Our mission
empower online stores with an automatic, smart, and compliant billing system.
When we started Octobat, our vision was to build an ultra-fast, one-click, and compliant integration with all payment gateways in order to create invoices for every online transaction. We have expanded this vision to offer seamless tools that will allow online sellers to simplify the tax reporting, accounting consolidation and to speed up the tax filing process in a unique and user-friendly interface.
Our story began in 2014 in the heart of Paris when Gaultier Laperche and Nicolas Guillemain, two childhood friends who had already worked together for some years in the creation of web projects and e-commerce sites, met some other startup entrepreneurs folks at The Family, a type of accelerator and VC for Parisien startups. They quickly felt the lack of adapted solutions for these entrepreneurs who were developing great concepts in the rapidly growing French but also European tech ecosystem.
We radically reduced the scope of PSPs and developed a direct integration with Stripe (a solution growing in popularity in the global startup ecosystem at that time) in order to create an instant post-transaction invoice issuing solution. After signing our firsts customers that were mainly entrepreneurial friends developing SaaS products, we realized that these types of businesses would face a new challenge within the EU due to the new set of VAT and invoice rules that came into force in 2015 and that concerned digital services selling across the continent - the VAT MOSS scheme.
After Gaultier and Nicolas built a mold that has successfully proven a strong market fit and has been able to sell itself in SaaS mode, Fernando Diez joined us in 2017 to strengthen the team and develop the sales and our partnership.
As we’re always looking for learning and growing, during the Covid crisis in 2019 we quickly realized that the new platform and marketplace model was booming and that there would be a growing need for a billing solution for platforms and marketplaces that could comply with the new VAT rules coming into place in July 2020. This was a complicated problem to solve and that no one in the market had proposed a solution - We launched Octobat Plaza: a set of APIs that allows platforms and marketplaces to onboard sellers and produce invoices in their name and on their behalf while respecting European regulations.
Today Ricoh, Blade, Soundiiz, Sweet Inn, Déménager Facile, Glassnode, Ultra, and 300+ other internet companies across Europe, Nord America, and Asia, use Octobat solutions not just to add automation to their billing flows, but to improve the user payment experience by reducing friction and improving compliance. It is a great achievement to work with these fast-growing companies and be part of their key to success.
And this is just the beginning!
Gaultier has been involved in web development since he started to learn programming in high school. In 2009, he graduated from Telecom Paris with a master's degree and started working as a freelancer alongside Nicolas, a friend of his from high school, to help French SMEs in their digitization process. After a failed startup launch in the social-local market, and realizing that the B2B-SaaS market was booming, they decided to launch Octobat in 2015 during an entrepreneurship program at TheFamily. At Octobat, he is mainly responsible for the product strategy and technical development, maintenance, and support.
Gaultier loves skiing, running, cooking, wine, craft beers, and Italy.
Fernando is originally from Venezuela where he obtained his master’s degree in electronics and computers. He arrived in France in 2010 to study at the Ecole des Mines de Paris. After a stint in the oil & gas and energy industry, he started his own consulting firm in computer engineering in the automotive and aerospace sector. He met Nicolas and Gaultier in 2017 and joined Octobat following a training program for startup entrepreneurs at The Family, a Parisien startup accelerator where Octobat was actually founded.
Just like Gaultier and Nicolas, Fernando is a multi-sports lover. He frequently practices cycling and running (on the road and in the mountains).
Nicolas studied computer science and quickly became a freelance developer in 2007.Soon after, he co-founded with Gaultier the company Zuuno, a web service provider for SMEs based in Paris. In 2015, Gaultier and Nicolas created and launched the first version of Octobat on behalf of The Family where he followed a training program for entrepreneurs called Koudetat. Nowadays, Nicolas is responsible for the marketing aspect at Octobat, and helps Gaultier and Fernando with development and sales respectively.
He has a particular lifestyle as he decided to live in a van around France and Europe. The goal is to combine travel, work, and sports in the wilderness.
Last modified 1yr ago