Stripe Atlas for LLCs - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/atlas-llc?c <comment><USER2> > Is organized in Delaware, the jurisdiction of choice for many new LLCs.

Be aware that if you are "doing business" in California which means you live there you also have to file as a California foreign entity and pay the absurd anti-small business flat tax of $800 a year.

This also does not include your state income tax liabilities in California. Just because the LLC is formed in Delaware does not mean you don't have to pay income taxes in the state you reside. Delaware is just the legal residence, has nothing to do with income taxes.

I moved to Tennessee in January and switched my single-member disregarded entity LLC from California to Tennessee. The annual fee in Tennessee is $400 vs $800 and there is NO STATE INCOME tax in beautiful TN.

<comment><USER3> CA in general makes absolutely no sense to start a business in. There are zero arguments for starting a business in CA. Oregon, Washington, Texas, Colorado, etc. are all objectively better choices. Even if you're interested in raising money from SV investors you're far better off locating in Seattle, Denver, Portland, Austin, etc.

<comment><USER4> I definitely agree with you that there are better states than California, but I recently moved my online company from California to Texas and discovered a really nasty surprise: Texas considers web hosting, server rental, SaaS, etc. to be services subject to sales tax [1]. Washington actually does as well, since you mentioned it.

This will complicate your life in two ways: First, your internet company now has to enumerate subscribers in the same state as you and charge them sales tax. Your competitors, located in friendlier territories, can undercut you by not having to do this.

Second, any payments you make to a SaaS/hosting vendor are now subject to use tax. Do you pay AWS for hosting every month? Get ready to cough up ~6% of that for Texas' treasury. If you're running the kind of business where your hosting bill will grow proportionally to your revenue, this amounts to a tax on revenue. In my case, it wildly exceeds anything California ever charged me in income tax.

[1] [https://blog.taxjar.com/saas-sales-tax/](https://blog.taxjar.com/saas- sales-tax/)

<comment><USER5> > this amounts to a tax on revenue.

Corporations wanted to be people. People pay income taxes on their revenue, not their profits.

<comment><USER6> What about deductions?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Damn, I was hoping for this about 6 months ago, I ended up filing my own paperwork instead. It was actually easier and cheaper than I thought for my state (Michigan). $50 and like five lines on a form. I even got my own EID completely online in about 10 minutes, and a bank account at my local small business bank the same day.

But just like with Stripe Atlas for C-Corps, what you're paying for isn't the paperwork and the filing fees, it's the access to lawyers and tax help and the network of other founders. It's Stripe's experience, and help for people who aren't in the US. I'd say it's worth it because to be honest I have no idea what my company's responsibilities for taxes are and yeah that makes me a little uneasy.

<comment><USER8> > I'd say it's worth it because to be honest I have no idea what my company's > responsibilities for taxes are and yeah that makes me a little uneasy.

Yikes. You should get an accountant. Ask for referrals from other businesses in your area that are similar to yours. Ask your local co-working spaces or incubators. Google...

<comment><USER7> Yup, I'm working with an accountant to better understand what's going on. Last year I was in a grace period but this year I'm going to have to file. Luckily it's just me, no employees and no cofounder to worry about. But man tax law is complicated and I don't like not knowing _every_ part of what I'm doing.

<comment><USER9> Part of the reason I started working at Stripe is that I remember going through _exactly_ this and it freaking sucked. Building a product and finding customers for it is hard enough without also having to cross-class as an expert in international taxes of software sales.

(Drop us a line if you need a referral to an accountant; we can introduce you to an accountancy that works with a lot of Internet businesses. We also have some guides about it at [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides) to demystify it a bit.)

<comment><USER10> Out of curiosity, are you guys thinking of something like an UpCounsel for startup/technology-focused accountants?

<comment><USER9> We have a number of accounting firms which we work with that we refer Atlas customers to. This lets us explain the Atlas concept once, prepare the firms for "You're going to have a high volume of companies who will often have the same set of issues so let's research and brief those in advance", build out tools to assist with information gathering, etc.

It also lets us help refer companies to accountancies whose sweet spot most closely corresponds to the facts of the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is all very cool. But: don't operate a multi-partner company in any form, LLC or C-Corp, without formal vesting. Companies without vesting are rigged to explode if any member leaves.

<comment><USER9> Context for folks who haven't encountered vesting before: vesting is an arrangement where, instead of getting all of your ownership up front, you earn it over time. For example, you might have a fairly common arrangement in Silicon Valley where you get 1/4 of your equity after working for a year and the remaining 3/4 over the next 3 years. This pre-commits to what happens regarding ownership if someone leaves 18 months (or 18 days) into running the company.

