Andreessen Horowitz backs Folklore investee, Sphere

Folklore has some exciting news to share, which was hinted at in our last quarterly report. As covered in the AFR this week, Sphere, a Folklore investee company, has closed a US$20 million Series A raise from US VC Andreessen Horowitz, alongside Y Combinator, Felicis, 20VC, among others.

Companies who expand globally quickly learn how painful international tax compliance is. Opaque rules, steep penalties, and outdated legacy solutions can stand in the way of businesses who want to serve customers all over the world. Enter Sphere.

Sphere is the AI-native cross-border compliance engine. Powered by a proprietary AI-native tax engine, Sphere handles the entire indirect tax lifecycle of registration, calculation, filing and remittance in over 100 regions globally.

Led by repeat founder and ex-Macquarie banker, Nicholas Rudder, this new round of funding represents one of the first investments by Andreessen Horowitz into an Australian-founded company, and represents a watershed moment for Australian technology to have one of the biggest VC’s in the world allocate into our technology ecosystem.

Folklore Ventures was the first (and only Australian) VC that invested into the company in its first round, at a pre-seed stage. Nick and his teams’ excellent execution ability in Sphere is a classic example of a highly valuable yet ‘unsexy and hard’ company that Folklore likes to identify and back.

When asked about the opportunity this offered for the rest of the Australian startup ecosystem by the AFR, Alister Coleman, Folklore Partner, said Andreessen Horowitz’s backing of Sphere was a milestone for all Australian start-ups. “This is good for the entire industry,” he said. “Nick is very good at spotting market opportunities and building products around that.”

This only means good things for tenacious founders scaling from Australia. And, on behalf of the Australian startup ecosystem, we'd like to  welcome Andreessen Horowitz to Australia and our world of talented founders.