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Ask HN: Is There a Stripe Atlas Alternative for EU or Germany?

5 points by zurfer ↗ HN
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.

7 comments

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mtmail
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 :)

zurfer
Thanks for the links! Both providers look great.

firma.de comes with 20k Euro on AWS and stripe. That is a good jump start. :)

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.

zurfer
Thanks for the details! Fortunately we don't have time pressure. Firma.de looks great. Is Penta compatible to your oferring? Say, we don't want the commerzbank account but open the Penta account instead. Ideally we manage to automate and outsource also the regular accounting. Here Penta seems to have the better integrations.
chrisked
Yes, Penta is compatible with our offering. We do have a great partnership with Commerzbank (https://www.commerzbank.de/portal/de/unternehmerkunden/produ...) but you can pick any bank to deposit your share capital and run operations. We are actively referring customers traditional German banks as well as different neo banks.

It is a little difficult to compare Penta with Commerzbank. First of all, Penta is not a bank while Commerzbank is. Penta is an user interface on top of Solarisbank (https://www.solarisbank.com/en/). Once you are registered with Penta you will receive your bank details from Solarisbank (BIC SOBKDEBBXXX). Second, Penta does not have the important accounting integrations yet. As of today they offer you lexoffice, sevDesk, CANDIS, Debitoor, Buchhaltungsbutler or FastBill. This integrations are actively used by the entrepreneur and not the tax firm. This services or tools are all good, but if you are looking to outsource what you want is an integration to DATEV (https://www.datev.de/). DATEV is the number one tax software provider and used by all major tax accounting firms in Germany. Commerzbank offers you an integration to DATEV via their COINFO service so that all banking transactions flow into your accountants system automatically. You can achieve the same thing with integrations Penta offers, but then you will use these service as a proxy to DATEV. Penta is working since more than 2 years on a DATEV integration. I assume it is just a matter of time when they can provide this natively (https://help.getpenta.com/en/support/solutions/articles/1500...).

If you have more questions feel free to reach out or reply here.

luzoerner
Penta CPO here. The DATEV topic won’t be a blocker anymore very shortly :) Very happy to chat further or help you get set up!