Atlas C corporations with multiple founders have a vesting schedule built-in (4 year vesting; 1 year cliff), the market standard in Silicon Valley.

Vesting in an LLC is complicated:

Because an LLC is a partnership, there can be complicated consequences of someone stepping back from an operational role (like e.g. being a founder) but remaining an owner of the business. We didn't think it was appropriate to have a one-size-fits-all answer for this: some companies might choose to buy out the departing founder, some might choose to pay them dividends on an ongoing fashion, and some might not have financial bandwidth to pay dividends but might want them to participate in upside in the event of a future acquisition.

Conversely, adopting vesting establishes some fairly substantial tax consequences (83(b) elections, etc).

This is heavily dependent on facts-and-circumstances.

Vesting is more of an established concept, with off-the-shelf support throughout the ecosystem, for C corporations. For those who want it in an LLC, please speak to an attourney. You can still adopt it for your Stripe Atlas LLC, it just isn't built in to the default experience.

<comment><USER12> > Because an LLC is a partnership

An LLC is _not_ a partnership. (A limited liability partnership is an LLP.) An LLC is a distinct business structure with some similarities to a corporation, some to a partnership, and some unique features.

<comment><USER13> He's referring to the fact that, by default, the United States taxes LLCs having more than one member as a partnership. An interest in a partnership is taxed differently than an interest in a corporation (stock).

<comment><USER14> citation, since I have it open: [https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small- businesses-self-employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses- self-employed/single-member-limited-liability-companies)

> Specifically, a domestic LLC with at least two members is classified as a > partnership for federal income tax purposes unless [...etc...]

(To grandparent comment: for what it's worth, I too find it highly confusing that "partnership" and "LLP" (vs LL _C_ ) are both terms and not as closely related as one might first suspect...)

<comment><USER12> > for what it's worth, I too find it highly confusing that "partnership" and > "LLP" (vs LLC) are both terms and not as closely related as one might first > suspect...

They are just as closely related as one might suspect: an LLP is a partnership where the partners enjoy limited liability.

An LLC is not a partnership, though multimember LLCs are, by default, treated like a partnership for federal income tax purposes.

(The LLC is a fairly new form of business entity originally created as a lower overhead alternative to the corporation that would provide a distinct entity for corporate joint ventures; the LLP is also fairly new, but [in its US form] it was formed to protect innocent members of professional firms from personal liability for actions of other members of the firms, and is in many jurisdictions restricted to professional firms.)

LPs and LLLPs make things even more fun, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Relevant for non-residents / foreign owned LLC :

[https://onlinetaxman.com/us-llc-tax-haven-for- foreigners/](https://onlinetaxman.com/us-llc-tax-haven-for-foreigners/)

 _If you don't have a dependent agent that substantially furthers your business in the US and don't have an office in the US, you are not subject to US tax. Even if the LLC generates income in the US, the income is not taxed in the US._

 _Furthermore, if you reside in a country with an applicable tax treaty with the US, then you would not be subject to US tax. Since you reside in your tax home, you can claim you operate a "permanent establishment" (e.g., an office or other fixed place of business) in your home country._

<comment><USER16> When does it makes sense for a European to start a Delaware LLC?

Let's say you have a lifestyle side-business and many clients in US.

Where is the legal tax avoidance here?

You still have to report the pass-through income to your home country.

You can't just keep the money in the LLC and delay the tax?

Maybe you want to buy 10 servers in US to be used and shipped home to Europe to be used for the same business.

Would you be able to deduct those kind of expenses?

PS I had a vanity Delaware C Corp in in the 90s which I did absolutely nothing with besides getting all the cool corporate knick knacks.

<comment><USER15> There are many countries where Stripe etc. aren't available. Starting an LLC in USA is an easy route to get that going albeit at additional compliance cost (e.g. filing informational returns). The article above clarifies that a foreign owned LLC with no income connected with US doesn't have to pay taxes in US. They just have to pay tax in their home country. It makes it more appealing & easier to start an LLC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This looks like a great service!

For my state (NY), I am required to register an out of state LLC (a "foreign" LLC [1]) before conducting business in NY. Is this registration or assistance with this registration included?

[1] [https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-qualify- foreign-...](https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-qualify-foreign- business-new-york.html)

<comment><USER18> This is likewise required in WA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is the LLC anonymous by default? For privacy reasons, not legal. I know I can still get subpoenaed. I just don't want my name/address associated with the company on anything public.

