HACKER Q&A
📣 zurfer

Is There a Stripe Atlas Alternative for EU or Germany?


We are 2 devs with a B2B customer and our first investor lined up. Until now that was mostly a Python prototype and PowerPoint. Now it's time to set up a company and take care if financials and tax etc. 5 days in we made progress but there is so many things do that we just would like to outsource. Now in the US, stripe Atlas seems decent. Are you aware of any European or even German alternatives? It does not make sense right now to start a company in Delaware. We would rather have Berlin.

  👤 mtmail Accepted Answer ✓
If you need a fast solution look at buying a pre-created so called shelf company (GmbH). https://www.foris.com/en/ will sell you a Voratsgesellschaft including bank account filled with 25k Euro for 30k Euro. They have documents ready for your notary. At your local notary you change the company name, address, shareholders, it 1-2 signatures. Then you transfer ownership of the bank account (new bank cards, new mobile app credentials) and you're ready for business and can sign contracts in the name of the new company. Takes 3-5 days.

Next you find an accountant. But payroll setup, health insurance setup, accident insurance (required in Germany but very cheap), local tax, VAT tax setup can wait. You're not really allowed to use the 25k to pay your own salary anyway, only business expenses. Expect ongoing 500-1000 Euro/month for a GmbH accountant.

👤 julian_digital
Firma.de and Penta (https://getpenta.com/en/in-grundung/) are the two closest alternatives to Atlas in Germany.

It's easier to set up a UK Ltd or an Estonian entity but there will be all sorts of tax implications.

For any Atlas-related follow-up questions, don't hesitate to reach out: julianlehr [AT] stripe -- happy to help :)

👤 chrisked
There are multiple options to create a German limited company available to you. You can find a local notary who speaks English via notar.de. They will be able to prep everything for the company formation. If you need help with opening a bank account, trade and tax office setup you can use different service providers. If you have severe time pressure buy an off the shelf company. You can do this via most notaries or directly with vendors like foris or blitzstart. If you go that route you will pay roughly 1.5k more. Also make sure you pick your location. Do not buy an off the shelf company in Munich and try to transfer to Berlin. This will severely slow you down.

I am running one platform in that space (www.firma.de/en/). Feel free to reach out via ck AT firma DOT de and I am happy to jump on a zoom call. There are surely more things to cover.