A €61bn market at a historic turning point.
We take over the practice — or the bookkeeping and payroll it can no longer staff — move every mandate onto our platform, and own the recurring revenue. Service-as-software.
A market guaranteed by law — whose providers are disappearing.
Every SME has to file, in every cycle. At the same time, the practices that do this work are disappearing — faster than the market can replace them.
annual compliance spend of German SMEs
solo practices without a successor (owner 61+)
practices already turning clients away
talent gap above the professional average
Only about a third of an SME's finance function sits with the external advisor today — mandatory compliance. The other two thirds — ongoing steering and controlling — stay inside the company, mostly unsolved.
Whoever owns the mandate relationship grows from the mandatory third into the full three thirds — compliance becomes steering.
Through the mandate relationship we integrate vertically down to the level of the individual employee — contracts, payroll, bookkeeping, financial statements. Every additional layer deepens the lock-in.
For the first time, this market is rationing demand — and selling its books.
A market that can't clear
Demand is set by law, supply capped by the license: reserved tasks can be neither outsourced nor accelerated. Wages, immigration, substitution — every balancing mechanism is blocked.
Supply is rationing demand
As recently as 2010 there was a labor surplus. Today practices turn away paying clients — and owners need a face-saving way out.
A window with a date
Around €2bn of private equity flowed into German tax advisory in 18 months — and skipped the solo practices. Their natural buyer was always another practice; that pool is gone. Peak 2027.
How we own the mandate relationship — without touching the ban on non-professional ownership.
A non-regulated model that owns the mandate relationship — already proven in the market by Taxfix and Accountable.
Client (SME)
Contracts with Ezarro and grants power of attorney: for the ongoing, non-reserved work and for procuring the reserved tasks.
Ezarro platform
Performs the non-reserved work itself and, for reserved tasks, engages a licensed professional in the client's name.
Licensed professional
Reviews and signs off the reserved task only — fully independent, without instruction, without kickback — and grants client protection.
Equity funds the platform, debt funds the scale.
Builds the platform: product, technology and team. Growth capital that creates the economics under which every additional mandate becomes cheaper and more automated.
Funds the scaling: the acquisition of the mandate books. Asset-backed, secured by recurring mandate revenue — a predictable, cash-flow-driven profile.
The bottleneck is execution, not demand — there are more acquirable books than can be absorbed. We'll shape the right structure together.
Why this market, this model, now.
Why tax advisory — and not another market?
Because four things converge here that rarely come together twice. First, an acute bottleneck: the talent shortage runs about 1.5× above the average across all professions, compounded by an unprecedented succession wave. Second, an extremely fragmented market of thousands of solo and small practices — no dominant provider, no established platform holding a position. The field is open. Third, and this is the unfair advantage: around 90% of practices run on DATEV. A single, uniform source system makes migration plannable and repeatable rather than a one-off — exactly the friction on which vertical consolidation usually fails simply falls away. Fourth, the work is high-margin, highly rule-based and poor in genuine judgment — precisely the profile today's AI automates reliably. Rarely does so much pain meet so little technical hurdle.
Why don't you believe in the classic PE roll-up?
The approach is legitimate — but it leaves the real value on the table. PE thinks in 3–5-year exits; that doesn't square with what's needed here: first build a new tech platform, then re-platform every book onto it. The value is created precisely in that longer horizon. There's also a concrete regulatory risk: PE roll-ups rely on an interpretation under which foreign professionals may hold stakes in German tax-advisory / audit firms — these foreign entities aren't subject to the ban on non-professional ownership, so capital can get in. Lawmakers and the profession are actively working to close this loophole by clarification. That would grandfather what's already built, but allow no further acquisitions going forward. And at the core: in a time of massive talent shortage, buying a people business to turn it into a bigger people business doesn't solve the problem — it scales it.
What sets your approach apart from the classic PE roll-up?
Three things. First, we build a proprietary tech platform that enables entirely new economics — service-as-software instead of linear headcount. Second, we use a proven, non-regulated platform model, like the one Taxfix runs: we own the mandate relationship and participate in the value of the reserved tasks — without prohibited kickbacks or commissions. Third, we work with lawyers instead of tax advisors, sidestepping the commercial-operation hurdle you otherwise hit quickly in this setup. So we don't buy practices to run them at larger scale — we move their books onto a platform that makes the work better, cheaper and scalable.
Why Germany — isn't the market too specific?
On the contrary — specific is an advantage here. Demand is guaranteed by law: every SME has to file, in every cycle — a €61bn mandatory market. The very structural features that drive the AI-led transformation of European services markets are maximally pronounced here: extreme fragmentation, acute succession pressure and a sluggish legacy layer — the DATEV quasi-monopoly, on whose pace of innovation the entire market depends.
How does the platform monetize — including the reserved work?
We own the mandate relationship and monetize it as recurring revenue. We also earn on the reserved services — via a proven platform model: we charge the client our own service fee that covers settling the professional's fee, pay the professional, and release the client from that fee. The difference is a legitimate platform margin on our own, non-reserved service — no kickback, no commission. That way we earn across the entire relationship, including around the reserved task.
How do you migrate mandates without major churn?
Clients are reluctant to switch — not out of loyalty, but out of fear of what feels like enormous effort. That's exactly where we come in. First, the retained advisor: the existing advisor stays on board for the reserved tasks through a transition period — giving the client the trust they need. Second, full alignment: we run the migration so the client has to do nothing themselves; to them it feels like an upgrade, not a switch. Third, technical uniformity: everything is migrated off DATEV along one repeatable path, not a special case. The real lock-in comes afterward — through vertical integration down to the level of the individual employee: contracts, payroll, time tracking, bookkeeping and financial statements all run on a platform used every day. Anyone wanting to switch wouldn't be swapping their tax advisor — they'd be ripping out the company's entire operational backbone. With every layer we add, switching costs rise — a replaceable service provider becomes infrastructure no one rips out.
Why focus on solo practices — what's your thesis?
Solo practices are the structurally underpriced and at the same time most accessible entry into a market with demand guaranteed by law. Crucially: a solo practice transfers only its client base, not a company. Since everyone migrates off DATEV anyway and no organization is taken over — only selected employees — post-merger integration shrinks to an absolute minimum. Buyers do exist, but there's little competition and attractive terms — precisely because many owners are under staffing pressure. And that's exactly what we have no problem with: a talent shortage isn't an obstacle for us, it's the reason we get the call. Owners are often 61+, without a successor — every acquisition is a warm relationship that we re-platform into our own recurring revenue. This is where the leverage is greatest, and the window is open (peak 2027).
Why this team?
Founder-market fit in the best sense: a technologist-operator pairing that has built exactly this before — built and scaled a German TaxTech — complemented by substantial M&A experience. Precisely the three disciplines this model demands: platform, operations and acquisition — united in one team.
Interested? Let's talk.
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