It seems to do this I will need a lawyer to be my registered agent for mail forwarding (a regular mail forwarding service such as [https://www.virtualpostmail.com/services/registered- agent/](https://www.virtualpostmail.com/services/registered-agent/) was apparently not enough since it doesn't have attorney-client protection). That was as far as I got when I last tried to start a LLC for my side project.

<comment><USER20> Delaware ain't the Caribbean.

<comment><USER19> I didn't understand the Caribbean reference which led me down a pretty fun rabbit hole trying to figure out how that world works. Apparently it's fairly common to incorporate in British Virgin Islands (and a few others like Cayman islands, Bahamas, or Panama) for international companies.

I was sincerely asking about it because of privacy and not tax reasons though.

<comment><USER20> To clarify: Many countries allow "anonymous associations", which provide privacy and the side effect of enabling tax evasion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hiya folks! I worked with the team on this; happy to answer any questions you have.

<comment><USER21> I appreciate the advice you've given through your blog and podcast. Thanks for taking the time to create those things. They've been inspiring.

I'm wonder if a US LLC would be better for me? I'm a mISV in Canada. I use Stripe & PayPal and make almost enough to live on. I have a US bank account but Canadian everything else (sole proprietorship, business license, tax id, citizenship, etc.). I don't plan on ever being funded, selling the business, taking on partners or making more than a 150k/yr.

<comment><USER22> A Canadian sole proprietorship is about as simple as it gets, since you can file taxes on your T1 and business income just passes through to you. Stripe can also transfer USD straight to a USD account at a Canadian bank.

Any kind of corporation (US or Canadian) is much more effort, both from legal and accounting perspectives. It's worth it if you need legal protections a corporation gives you or care for some of the tax advantages. But it comes at the cost of extra effort in managing the complexities if a corporation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before doing this, be sure to read your home state's requirements for registering out-of-state LLCs. You'll likely be required to file annual paperwork and fees in your home state, thus possibly counteracting any convenience you _thought_ you were getting by registering in Delaware.

Or consult with an accountant, many of whom offer free first-time consultations.

</comment><comment><USER23> > Is designed to make conversion to a C Corporation as simple as possible. (We > can connect Stripe Atlas users to a lawyer to manage the conversion process > with discounted, flat-rate packages).

This is the most important part. LLCs tend to be cheaper and more flexible before you raise money, but a C-Corp is basically necessary to raise money. Converting an LLC to C-Corp conversion is often quoted at about $10K from a law firm. With Stripe Atlas, you are set up to make the conversion easily.

<comment><USER9> $10k isn't the high end, either.

<comment><USER24> Any ballpark figure on how much it costs with Atlas?

<comment><USER9> Starts at $500. We can't quote a firm price because you can do things in the company (it is your company, after all) which make it more complicated. There are an infinite number of contracts that a company could hypothetically sign, some of which have interesting implications for conversion. Those contracts have to be read and interpreted; that isn't going to be free for a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not a USA resident, I live in Europe (not EU zone). What would be my tax obligations to the USA if I had LLC formed through Atlas for a purpose of software SAS business (selling software subscriptions worldwide)? I know I would be obliged to pay income taxes in my country, but I don`t know if and what would I need to pay regarding taxes to the USA.

<comment><USER26> You generally need to talk to a tax lawyer about this, but in a nutshell:

You could owe tax to the state in which you incorporate, if they tax LLC income earned out of state. (Most states don't, but you will have a "minimum franchise tax" that you must pay regardless of LLC income for the privilege of being registered in their state.)

You generally would owe US federal income tax on the income you earn from your US customers. But, in many cases you could qualify for tax treaty benefits that reduce your US tax liability to zero. You would still need to file a US tax return, but you would not actually pay US taxes. (Your tax return would explain why you don't need to pay.)

You would generally be taxed on the income in your home country. Despite common belief, almost all countries tax the worldwide income of citizens residing in their country. (Territorial taxation is generally reserved for corporations and expatriates.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Heads up, if you're not a US citizen, Azlo (the underlying checking account provider they use) doesn't let you open an account. I'm not sure if they have a special deal with Stripe that lets you through, but they definitely don't let their regular customers through without a US passport.

<comment><USER28> Hi @rolleiflex, this is not exactly correct. You do not need a passport to sign up for Azlo. It certainly is accepted as a form of identification, but not the only one. Also, we will be accepting both resident aliens and non- resident aliens this month!

<comment><USER29> @wbmstrmjb Just tried to sign up as nra a few days ago. It told me it was not available. Also sadly I forgot the password and now can't even recover it because it complains that there's no verified phone number (???), it never asked for one as the procedure failed as soon I selected a different country than USA.

