Stripe Atlas vs Firstbase vs DIY: What They Structure and What They Don't

Formation services have made incorporating a company faster than opening a bank account. A few forms, a credit card, and within days a legal entity exists — with an EIN, a registered agent, and a state filing on record. The founder moves on to building the product.

The question is what happens after. The entity is real. The structure around it — the tax position, the compliance obligations, the documentation that connects the entity to the founder's actual situation — may not exist at all. And the gap between what was created and what the founder assumes was handled is where cross-border structural risk begins to accumulate.

What each service provisions

Stripe Atlas provisions a Delaware C-Corp with an EIN, a bank account through Mercury or SVB, stock issuance templates, and an 83(b) election template. The process is streamlined. The founder receives an entity that is ready to accept investment and process payments.

Firstbase provisions a Wyoming or Delaware LLC or C-Corp with an EIN, a registered agent, and a basic operating agreement. The scope is similar to Atlas, with flexibility in entity type and state of formation.

DIY formation involves filing directly with a state, applying for an EIN through the IRS, and handling everything else manually. The founder does the same state filing that Atlas and Firstbase do — without the bundled services.

Each of these paths creates a legal entity. The entity has a name, a jurisdiction, a tax ID, and a registered agent. These are the components of entity creation.

None of them create a structure.

What none of them address

The following are characteristics of a cross-border solo founder's structural position that exist independently of entity creation:

• Tax residency determination — where the founder is tax-resident, whether that residency triggers obligations in multiple jurisdictions, and how the entity's income interacts with the founder's personal tax position.
• FBAR and FATCA obligations — reporting requirements that attach to the founder as a US person, regardless of which service created the entity.
• Multi-jurisdiction PE risk — whether the founder's activities in other countries create permanent establishment exposure for the entity.
• Transfer pricing between entities — for founders operating multiple entities, the documentation and pricing methodology for intercompany transactions.
• Personal liability allocation — how the founder's personal assets relate to the entity's obligations, particularly when operational practices blur the boundary.
• Ongoing compliance calendar — annual filings, franchise taxes, registered agent renewals, and jurisdiction-specific requirements that recur every year.

The gap is not in what formation services do. The gap is in what the founder assumes is handled once the entity exists.

The coverage gap analysis

Formation and structure are different things.

Formation is entity creation: a state filing, an EIN, a registered agent, a basic governance document. This is the portion that Stripe Atlas, Firstbase, and DIY all accomplish — with varying degrees of convenience and bundled services.

Structure is everything else: entity creation plus tax position plus compliance obligations plus documentation. It is the complete picture of how the entity relates to the founder's situation, which jurisdictions are involved, what reporting obligations exist, and what documentation supports the arrangement.

Formation covers roughly 20% of what a cross-border solo founder's structural position requires. The entity is created. The remaining 80% — the tax residency analysis, the reporting obligations, the PE assessment, the compliance calendar, the transfer pricing documentation — is not addressed by any formation service. That 80% is invisible to the founder unless they go looking for it.

When DIY becomes structural risk

Here is the structural paradox: DIY formation is functionally equivalent to Stripe Atlas and Firstbase in terms of what is created. The state filing is the same. The EIN is the same. The entity that results is the same legal construct.

The difference is not in what is created. The difference is in what is assumed.

A founder who uses Stripe Atlas receives an entity through a polished, end-to-end process. The experience communicates completeness. The founder receives confirmation emails, onboarding guides, and access to a bank account. The implicit signal is: you are set up.

A founder who does DIY knows exactly what they did — they filed the paperwork. Nothing in the process suggests that anything beyond the filing has been handled. There is no onboarding flow that communicates completeness.

The structural observation is that the formation service that creates the strongest sense of completeness carries a specific risk: the founder stops looking for gaps. The entity exists, the bank account works, revenue flows in. The tax residency question, the FBAR obligation, the PE exposure — these remain unexamined not because they are unimportant, but because the formation experience suggested they were covered.

They were not covered. They were never in scope.

What to verify regardless of provider

Regardless of whether an entity was created through Stripe Atlas, Firstbase, or DIY filing, the following structural characteristics exist and require independent verification:

• Tax residency position — which jurisdiction claims the founder as a tax resident, and whether the entity's income creates obligations in that jurisdiction or others.
• Reporting obligations — FBAR (FinCEN Form 114), FATCA (Form 8938), and Form 5471 for US persons with interests in foreign corporations. These attach to the founder, not the entity.
• Operating agreement adequacy — whether the governance document reflects how the business actually operates, particularly for single-member LLCs where the boundary between personal and business activity requires documentation.
• Registered agent active status — whether the registered agent is current and the entity remains in good standing with the state of formation.
• Annual filing requirements — franchise taxes, annual reports, and jurisdiction-specific obligations that recur independently of business activity.

These are not features that a formation service failed to include. They are characteristics of the founder's structural position that no formation service is designed to address.

What this means for your structure

Entity creation and structural visibility are fundamentally different things. One is a transaction — a filing, an EIN, a registered agent. The other is a continuous condition — the relationship between the entity, the founder's tax position, the jurisdictions involved, and the documentation that connects them.

No formation service bridges this gap. Not because of a failure in their product, but because structural visibility is not what they sell. They sell entity creation. The structure that matters — the 80% that determines how the entity interacts with tax authorities, banks, and compliance regimes across jurisdictions — is the founder's responsibility to map.

The observation is not about which service to use. It is that the moment after entity creation is the moment when the structural questions begin — and no formation service tells you that.

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Visual: Formation Service Coverage Gap

Key Takeaways

• Stripe Atlas, Firstbase, and DIY all create a legal entity — the structural difference between them is minimal compared to the gap between entity creation and structural visibility.
• Formation services cover roughly 20% of what a cross-border solo founder needs — the remaining 80% (tax residency, reporting obligations, PE risk, compliance calendar) is not addressed by any provider.
• The formation service that creates the strongest false sense of completeness carries the highest structural risk — founders who believe they are "set up" stop looking for gaps.
• Tax residency, FBAR/FATCA obligations, and multi-jurisdiction PE risk exist independently of which service created the entity — these are characteristics of the founder's situation, not the entity.
• The structural observation is not which service to use — it is that entity creation and structural visibility are fundamentally different things, and no formation service bridges that gap.

References

• Stripe Atlas Documentation — Stripe Atlas formation service overview and included features
• IRS: Forming a Corporation — IRS guidance on corporation formation and tax obligations
• IRS Form 5471: Information Return of U.S. Persons with Respect to Certain Foreign Corporations — Filing requirements for US persons with foreign corporate interests

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