Mathis Büchi and Lino Teuteberg were Swiss entrepreneurs who co-created Smallpdf, a tool for merging and compressing PDF files. They grew it into a profitable business without outside investors.
They founded Taxfix in Berlin in 2016. Millions of employees in Germany were owed refunds and never filed, because tax software was built for accountants. Taxfix asked plain questions in an app and did the translating behind the scenes.
Index Ventures led a $65 million Series C in April 2020 and Neil Rimer joined the board. In September 2021 Büchi became chairman and Martin Ott became CEO, while Teuteberg stayed on product.
In April 2022 Taxfix raised $220 million at a valuation above $1 billion. Funding then dried up. The company cut 120 jobs, about 20% of staff, in May 2023, and headcount fell from over 500 to just over 300 over several rounds of layoffs.