<comment><USER29> nvm got answer from support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Before doing this, be sure to read your home state's requirements for registering out-of-state LLCs. You might still be required to file annual paperwork and fees in your home state, thus possibly counteracting any convenience you thought you were getting by registering in Delaware.

Or consult with an accountant, many of whom offer free first-time consultations.

<comment><USER30> I believe every state requires you to register your business in that state if you have a tax nexus there. California is particularly onerous about this, requiring LLCs to register and pay a minimum $800 franchise tax every year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> S-Corp always seems to get short shrift compared to LLC. I live in MA, where I registered my S-Corp, and it simply costs less, w/ no downside. Do your research (or, better, ask your accountant) before following the herd! :)

<comment><USER2> There is downside to S-Corps. Lots more regulatory requirements, minutes, and tax forms required. As a general rule of thumb assuming you are a single person company it doesn't make sense unless profits are greater than at a minimum of $150,000 a year. At that level you can pay yourself a "reasonable" salary say $80,000 and then lump dividend for the rest which is taxed at 15%.

<comment><USER31> "unless profits are greater than at a minimum of $150,000 a year."

Ok, sure. Similarly, an LLC is probably overkill if you're making under $100k. I'd argue it's a minority of entrepreneurial software consultants who make over $100 but under $150. Finding a good accountant to help you figure it out (and to handle the paperwork) is also likely to help you join the S-Corp cohort.

<comment><USER32> You just setup a straw-man.

No one else agrees LLC is overkill if making under 100k profit. I would in fact encourage LLC from day 1 for anyone making anything.

(and just auto converting to S-Corp at 150k is also silly, talk to an accountant. Many reasons to be a LLC even if making millions of dollars a year, see many real estate LLCs or companies with 100-1000 employees but still a LLC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It sounded right until $500 part... llc setup cost is $50, bank accounts, stripe accounts are all free, same goes for any "credits" from aws and elsewhere.

I understand the desire to turn a profit on this, but that's kind of overboard, IMO.

<comment><USER8> It's roughly in line (albeit on the high end) with what RocketLawyer and other do-it-yourself companies charge. Yes they are all more expensive than _truly_ doing it yourself (as in, printing forms from the local gov site and mailing them), but you're paying for convenience and the increased likelihood of getting the paperwork done right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What would be the combined fed+state corporate income tax rate for a Delaware LLC?

Quick google says this is 21% (federal) + 8.7% (Delaware). Is my understanding of this correct, that a Delaware LLC pays 29.7% taxes on its profits?

<comment><USER35> Unless you have presence in Delaware (offices or employees), you don't pay corporate income taxes there just because you formed as Delware LLC or C Corp. You pay a nominal franchise tax, and you're taxed in the other state(s) you operate in.

<comment><USER36> Yep. An LLC* is not taxed as a corporation unless it chooses to be, by default it is taxed as a sole proprietorship (and so the owner would pay income tax). This is known as a disregarded entity" at the federal level.

Also watch out for franchise taxes - if you live in California it's $800/yr minimum.

* Edit: a single-member LLC

<comment><USER2> Pretty sure you can only be a "disregarded entity" (schedule-c) with a single member LLC. Beyond that is get's more complicated.

<comment><USER36> Yes, that's right. Good point!

<comment><USER37> You can choose to be taxed as a corporation even in that case, but it's usually not worth the tradeoffs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Why Delaware over Wyoming? Wyoming has no corporate income tax and lower fees.

<comment><USER39> This! Delaware is simply the choice for most because of conventions, marketing, and (legal) history. The ideal choice should be Wyoming in my humble opinion.

<comment><USER40> Why wyoming vs nevada

<comment><USER41> It's cheaper

<comment><USER30> If the annual renewal cost of your business entity is a dominating factor of where you're going to site the entity, you should probably be thinking strongly about whether you should be forming an entity at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am particularly interested in the liability protection provided by an LLC (selling physical products).

How much legally grounded advice is provided as a part of the service about how to avoid activities that could make the corporate veil easier to pierce in the event of a lawsuit?

I've heard anecdotally about doing a good job of keeping business and personal accounts completely separate, for example. This is the type of advice that I would typically lean on a lawyer for, but it seems could be easily provided as a part of this service.

<comment><USER9> We're not lawyers and we cannot licitly give legal advice, but part of the service is that we can introduce you to lawyers. We do have guides about topics including that topic specifically; you can find them at [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides) ; I can't remember which one addresses that issue off the top of my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'll soon need to move an LLC from Texas to Colorado. Should I instead consider shutting down my Texas LLC and forming a new one with Stripe Atlas? Would there be any benefit to this?

