Sphere YC Application

Winter 2022Active

Sphere went through Y Combinator in the Winter 2022 batch as a B2B company. Below: what the company does, who founded it, and its application to YC, reconstructed question by question in the real YC form.

YC batch: Winter 2022
Industry: B2B
Team size: 7
Status: Active
Launched: 2021

Founders

Nicholas RudderFounder

What Sphere does

Sphere is an AI-powered cross-border compliance platform. We help companies like Lovable, Eleven Labs, Replit and Windsurf automate their sales tax, VAT, GST compliance obligations. What makes us different to other vendors on the market is: 1. we have spent the last 1.5 years building local rails into 100+ tax authorities in both the US and internationally to properly automate compliance processes, and 2. we've built the world's first AI-native tax engine which ingests, codifies and monitors tax law globally.

Sphere's YC application, reconstructed

Y Combinator application

Sphere, Winter 2022 batch. The real form questions, answered from public data.

Founders2
Company7
Progress7
Idea4
Equity3
Curious2
Batch Preference1

Company

Company name

Sphere

Describe what your company does in 50 characters or less.

AI-powered sales tax, VAT and GST compliance

What is your company going to make? Please describe your product and what it does or will do.

We build an AI-native cross-border compliance platform that automates sales tax, VAT, and GST obligations. Our product connects to over 100 tax authorities locally in the US and internationally, ensuring users like Lovable and Replit stay compliant with complex local tax laws. The core is our AI engine that continuously codifies and monitors tax law globally to handle changes automatically.

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live in San Francisco, CA, and the company will remain based there after YC.

Explain your decision regarding location.

San Francisco offers the best access to talent and customers in B2B finance and AI, which is our focus. Staying here keeps us close to this ecosystem.

21 more answers in the full application

Founders, Progress, Idea, Equity, Curious, Batch Preference are in the full version. Create a free account to open it in YC Insights, next to every other YC batch.

See full application

Frequently Asked Questions

Is this the real Sphere YC application?

No. Y Combinator keeps submitted applications private. This is a reconstruction: the real YC form questions, answered from Sphere's public data (launch notes, founder backgrounds, product description). It shows how a company like Sphere would present itself to YC, not the text they submitted.