Cairnul and Clerky both help early-stage startups manage important fundraising and company documentation, but they are built around different workflows.
Cairnul is an agentic, document-centered platform for first-time founders running early fundraising rounds. It connects SAFEs, investors, advisor agreements, documents, governance, compliance, and the cap table in one workflow built around the first 12 to 18 months of a company's equity life.
Clerky is an online legal paperwork platform built around startup formation and ongoing legal workflows. It covers incorporation, post-incorporation setup, fundraising, hiring, equity compensation, commercial documents, and corporate maintenance.
Choosing between them
Clerky is an online legal paperwork platform built around startup formation and ongoing legal workflows. It covers incorporation, post-incorporation setup, fundraising, hiring, equity compensation, commercial documents, and corporate maintenance.
At a glance
| Category | Cairnul | Clerky |
|---|---|---|
| Best fit | First-time founders running an early fundraising round | Startups needing formation and ongoing legal paperwork |
| Primary focus | Fundraising workflow and connected fundraising records | Startup formation, legal documents, and corporate legal workflows |
| Fundraising | Round-centered workflow connecting investors, SAFEs, documents, governance, and compliance | SAFE and convertible note workflows with board consent and fundraising documentation |
| SAFE management | Four standard, unmodified SAFE forms connected to the Round, Investor, documents, funding, compliance records, and Position | SAFE issuance through guided legal-document workflows after required company setup, with customizable terms |
| Cap table | Three connected ledgers covering issued stock, advisor grants, and SAFEs, each linked to the documents behind it | Equity issuance and stock-related legal paperwork, including founder stock and equity compensation |
| Compliance | Fundraising-focused workflows including Rule 506(b) and 506(c), accreditation evidence, Form D preparation, state notice filings, and board actionsLegal-document workflows with securities compliance guidance; fundraising products are designed for private offerings to accredited investors and do not include securities filings | Legal-document workflows with securities compliance guidance; fundraising products are designed for private offerings to accredited investors and do not include securities filings |
| Company formation | Delaware C corporation incorporation | Delaware C corporation incorporation and post-incorporation setup |
| Legal documents | Documents connected to fundraising, governance, compliance, and company records | Formation, fundraising, hiring, equity compensation, commercial, and maintenance documents |
| Automation | AI Startup Advisor and connected workflow assistance | Guided product access based on completed legal prerequisites |
| Pricing | Free until you open a round. Then $110 a month billed yearly, or $130 monthly, per company. The investors and advisors you invite pay nothing to take part, and Cairnul takes no percentage of the raise. | Incorporation from $427 one-time, post-incorporation setup $299, or a Company Lifetime Package at $819; fundraising from $9 per SAFE or $99 for six months of unlimited issuances |
| Workflow focus | Organize and execute the fundraising round | Complete the company's legal paperwork as it progresses from formation through ongoing legal workflows |
Pricing, features, availability, and product offerings can change. Please confirm current pricing, features, and terms directly with each provider.
Eight differences
Cairnul
Cairnul organizes fundraising around the Round. The Round connects investors, raise terms, SAFEs, documents, governance, compliance steps, and the resulting equity information in one workflow, with the terms on offer held inside it as board-authorized term sets.
This means the raise has one operating record rather than a sequence of completed documents. A founder can see which investor is at which step, which side is being waited on, and what still stands between a signed SAFE and a formed position.
Clerky
Clerky approaches fundraising through legal-document workflows. Its Fundraising products support SAFEs and convertible notes and guide founders through steps such as board approval before issuing the financing documents.
The difference is the center of the workflow: Cairnul treats the fundraising round as the primary operating record, while Clerky treats the legal paperwork required to complete the financing as part of a broader startup legal workflow.
Cairnul
Cairnul begins at incorporation, and it begins by reading the formation paperwork. Documents are uploaded during onboarding, categorized into the Data Room, and used to propose the entity record for the founder to confirm, with low-confidence extractions left empty rather than guessed. The action by sole incorporator and the initial board consent seed the board roster, which is what determines who signs the company's consents later.
For a founder who formed the company on Clerky, that is a clean handoff: the documents Clerky's post-incorporation setup produces are the documents Cairnul asks for, and they arrive as the entity record and the board roster rather than as files in a folder.
Clerky
Clerky starts much earlier, with Delaware C corporation formation and post-incorporation setup such as adopting bylaws, electing directors, appointing officers, issuing founder stock, and completing founder IP and confidentiality agreements. Its product-access model also connects later legal workflows to these prerequisites, so fundraising products become available after the required setup is completed.