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice, this is why I didn't use Atlas despite being offered a beta slot.

I ended up forming a local state LLC. This is still delaware LLC, which seems an extra hoop for (potentially dubious consult your lawyer) gain... but still good to see them going this direction.

That send - end to end to form a LLC in the state of Indiana, it took about a half day and $250. I do not need to file anything in delaware or deal with my company as a foreign entity or any of the extra stuff you would get going this route.

</comment><comment><USER43> I recently opened an LLC in NYC for $200 and took me less than an hour. All I did is to follow the (free) instructions here ([https://www.llcuniversity.com/new-york- llc/](https://www.llcuniversity.com/new-york-llc/)), was super simple and worth it. Opening a business account took me less than an hour and nowadays you can do it online.

<comment><USER44> The New York State fee by itself is $200. Unless I'm missing something, you paid significantly more than that for the publication requirement (it was around $1,000, give or take a couple hundred, last I checked).

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Re: SVB bank I heard you can't even get a debit card. What other restrictions are there? Is it only good for using Stripe and nothing else?

</comment><comment><USER46> @Patio11 - I recently moved from California to Florida and I'm about to open an LLC here.

What are the advantages / disadvantages of having an LLC based in Delaware vs creating one in Florida?

I'd love to use Stripe Atlas - but not sure if I'm making things more complicated than they need to be by opening in Delaware vs Florida.

<comment><USER26> If you don't plan on trying to raise VC money, then a local LLC is preferable to a Delaware LLC in 99.999999% of business cases.

Or another way to put it: if don't plan to do business outside of Florida, why would you subject yourself to the laws and jurisdiction of another state just to save a few bucks?

<comment><USER46> > If you don't plan on trying to raise VC money, then a local LLC is > preferable to a Delaware LLC in 99.999999% of business cases.

Well, I do have clients and customers outside FL - lots of them. Does that make a difference?

<comment><USER26> It depends on where you plan on doing work for those clients.

<comment><USER46> Mostly in FL but I also travel a bunch cause I'm remote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Thanks Patrick. I've heard of Atlas recently and am seriously considering it. I was simply wondering if you provide any tax advice for people living in different countries but who own a Delaware LLC (or C-Corp) through Atlas?

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone know what is the total cost of Striple Atlas? What others cost beside the $500 one time fee? Will really appreciated some breakdown numbers

<comment><USER9> [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas) Ctrl-F for "ongoing costs"

It's impossible to give you a fully inclusive quote without knowing more of your situation, and I'm not qualified to comment on e.g. tax consequences for you if you live outside the United States, but broadly speaking the total cost of ownership ranges from about $1k to about $2k depending on circumstances (C corp vs LLC, number of founders, whether founders are US-based or not, etc). This includes annual costs for Delaware taxes but doesn't include e.g. corporate or personal income taxes.

<comment><USER42> FYI, there seems to be some disparity on two different pages:

On [https://stripe.com/atlas](https://stripe.com/atlas): _Delaware tax filing: preparation is free, Delaware fee starts at $225_

On [https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/tax- obligations](https://stripe.com/docs/atlas/tax-obligations): _All LLCs formed or registered in Delaware must pay an annual LLC tax, currently at a flat rate of $300.00._

<comment><USER9> Thanks; will correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> @patio11 does the LLC package come with a DUNS number?

<comment><USER9> It doesn't, but we help people get them on an ad hoc basis.

Mind if I make a guess? You're probably wondering "Can I get a DUNS number so that I can list something on the App Store?" if you're like 90% of people who ask us this. If so, let me just tell you now what we'd tell you in the future:

> My most recent understanding is that if they're using the DUNS number as a > part of the Apple Developer program, we should recommend that they email > firstname.lastname@example.com and they will advise you how to apply for your > situation. Just let them know that you're representing a US company trying > to get a DUNS number but that you're headquartered in [country outside of > the US if that's an additional consideration].

<comment><USER50> Not OP but that's my only use case for the DUNS number.

Are you saying we may not need it? Or that there's an expedited / cheaper way if we're just getting it for that sole purpose?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> If the US company is going to be a fully owned child company of another EU company, which is most suitable, a C Corporation or an LLC and why?

<comment><USER9> We do not support LLCs as subsidiary of other companies, for reasons. We do support that use case for C corporations. There are complicated tax issues involved here; an accountant can talk you through them.

<comment><USER51> Isn't Google LLC a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc?

