We’re in the middle of setting up our company and based on what we’ve learned so far, I’d suggest that if you’re establishing a DE C-corp, you do it with a dedicated attorney whom you trust rather than with online templates (Clerky, Stripe Atlas, etc.)
The templates struggle with nuances (employee pools, acceler. vesting, etc.). The templates will also give you only a snapshot-in-time service, while you will need to keep things chugging in the long-run to remain in good standing. Alternatively, you can ask your lawyer to review the templates, if that saves her/him time and costs you less, but using the templates instead of lawyers makes for a bad recipe.
Incorporation templates feel like outsourcing your core engineering function - they might get you going now, but in the long-run you will struggle. Even if your attorney charges $400+/hr, you’d only save about $1k-$2k, which is not worth it when so much is at stake.
My advice is too go the cheaper route of using a Clerky or Atlas and then spend the money to tidy it up later. Maybe you could pay a lawyer $5k now vs $30k later for the clean up but the value of the money and time required changes drastically.
Spending $5k when I started my business would literally be months of expenses. Spending $30k now still sucks but capital is much cheaper now, maybe 1/3rd of our expenses for the month.
I think that doing this is risky and precisely what people should try to avoid if they could. The reason is because the devil is in the details: i.e. adopting a stock plan at incorporation and prior to a SAFE means the founders eat the dilution. I wouldn’t have known without our attorney.
If people are trying to save cash, I’d say a compromise is start with a template but then run it by your attorney. Otherwise, you’re playing with fire.