For a founder still establishing the company's legal foundation, Clerky addresses a part of the company's early legal setup that Cairnul also does for Delaware incorporation. For a founder already formed and focused on running a round, Cairnul is centered on the fundraising workflow itself.
Cairnul
Cairnul treats a SAFE as part of the complete fundraising record. It connects to its Round and term set, the Investor, the accreditation evidence relied on, funding confirmation, signer information, and the resulting Position, and Cairnul fills four standard, unmodified SAFE forms rather than editing them.
That produces a record where the terms an investor was offered trace back to the consent that authorized them, and where the evidence behind each sale is attached to the SAFE it supported rather than floating loose on the person.
Clerky
Clerky provides SAFE financing workflows that support valuation caps, discounts, and MFN terms, with board approval incorporated into the process, and it also supports convertible notes. Founders can customize document terms and involve their attorney in reviewing the information entered into a workflow.
That flexibility is a real reason to choose Clerky. Cairnul does not support convertible notes or modified terms, and a founder whose raise needs either will be working outside it. Where the terms are standard, the difference is what surrounds the document: Clerky completes the paperwork, Cairnul keeps the paperwork attached to the round, the investor, and the position it created.
Cairnul
Cairnul treats documents as evidence behind the company's fundraising and governance record. SAFEs, board actions, compliance records, company agreements, and related materials remain connected to the workflows and people they support, every fact carries its provenance, and shared documents are watermarked per recipient with downloads released on the founder's approval.
The practical result is that a diligence question has an answer attached to it. What supports this position, who authorized this round, what priced this grant, and who was given access to what are all properties of the record rather than things to reconstruct later.
Clerky
Clerky is fundamentally document-centered as well, but across a wider legal scope. Its products cover formation, fundraising, hiring, equity compensation, commercial documents, and corporate maintenance, and founders can customize document terms and involve their attorney in reviewing the information entered into a workflow.
That makes Clerky a strong fit when the primary need is getting startup legal paperwork completed across multiple areas, with documents built to survive investor diligence. Cairnul is more focused on connecting the documents and records around the fundraising workflow.
Cairnul
Cairnul is built around the exemption the round is running under. The founder chooses 506(b) or 506(c) when opening the Round and it locks for the life of that round, accreditation is held as a ledger of dated evidence records on the investor's account, verification is required before acceptance under 506(c), and Cairnul prepares Form D and the state notice filings that follow from where each investor lives.
For a first-time founder this is the part that is hardest to reconstruct afterwards. The evidence that supported each sale stays attached to the SAFE it supported, and a 506(c) round cannot go out on a self-certification left over from an earlier 506(b) raise.
Clerky
Clerky provides legal guidance around seed financing requirements, but its Fundraising products are designed for private offerings to accredited investors and do not include securities filings. Clerky advises founders to discuss securities-law compliance with their startup attorney.
That difference is worth checking against your own raise. If your round is entirely accredited and your attorney is handling the filings, Clerky's scope may be exactly right. If you are raising from friends and family and expect some investors who are not accredited, or you want the filings prepared alongside the raise, that work has to happen somewhere, and Cairnul is built to hold it.
Cairnul
Cairnul concentrates on the early fundraising and equity workflow, including advisor equity as a full sequence rather than a document. An advisor signs the standard FAST, the board consent authorizing the grant is generated and signed, the restricted stock or option agreement follows, and the position then carries its own vesting schedule, its formation date, and its 83(b) task where one applies.
That matters because a signed FAST issues nothing on its own. Keeping the agreement, the authorization, and the issuance document on one chain is what lets the founder answer, years later, how a particular advisor came to hold what they hold. Where the grant is an option rather than restricted stock, the option pool has to be recorded with the document behind it before the grant can complete.
Clerky
Clerky extends into other corporate legal workflows after formation, including hiring paperwork, advisor agreements, equity compensation, NDAs, board actions, changes to authorized shares, changes to company information, and other maintenance products.
If your immediate need is a broader set of startup legal workflows, Clerky covers considerably more ground outside the raise. If your priority is the round and the equity activity around it, tracked as ongoing positions rather than completed paperwork, Cairnul is the more focused workflow.
Cairnul
Cairnul gates on authorization rather than on paperwork sequence. No SAFE can be generated or sent on a round whose opening authorization is not yet fully signed, and none on a term set whose supplemental authorization is still out for signature, while everything before the document continues in the meantime.
The reason is that a consent signed after the sale it authorizes is a question a diligence lawyer asks, and a signing window that lapses after a SAFE has formed leaves a sale with nothing behind it. Gating removes both, and the founder keeps working on invitations, questionnaires, verification, and risk acknowledgments while signatures are outstanding.
