As Nicholas Rudder built his last startup, an educational marketplace called ScholarSite, he kept running into the same problem: tax.

“Marketplaces are liable for tax on their entire GMV (gross merchandise value) not just their take rate, so every new country meant a maze of registrations, filings, deadlines, and risk,” Rudder told TechCrunch. “It became a constant distraction. Instead of building the business, I was spending time deciphering international compliance rules I never wanted to become an expert in.”

As he and co-founder Adrian Sarstedt were looking to shut down ScholarSite (later calling it Sphere), they decided to keep the name but turn the product into something new.

“The world was going global, but compliance infrastructure hadn’t kept up,” Rudder said.

In 2023, they

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