Founder-ready templates with context.
Documents to get your company off the ground, from incorporating to hiring your first employees.
Enter your email to unlock downloads
Formation
Formation Document Instructions
The checklist that ties the rest of the formation kit together — what to sign, in what order, when to file, and what to do after.
Certificate of Incorporation
The founding Delaware filing that legally creates the company — name, shares, registered agent, and governance baseline, on a single signature.
Action by Sole Incorporator
The incorporator’s one-time action that hands the new company to its first directors — adopts bylaws, names the board, then steps off the stage.
Bylaws
The corporation’s internal operating manual — how meetings get called, votes get counted, officers act, and stock moves. Adopted at formation, amended only rarely after.
Action in Lieu of Organizational Meeting
The board’s first day on the job — ratifies the Certificate, adopts the bylaws, elects officers, issues founder stock, and opens the company for business. By written consent, so no meeting required.
Contribution and Assignment Agreement
The pre-incorporation IP cleanup. This agreement transfers to the company the work a founder created before the company existed — or while building the business outside the company — so the company, not the founder personally, owns the assets it needs to operate.
Founder Stock Purchase Agreement
The legal mechanism that actually issues founder stock and ties it to vesting — every founder signs one on day one, and every share a founder owns later traces back to it.
Stock Certificate
The paper (or PDF) evidence of share ownership. One per founder, signed by the President and Secretary, retained in escrow for any unvested shares.
Section 83(b) Election
IRS Form 15620 linked within step-by-step filing instructions and bundled with a cover letter to the IRS Service Center. The 30-day filing window starts when the restricted stock or other property is transferred. File promptly and keep proof of timely filing.
Voting Agreement
The founder-to-founder agreement that locks in board seats while you’re working together — and pulls voting power away from a co-founder who departs.
Employee Confidentiality and Invention Assignment Agreement
The day-one agreement every employee signs to protect the company’s confidential information and ensure employee-created inventions and work product are assigned to the company. It also sets baseline obligations around conflicts of interest, non-solicitation, and related employee duties, with state-specific carve-outs built in for applicable jurisdictions.