Clerky
Clerky uses prerequisite-based product access. Startups begin with incorporation products and gain access to additional products as required legal paperwork is completed. Clerky says this approach is intended to reduce the risk of founders completing legal paperwork before the company is ready for it.
Both products therefore refuse to let a founder run ahead of themselves, and the reasoning is similar. What differs is the checkpoint: Clerky checks that the company's legal foundation is in place, while Cairnul checks that the board has authorized the specific thing about to happen.
Cairnul
Cairnul has a free tier and a paid one, and the round is the line between them. Free is where you build the cap table, invite the people involved, and see what the raise will need. Nothing is charged until you open a Round. The paid plan is $110 a month billed yearly, or $130 a month for a short round without an annual commitment.
It is priced per company, never per stakeholder and never as a cut of the raise. The investors and advisors you invite pay nothing to take part, and the money never passes through Cairnul at all: it moves directly from the investor's bank account to yours
Clerky
Clerky prices per document and per package. Delaware incorporation is $427 one-time, post-incorporation setup is $299, and a Company Lifetime Package at $819 covers unlimited use of its standard fundraising, hiring, commercial, and maintenance products. Fundraising is listed at $9 per SAFE, $19 per convertible note, or $99 for six months of unlimited issuances.
The two models are not really comparable, and a founder issuing a handful of SAFEs will pay Clerky far less than Cairnul's annual plan. What that buys is the documents. Cairnul's subscription buys the workflow around them: the authorization that has to exist first, the accreditation evidence, the filings, and the positions the documents create.
The real world
A first-time founder posted in r/startups, partway through raising a friends and family round on a 506(b) offering. They had already missed their 83(b) election at incorporation and some California state filing deadlines, and were trying to work out how much of a first raise is pitching and how much is paperwork nobody warned them about.
It is a common position to be in. Most fundraising advice covers the pitch. Very little of it covers what has to be in order before anyone says yes.
First-time founder, already started to raisereddit.comhow much of it was pitching versus documents? And is there anything you'd get sorted before you start rather than during?
A solo hardware founder asked whether they could raise a small round from friends and family on a standard YC post-money SAFE, or whether everyone involved had to be an accredited investor. They had read contradictory answers and could not work out which was right.
The replies did not settle it. One said the SAFE only works with accredited investors. Another pointed out that Rule 506 permits up to 35 non-accredited investors. A third said it was a non-issue. All of it from people who had raised.
Can you raise money from family and friends with a YC post-money SAFE?reddit.comI keep hearing mixed things, some people are saying I cant raise from friends and family via a Y combinator SAFE and they must be accredited investors.
The filing question is the sharpest point here for anyone comparing these two. Clerky’s fundraising products are built for offerings to accredited investors and do not include securities filings, so a 506(b) round with filing obligations needs that work to happen somewhere.
Questions founders ask
No.The overlap is fundraising and advisor equity, where the difference is that Clerky produces the documents and Cairnul runs the round they belong to.
Yes, and the formation documents are the starting point. Onboarding asks for them, proposes the entity details for you to confirm, and uses the action by sole incorporator and the initial board consent to seed the board roster, which is what Cairnul uses to work out who signs each consent.
Clerky states that its fundraising products are designed for private offerings to accredited investors and that they do not include securities filings, and it advises founders to discuss securities-law compliance with their attorney. Cairnul supports Rule 506(b), which permits up to 35 non-accredited sophisticated investors per offering, and Rule 506(c), which requires every investor to be verified accredited before acceptance. If your friends and family round includes people who are not accredited, that distinction is worth resolving before you choose.
No. Cairnul supports post-money SAFEs on four standard forms and fills them rather than editing them. Clerky supports both SAFEs and convertible notes and allows customized terms, so a raise involving either belongs there or with your own lawyer.
Cairnul computes who has to sign from the board roster as it stood on the action date, shows that signer set to the founder for confirmation before the document is generated, and pins it to the action so a later board change never rewrites what a past approval meant. It also checks whether an investor is a director and routes an interested transaction to the disinterested directors when one is.
Clerky currently lists Delaware incorporation at $427 one-time, post-incorporation setup at $299, and a Company Lifetime Package at $819 covering unlimited use of its standard fundraising, hiring, commercial, and maintenance products. Fundraising products are listed at $9 per SAFE, $19 per convertible note, or $99 for six months of unlimited issuances. Additional fees may apply for certain products and third-party services.
Your first raise creates more than a set of signed documents. It creates a record of investors, terms, approvals, compliance, documents, and ownership.
Keep the whole fundraising workflow connected with Cairnul.