<comment><USER9> Google has some issues that you and I probably do not, and has some lawyers and accountants that you and I probably do not. Thankfully, we don't have to build a product which seemlessly works for this Google; we just have to build one which seemlessly works for the next Google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I wish atlas allow transferring over our Delaware c Corp to them. They launched around 3 months after we incorporated :(

</comment><comment><USER53> If I'm not a resident of US and didn't visit US in a tax year, would I have to pay US income tax for the LLC?

<comment><USER9> Owning a US LLC as a non-resident can be complicated; it depends on a variety of circumstances regarding what you do, how your business interacts with the US market, whether you are a US citizen, where you live, etc. You may wish to speak to an accountant.

<comment><USER54> Would it be easier to own a C Corp as a non-resident? Does Atlas provide that as well?

<comment><USER9> We do provide C corporations. It was the first option we launched with, and a core goal of that was supporting non-US founders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> If I want to release a bunch of different projects under the same company name which one is better LLC or C Corp?

<comment><USER9> Either supports that use case; the decision is typically driven by other considerations. I wrote a guide about them: [https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/llc-vs-c- corp](https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/llc-vs-c-corp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Apparently Stripe Atlas is being used by and tailored for US residents only, which is odd.

<comment><USER9> We have thousands of users in over 125 countries, and do substantial amounts of work to ensure that we're making our services available as widely as possible.

If there is a particular thing you'd want to improve the service for folks outside the US, I'd love to hear about it -- feel free to email me at my HN name at stripe.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Looks like you have to have a Web site up and running to be invited to the preview.

</comment><comment><USER58> Does this support converting an existing LLC into one that Atlas would set up?

<comment><USER59> No. I asked them. They said

 _We 're still in the growing phases and constantly looking for ways to expand and improve, but I'm afraid, the Atlas program is only accessible as a package deal._

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is pretty exciting. $500 is a great deal for an LLC with a fully vetted operating agreement suited for an internet company as well as a bank account out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER60> Can I be taxed as a s corp with stripe atlas?

<comment><USER9> An LLC can elect to be taxed as an S Corp. We're happy to introduce all Atlas companies to accountants; this is something you can ask them to do for you.

<comment><USER33> I think parent meant a C Corp with automated IRS tax election for S Corp... not llc.

<comment><USER8> Why do you think so? LLCs can elect to be taxed as S-Corps, and this thread is about LLCs...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If you want to run a remotely lean organization, spending $500 to incorporate your LLC is not starting off on the right foot.

<comment><USER61> Sorry, but lean and cheap aren't synonyms.

As an example, a pal once worked for some medium-sized company where if you wanted a new pencil, you go down to the basement and through a long hallway to a window. At the window you had to confront the Dragon of the Office Supply Horde, and to prove your worthiness, you had to bring a sufficiently used existing pencil. That company was definitely cheap, but was very much not lean.

Toyota, on the other hand, is the classic lean company. When they don't need to build cars, they don't lay people off or send them home, which would be the cheap thing to do. Instead, they have them clean, polish, train, and generally improve the plants and themselves. They spent extraordinary sums building the _first_ Prius prototype, which could barely get around a track. But they kept on improving it, eventually making one of the world's best-selling cars and making them a leader in a new market.

Spending $500 to incorporate a startup may not be _cheap_ , but it certainly can be lean if you determine that the investment in learning how to correctly do the legal and financial dance will not have as much ROI as paying for it to happen and focusing instead on building the actual business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Liability can not be limited. Someone is either liable or not.</comment>


We need new data books, so we started one: Cloud Data Management - <AUTHOR> https://chartio.com/blog/cloud-data-management-book-launch/ <comment><USER2> One of the experiences that stuck with me most going from doing software engineering stuff to data engineering stuff is the very difficult and sometimes complete lack of tooling around testing and debugging issues in SQL and pipelines. As software engineers, we have debuggers, unit testing, mocking frameworks, e2e tools, BDD languages like Cucumber, code quality tools, etc. But when you're working on a pipeline and you're wondering what will happen if you run it, sometimes your best bet is actually to just run it and wait 20 min for it to complete. Or run some portion of it ad hoc. Or if you want to know what a SQL query is going to do in the black box of your query engine, you might try to parse the esoteric language of a query explainer. The best tools seem to be available after deployment such as data quality tests, dashboards and alerts. I think there's a lot of opportunity to improve the ecosystem.

<comment><USER3> I have started using prefect.io as a workflow runner. It helps me define tasks and deeply define what should happen on failure of a task including cleaning up a cluster.

Because Tasks are just functions you could test your tasks with regular unit testing and mocking methods.

