After ups and downs: RIDE Capital is back 📈

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Short and sweet 🎂

• Daniel Marcous (Opens in a new window), co-founder and CTO of US-based embedded tax solution april (Opens in a new window), talks in the AI Knowhow podcast about AI-powered tax solutions (Link (Opens in a new window))

• Swedish Bluebook (YC W25) (Opens in a new window), aiming to bring AI agents to accounting companies, raises three million dollars in pre-seed round (Link (Opens in a new window))

• Neo-business bank Finom (Opens in a new window) releases Finom AI Accounting, opening waitlist for eager business owners (Link (Opens in a new window))

• Plutus (Opens in a new window)' Kai Klapal (Opens in a new window), where they offer a tax service for German holding entrepreneurial companies (= UGs), announces reached goal of 100.000 euro annual recurring revenue at the end of last year with constant user inflow (Link (Opens in a new window))

• Dutch Stacks (Opens in a new window) – an AI solution for accountants, that want to close their books more easily – launches with 10 million dollars in seed funding (Link (Opens in a new window))

• SparkReceipt (Opens in a new window), a Finnish pre-accounting software provider, raised an undisclosed round from Trind Ventures (Opens in a new window) (Link (Opens in a new window))

• CHECK24 Vergleichsportal (Opens in a new window)'s SteuerCHECK now supports the transmission of tax returns for self-employed individuals. This comes at a time where other tax do-it-yourself solutions are already scratching their heads on how to compete with CHECK24's free offering, while they charge around 30 to 40 euro per tax year (Link (Opens in a new window))

RIDE Capital is back 🌅

Seven months of tragic LinkedIn-silence have now been superseded by a new post (Opens in a new window) from RIDE Capital (Opens in a new window) on their official LinkedIn page. It has been a wild ride, hasn’t it?

Before we dive into the juicy details, here is a short summary of the happenings during the last months:

• December 2023: Questionable property deals from an earlier business model put RIDE Capital in the limelight

• April 2024: Lawyer and tax advisor Simon Beyme (Opens in a new window) joins RIDE Capital as Head of Tax and becomes Managing Director of RIDE Steuerberatung (= Tax Consultancy)

• September 2024: RIDE Capital files for bankruptcy

• November 2024: Raoul Heraeus (Opens in a new window) buys RIDE Capital for a reported 630.000 euro

• December 2024: RIDE Capital is forced to stop operating and is bought back by the two original founders Christine Kiefer (Opens in a new window) and Felix Schulte (Opens in a new window)

What about now?

March 2025. The original RIDE GmbH is in the process of being liquidated. TTT Education GmbH, a shelf company (= Vorratsgesellschaft), has been in use as the new company behind RIDE Capital. It is supposed to be renamed during the course of this year.

The management of this new entity now consists of Christine Kiefer, Felix Schulte and Jens Labusch (Opens in a new window). Looking at the LinkedIn employee count, they manage around 25 employees. However, reports from 2024 suggest that around 20 employees are left.

However, to provide tax services, a tax consultancy is needed. In this case, that is the RIDE Steuerberatung GmbH (previously vvSteuerberatung GmbH). Since April 2024, this tax consultancy has been run by Simon Beyme, who decided in February 2025 to leave this position and instead join the German personal do-it—for-me tax app Zasta.

That sounds like a vacancy to fill, doesn’t it?

A new project for Martin Grau

Well, with whom could you substitute someone who is a tax consultant and a lawyer?

To find this information, I went into Germany’s digital jungle, the Common Register Portal of the German federal states (= Handelsregister) and weaved my way through their ancient web portal – saving you the pain.

Surprisingly, it was worth my while and I successfully extracted the following: The new and current managing director of RIDE Steuerberatung GmbH is listed as tax consultant, lawyer and auditor Martin Grau (Opens in a new window).

Martin Grau is seemingly a jack of all trades and is involved in a myriad of tax-related projects. Among others:

• megra Steuerberatung (Opens in a new window), a German tax consultancy

• MiMaTAX, a German tax consultancy, that initially only focused on sevdesk users but is now rebranded as zuno.tax (Opens in a new window), partnering not only with sevdesk but also with Lexware Office and Taxdoo

• As an investor in milia.io (Opens in a new window), a central platform for transparent information exchange and digital collaboration with clients

• Tax2Tech podcast, together with Melchior Neumann (Opens in a new window), where they discuss the latest developments in the taxtech world

Let’s try again

That RIDE Steuerberatung is currently still looking to fill vacancies for tax experts and also a tax advisor, makes it unclear what the exact depth of involvement of Martin Grau will be in his new role but he will for sure bolster the new found spirit that RIDE Capital now needs as much as ever.

With the founding duo having the reins in hand again, RIDE Capital might face a bright future, offering a highly demanded digital solution for low-tax investing through German GmbHs.

To support this newsletter, you can subscribe either as an individual supporter or a company sponsor. Go here (Opens in a new window) to find out more or contact me directly (Opens in a new window).

Thank you 💜