Article · 20 min read

Equity for Founders

Stripe Atlas Free Intermediate

This is the canonical explainer on the exact mechanism that closes your ownership gap: founders assign pre-incorporation IP to the new company through the stock purchase agreement, while a CIIAA captures everything created afterward. It shows why code, designs, and prototypes built before the company existed stay personally owned until you explicitly assign them, which is a classic diligence killer.

• Two documents split the job: the common stock purchase agreement assigns IP you created before incorporation, and the CIIAA covers IP created after.
• Without a signed assignment, the company does not own founder-created IP even though the founder is running it, which surfaces as a red flag in funding or acquisition diligence.
• Every founder should sign an IP assignment at incorporation and be able to easily show they did it, so the chain of title is unbroken.