But I agree a lot of data people seem to think interactive is good enough.

<comment><USER4> How do you think Prefect compares to Airflow / Dagster?

<comment><USER3> What makes prefect stand out is the highly pythonic API and the powerful primitives for defining failure scenarios. Additionally, for me, integrating with dask is key as dask has become one of my main tools.

Heres a rewrite of the airflow tutorial in prefect: [https://docs.prefect.io/core/examples/airflow_tutorial_dag.h...](https://docs.prefect.io/core/examples/airflow_tutorial_dag.html)

My advice is try it out and see if you like the api. I think that the airflow ui is still a killer feature in 2019 though.

Theres also this post from the creator of prefect on why not airflow: [https://medium.com/the-prefect-blog/why-not- airflow-4cfa4232...](https://medium.com/the-prefect-blog/why-not- airflow-4cfa423299c4)

I haven't tried dagster yet, how does it compare to airflow?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I completely agree with the sentiment here. As an engineer tasked with building data driven systems and architectures, I'm well aware of the amount of buzzword / enterprise nonsense floating around in this space - and it is enormous. You can couple that with the fact that its really difficult to find any practical books and resources that you can actually apply to solve real- world problems when working in small-teams and on quick deadlines. Getting business to act in a data driven and analytic way, and building the architecture for it - is a non-trivial task. This looks like it could be one of those rare good resources in the space.

Great work by the guys from chartio!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We're truly looking for this to be community driven as well. So if you see places to contribute, or where you might disagree, or where you could share a story - do let us know or make a pull request on GitHub!

Besides the need for a new data book, we realized that it needed to be of a different format, as the space is moving so fast the expertise is very distributed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm in the data space today. It is indeed a very confusing space to be in. This is a fantastic set of resources you've created here. Well done!

</comment><comment><USER7> Has anyone found any similar guidance around master data management? Matching/deduplicating, and feeding back into source systems.

<comment><USER4> Senzing and Tamr are two options for this

<comment><USER7> Are those products? I was hoping for books/guidance

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I worry that this promotes the data architecture philosophy that is currently in vogue in tech companies, but is actually a bad fit for many traditional enterprises. Most of the time, data architecture needed depends on use case.

Tech/web companies deal with massive amounts of unstructured/semi-structured data ingested at a fast clip, so the architectural thinking here works.

However I would argue that many traditional enterprises whose major sources of data are primarily highly structured (SQL databases), a lake is actually not needed.

A young data engineer working in a traditional enterprise, enamored with the idea of data lakes say, might try to ETL SQL databases into an object store (add RBAC etc.) only to rebuild it back out into a data warehouse. This will almost always turn out to be the wrong approach.

The simpler and more manageable approach is actually to federate existing databases, add cataloging etc. and not even use a data lake at all.

<comment><USER9> I think by lake they mean s3 and similar alternatives (like hdf is for hadoop). This is not crazy as processing s3 files is quite easy. What you say is true but the problem is that no analyst deals only with one db, they have to deal with an increasing number of data sources, that's what the lake is for. I also don't believe you need a warehouse after the lake and that one source of truth is pipe dreams, so I'm with you this architecture is not 100% what companies probably need.

<comment><USER8> > no analyst deals only with one db, they have to deal with an increasing > number of data sources

Which is why I mentioned federation. Most data sources in an enterprise are SQL native or accessible and it does not make sense to dump a SQL database into S3 just to be able to combine it with other forms of data.

Federation means you can operate across multiple databases (eg do Cross database joins etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is just lovely. I'm the lead of a company's data warehouse project, having inherited it from someone who was a DBA that read a book and then made the whole thing ...

I tend to joke that I'm a digital janitor and now I'm a big data janitor. Well, things are going well enough, but cleanup on a live system with users and zillions of reports is incredibly difficult. Part of the issue is isolation and size: too many have too much access to too much data. It's overwhelming and it also leads to a lot of high cost because queries aren't understood and they're run against massive datasets.

I've been educating myself as well as I can between fixing errors and this book is just the thing I need to calm my nerves. It totally makes sense how the stages are set and even just this blog post overview has given me ideas of how to carve some things up.

Kudos, cheers, and all that. Happy Halloween!

</comment><comment><USER11> Great to see more information about data out there for people to learn from. BTW my colleges and I created a declarative (SQL) open source (MIT) framework for Apache Spark to make ETL and ML super easy, if you want to check it out it you can read more here: [https://arc.tripl.ai](https://arc.tripl.ai) . We've recently started combining this with Argo and Delta Lake which is working well for us in the source, lake to warehouse stages.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've recently dug into the Agile DWH Design and The DWH Toolkit books and the design tips in them all seem really compelling, for good reason. Though as I've actually started modeling, I've found that the creation of "proper" fact/dimension tables has felt at times like overkill, given the technologies we're using (BQ / Postgres / Looker).

