Signatures and workflows
Documents that know who signs them
A template gives you a file and a problem. Every document here carries its own workflow: who has to sign, in what order, what has to be true before it is valid, and what happens to the cap table when it completes.
- Routed to the right signers, including directors and, where the law requires it, spouses
- Countersignature and full audit trail, stored against the company record
- Board consent captured before a grant is real, not after the offer went out
- Completion updates the cap table, so there is nothing to re-key
Founder Stock Purchase Agreement
Out for signature- Ana RuizIncorporator
- David KimDirector
- Mia OseiFounder Awaiting signature
Action of Incorporator
GrantedNext: 83(b) election, due in 26 days
Cap table
A cap table you do not pay extra to keep
Ownership updates itself from the documents that created it. Vesting ticks, grants draw down the pool as the board approves them, and SAFEs sit there as real convertible instruments rather than a footnote.
- Founder vesting tracked daily, with cliffs and acceleration
- Option pool that reduces as grants are approved
- SAFEs modelled properly, so you can see the conversion before you sign
- Model a priced round and show every holder what it does to them
- Authorised
- 10,000,000
- Issued & outstanding
- 2,180,000
- Available to issue
- 240,000
- Fully diluted
- 2,480,000
| Holder | Class | Shares | Fully diluted |
|---|---|---|---|
Mia Osei Founder | Common | 1,041,600 | 42.0% |
David Kim Founder | Common | 942,40068.8% vested | 38.0% |
2024 Stock Plan Option pool | Common | 297,600 | 12.0% |
Convertibles
Ridge Ventures SAFE · post-money | $250,000 | $8,000,000 cap |
A. Whitfield SAFE · awaiting signature | $50,000 | $8,000,000 cap |
Employee equity
Option grants with the board consent attached
Every option grant legally needs board approval, and it is the step that gets skipped when a company is moving fast. Here the grant and the consent are the same workflow, so a promise in an offer letter and the paperwork behind it cannot drift apart.
- Adopt the stock plan once, then grant against it
- Board consent raised, signed and filed with each grant
- Vesting, exercise windows and leaver events tracked per holder
- Employees see their own grant, vesting and what it is worth
| Optionee | Options | Status |
|---|---|---|
Priya Nair 4 years, 1 year cliff | 40,000 | With your board |
Tom Alvarez 4 years, 1 year cliff | 15,000 | Granted |
Wei Chen 4 years, 1 year cliff | 5,000 | Granted |
- Pool remaining
- 240,000
- Consent sent to
- 2 directors
Fundraising
Raise on the standard SAFE
We use the Y Combinator post-money SAFE, unmodified. That is most of its value: an investor recognises it, reads the two numbers that matter, and signs. A SAFE nobody has seen before invites a negotiation you did not want.
Valuation cap
The most common. Sets the highest valuation at which the money converts.
Discount
Converts at a discount to the priced round, with no cap.
Cap and discount
Both, with the investor taking whichever is better for them.
Most favoured nation
No cap or discount, but inherits the best terms you give a later investor.
The SAFE was created by Y Combinator, and we use their version
We generate the post-money SAFE from Y Combinator's published documents without altering the terms. You can read the originals and compare them against anything you sign here. Y Combinator's SAFE documents
The company behind your company
Backed by people who have built this before
You are choosing who holds your cap table for the next decade. We are profitable, founder-led and five years in, and these are some of the people behind us.
Biz Stone
Co-founder, Twitter
Early Investor & Advisor
Balaji Srinivasan
Former CTO, Coinbase
Investor
Lachy Groom
VC, Early Stripe Employee
Investor
Sahil Lavingia
CEO, Gumroad
Investor
Sunil Sharma
Former MD, Techstars Toronto
Investor & Advisor
StartGlobal is a Techstars-backed company, and Sunil ran Techstars Toronto. Read what they wrote about us
See the whole thing working
Formation, the founding documents, your cap table and your first SAFEs. We will show you how they connect before you decide anything.
Loved by founders in 150+ countries
Real customers, on camera, talking about their U.S. business journey
Questions founders ask first
Why a Delaware C Corporation instead of an LLC?
If you plan to raise from US venture investors, a Delaware C Corporation is what they expect and often what their funds require. It supports preferred stock, option pools and SAFEs, none of which fit cleanly in an LLC. If you are bootstrapping or running a services business, an LLC is usually simpler and cheaper to hold, and we form those too.
What is an 83(b) election and why does the deadline matter so much?
When you buy founder stock subject to vesting, an 83(b) election tells the IRS to tax you on the value at purchase, when the stock is worth almost nothing, rather than as it vests and becomes valuable. You have 30 days from the purchase date to file it. The deadline is statutory, there is no extension, and missing it can create a tax bill on stock you cannot sell. It is the single most expensive avoidable mistake founders make in their first month.
Do I need to be in the US to form a Delaware C Corporation?
No. You do not need US citizenship, US residency, an SSN or a US address. Founders in more than 150 countries have formed with us. Be aware that a C Corporation has different tax consequences from an LLC for non-residents, including corporate level tax, so it is worth being deliberate about which one you want.
Is this a real cap table, or a spreadsheet?
A real one. Vesting schedules tick on their own, option grants reduce the pool as they are approved, and SAFEs sit on the cap table as convertible instruments so you can model what a priced round does to everyone before you sign it. It is built to replace Carta or Pulley, not to sit next to them.
Are the documents just templates?
No, and that is the point. Templates leave you to work out who signs what, in what order, and what has to happen before the next document is valid. Here every document is a workflow: it knows its signers, routes to them, chases them, records the countersignature, and updates the cap table when it completes.
Which SAFE do you use?
The Y Combinator post-money SAFE, unmodified. It has been the market standard since 2018 and investors recognise it on sight, which is most of its value. You choose the variant: valuation cap, discount, both, or most favoured nation. The original documents are published by Y Combinator and we link to them so you can compare what you are signing.
Can you take over a company that already exists?
Not at the moment. We form new Delaware C Corporations rather than adopting companies incorporated elsewhere, so this page is for founders starting from scratch. If that changes, it will say so here.
What ongoing filings does a Delaware corporation have?
Delaware requires an annual report and a franchise tax filing every year, and there are federal tax filings on top. We track the deadlines and file them. Nobody enjoys discovering a Delaware franchise tax notice in the middle of a fundraise.
See it before you commit
We will walk you through incorporation, the founding documents, the cap table and how SAFEs run on it, against your own situation rather than a script.
- 30 minutes, no obligation
- No SSN or US address needed
- Talk to a person, not a form