Paddle

Christian Owens and Harrison Rose founded Paddle in London from a problem every software developer knows: selling a digital product globally is dramatically harder than building it. Every country has its own VAT rates, its own tax compliance rules, its own payment preferences. A SaaS company that wants to sell in 100 countries technically needs to register as a seller in dozens of jurisdictions, manage locally compliant invoicing, and integrate with incompatible payment methods. Paddle solves this by acting as the Merchant of Record. Being a Merchant of Record means Paddle is the legal seller of record facing the end customers of the software companies it serves. Paddle calculates and remits local taxes, issues invoices compliant with each country's regulations, handles refunds, and manages payment disputes. The software vendor sells through Paddle, which absorbs all the legal, fiscal, and operational complexity that would otherwise require dedicated legal and finance teams. The product covers the full billing lifecycle for SaaS companies: customer onboarding, subscription management, upgrades and downgrades, free trials, metered billing for pay-as-you-go models, proration, and automated dunning for churn prevention. With Paddle, a software company can launch globally on day one — no local tax infrastructure, no separate payment processor contracts in each country. The addressable market is the vast and growing universe of B2B software companies — SaaS products, plugins, APIs, developer tools — that want to scale internationally without building in-house the operational complexity of global sales. The revenue model is built on a revenue share and fees on managed subscriptions, which means Paddle's economics grow directly with its customers' growth. Paddle acquired ProfitWell in 2022, integrating powerful subscription analytics capabilities and cementing its position as the default operational infrastructure for software vendors selling at global scale.