Groundwork vs. LegalZoom and incorporation services

This is the comparison where the honest answer is "these do different things, and for the thing they do, you need them and not us."

What formation services do

LegalZoom, Stripe Atlas, Clerky, Firstbase and their equivalents execute a decision. You tell them what entity, in what jurisdiction, with what share structure — they file it, handle the registered agent, produce the formation documents, and in some cases open the bank account.

Groundwork cannot do any of that. We do not file anything, we are not a law firm, and we do not provide legal advice. If you know what you want to form, go to one of them.

What Groundwork does

Groundwork is for the part before that form: deciding what you should form, and whether now is the moment.

Formation services are, reasonably, optimised for the customer who has already decided. The signup flow asks which entity, in which state — and a first-time founder who doesn't know is nudged toward the default, which is usually the option that suits the majority of that service's customers rather than the one that suits them.

That default is frequently a Delaware C-corp. It is genuinely right for a founder raising US venture money. It is often wrong for a solo founder outside the US with no US customers and no plans to raise — for whom it means annual US filings, franchise tax, a registered agent bill, and a tax-residency question they now need to pay someone to answer.

Incorporate Now — and As What? works through the inputs that actually determine the answer: where you live and pay tax, where your customers are, whether a raise is real or hypothetical, whether anyone else is getting equity, and what the product does. It is a Decision project — no document to build. You leave with the decision made and a summary of the reasoning, including what you ruled out and what would make you reconsider.

Then you go to a formation service and buy the thing you decided on.

The documents question

Formation services also sell document packages — founder agreements, offer letters, NDAs, privacy policies. Fill in the blanks and out comes a document.

Same distinction as above, one level down. A template with your name in it is a document; whether it says the right things depends on decisions nobody walked you through. Founder Agreement works through equity, vesting, IP assignment, roles and departure terms as decisions, and produces a document reflecting what you actually agreed. Privacy Policy starts from an inventory of what your product genuinely collects and who it shares it with — which is why the result describes your product rather than the one the template author had in mind.

For anything with real money or real risk attached, both paths end at the same place: a professional reviews it. The difference is what you're paying them for. Reviewing a document you can explain the reasoning behind is a short, cheap conversation. Reviewing one you generated and don't understand is an open-ended one.

Use both

The sequence that works:

1. Decide what to form and when — Groundwork, or a lawyer, or your own research.
2. File it — LegalZoom, Stripe Atlas, Clerky, or a local equivalent. This is not optional and we are not an alternative to it.
3. Work out the terms between people — founder agreement, contractor assignments, equity.
4. Have a professional check anything with real exposure.

Where a formation service alone is enough

• You've done this before and know exactly what you want.
• Your situation is standard: US founder, US customers, planning to raise, C-corp.
• You have a lawyer already making these calls.

If none of those is true, the risk isn't filing the wrong form — it's filing the right form for somebody else's company.

Groundwork is a structured thinking tool, not a law firm, and nothing here is legal advice. Company names above belong to their respective owners and are used for comparison only.

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