So, perfect timing! Really looking forward to checking this out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah exactly. Much of the "overkill" was done because of performance and cost reasons, that frankly just don't apply anymore. Now the largest expense by far is time.

There are a number of people starting to talk about Star Schemas having little gain on modern stacks. The performance and costs gains are automatically done now with C-Store warehouses. Fivetran has a great post on this [https://fivetran.com/blog/obt-star-schema](https://fivetran.com/blog/obt- star-schema)

<comment><USER13> The reason a Star Schema exists is because it reduces the amount of data stored and it reduces the load times (faster updates) because only the facts and measures get updated. There is also little redundancy in Master Data (dimensions).

in the world of fixed assets (on-premise data warehouses) this was a concern, I'm curious to see how this plays out in these Cloud Providers because to me it seems like they will be more than happy to rent you as much space as you want and everyone is happy until the bill comes due.

Doing materialized, flat tables everywhere is great for reporting performance but the tables will not be updated as quickly, there will be redundancy in storage and it will be difficult to sync time dependent dimensions.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I mean by updates due to C-Store warehouse engines (Redshift, BigQuery, Snowflake, etc). It's not just that the cloud providers are happy to rent you more space - it's also that they're C-Store and because of that redundancy in columns is well compressed automatically.

We try to explain some of that here - [https://dataschool.com/data- modeling-101/row-vs-column-orien...](https://dataschool.com/data- modeling-101/row-vs-column-oriented-databases/)

And Fivetran did a great benchmarking of it here - [https://fivetran.com/blog/obt-star-schema](https://fivetran.com/blog/obt- star-schema)

The architecture of the C-Store warehouses often removes the benefits of materialized views. This is why for a very long time Redshift didn't even support them - they insisted they weren't needed as they didn't improve performance over regular redshift significantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> this is awesome.

would have loved to have this book when we were building this at my previous co.

very approachable in how it explains each segment on the whole and zooms in on them individually.

would have saved our team a lot of time as we came to very similar conclusions but over the course of a few months

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool! The framework makes a lot of sense, and articulates what I've observed very well.

</comment><comment><USER16> I see Panoply is part of this effort. Panoply creates a lot of spam on hackernews, reddit, twitter, and elsewhere.

As an example, doing ETL with drag n drop tools, and not in code, is a dying skill in the industry.

[edit] Basically I'm wary of companies commenting on data standards, where those same companies also sell a product in the data industry. You're probably going to find more honesty on guidelines from open source contributors like LinkedIn, Netflix, Sitchfix, etc.

<comment><USER17> I'm surprised to see dbt make that list of yours - I don't think I've ever seen them spam the online communities I visit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> On an unrelated note, would anyone be able to tell me which blog engine (and theme) their website is running on?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use Jekyll. It's a custom design from our own awesome Steven Lewis.

<comment><USER18> Rather well designed. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yay, free ebook. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this book available in print at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> not yet. Just PDF. But we'll be working on getting it into print eventually.</comment></comment>


Why does "% I" in a podcast title break some car media players? - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/gimlet/comments/bbyhv4/reply_all_140_the_roman_mars_mazda_virus/ <comment><AUTHOR> 99% Invisible doesn't work in some Mazda cars. The person who wrote the code could only say that the % sign had some meaning in the URL and that caused the "heartbeat" to tell the car that something wasn't working and therefore to restart.

But no understanding of why this happens to % I and not % with other letters. Even % i -- the lowercase -- is fine.

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow. I'm guessing the parsing of the .xml feed file is badly broken? If the string was getting passed somehow as the first argument to something like sprintf(), I could see a crash happening, but the first argument should be a fixed format string, not incoming data.

<comment><AUTHOR> Weirdly, when they simply changed the title from "99% Invisible" to "99% invisible" that solved it.

<comment><USER2> "% i" might(???) be interpreted as "print a decimal number without including the sign," where "% I" is (I think?) not a valid format string. This is pretty speculative though. And it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me that part of the file name would be interpreted as a format string.

<comment><AUTHOR> This thread didn't get much attention, but since you chimed in I thought you would be interested in how this got figured out in the comments here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/gimlet/comments/bdxht4/hey_its_ben_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gimlet/comments/bdxht4/hey_its_ben_from_the_reply_all_episode_140_i_have/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>