As a Merchant of Record, FastSpring’s enterprise-grade platform enables companies of all sizes to scale globally by offloading the operational complexities of payments, subscriptions, and international tax compliance. This new partnership with LLR Partners will allow FastSpring to further accelerate its product innovation, expand its go-to-market capabilities, and invest in strategic initiatives that deliver deeper value to its global customer base.

The investment from LRR arrives as global digital commerce faces a pivotal shift. Businesses are increasingly moving away from fragmented payment setups in favor of unified solutions that handle the “heavy lifting” of international expansion. LLR Partners, a private equity firm known for its deep roots in the technology sector, identified FastSpring as the primary engine for this transition.

“We see a unique opportunity to back one of the most experienced and capable teams within the ecommerce enablement category,” noted Devon Bembery, Vice President at LLR Partners.

Bembery emphasized that the partnership is designed to move beyond simple capital injection. By collaborating closely with both the FastSpring leadership and Accel-KKR, the goal is to aggressively push the boundaries of product innovation and launch strategic initiatives that solve the most pressing pain points for digital creators and software developers today.

Accel-KKR, which has anchored FastSpring’s growth through its most recent years of scaling, remains a cornerstone of the company’s board. Their continued involvement ensures a balance of historical institutional knowledge and fresh strategic perspectives.

“FastSpring has built a strong foundation as a leading digital commerce platform, and we’re proud of the progress the team has made,” said Andy Rich, Managing Director at Accel-KKR. “We’re excited to partner with LLR Partners on this next phase, combining our strengths to support continued innovation and help accelerate FastSpring’s long-term growth.”

This “powerhouse” partnership among the three entities signals a commitment to making global commerce more accessible. By combining LLR and Accel-KKR’s expertise with FastSpring’s operational excellence, the company is poised to redefine what it means to be a Merchant of Record today and in the future.

For more information on how FastSpring helps software companies scale, visit https://www.fastspring.com.

About FastSpring

FastSpring is how AI, SaaS, gaming, software, and digital product companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle all payment needs from checkout to taxes so you can go farther faster. Founded in 2005, we are a privately owned company headquartered in Santa Barbara with offices in Amsterdam, Austin, Belfast, Dublin, Halifax, and Singapore.

About LLR Partners

LLR Partners is a lower middle market private equity firm focused on investing in software and tech-enabled companies. LLR has raised over $7.5 billion and has partnered with over 130 companies. We believe in creating value through partnership to help companies grow every day. To learn more, visit www.llrpartners.com.

About Accel-KKR

Accel-KKR is a technology-focused investment firm with over $23 billion in cumulative capital commitments. The firm partners closely with management teams of software and tech-enabled businesses, working alongside them to build long-term value and drive sustainable growth by leveraging the resources of the Accel-KKR network. Headquartered in Menlo Park, Accel-KKR has offices in London, Atlanta, and Chicago. To learn more, visit https://www.accel-kkr.com/.

The post FastSpring Announces Strategic Investment from LLR Partners to Accelerate Growth appeared first on FastSpring.

• Amsterdam.
• Austin.
• Belfast.
• Dublin.
• Halifax.
• Santa Barbara.

FastSpring has been represented by an in-person sales team in Singapore for almost two years, and that team has quickly grown FastSpring’s presence while embedded in the local technology community. 

Growing demand for FastSpring’s merchant of record services in the dynamic and thriving Asia-Pacific region has led to the subsequent growth of our Singapore team, which will now be able to serve our APAC customers even better from a dedicated workspace. 

Leo Ng [foreground] takes a selfie with [background, left to
right] Tengxiong Yao, Jay Jia, and Jeslyn Ong.

The Singapore team now has a private office space within the bustling WeWork coworking location at 60 Anson Rd, Singapore 079914, Unit #17-135.

Related: FastSpring recently won the 2025 Golden Sail Award for Outstanding Global Expansion Ecosystem Service at GICC, one of China’s most recognized global business summits.

FastSpring remains focused on deep, local integration with tech communities all over the world to ensure we remain in touch and in tune with the customers we serve in the SaaS, software, video games, mobile apps, AI, eLearning, and other digital goods spaces. 

FastSpring powers global payments for software companies, video game publishers, and other digital goods businesses. As a merchant of record, FastSpring provides a fully managed payment solution including checkout, fraud mitigation, comprehensive sales tax and VAT compliance, and more. Founded in 2005, FastSpring is a privately owned company headquartered in the U.S., with offices in Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the U.K.

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

To view our homepage in simplified Chinese, click here.
若想浏览 FastSpring 中文官网，请点击此处。

To sign up for a personalized demo using a form in simplified Chinese, click here.
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The post FastSpring Expands APAC Presence and Brings Together Singapore Team With New Office Location appeared first on FastSpring.

Below, check out some of the awesome ways FastSpring team members have been celebrating around the globe. 

To learn more about FastSpring’s meaningful history in the fintech and ecommerce space, check out our podcast episode with one of the original cofounders and the original CEO of FastSpring Dan Engel, and current CEO David Nachman. Read more, watch, or listen here. 

FastSpring Celebrates 20 Years Around the World

There were many ways we made sure to celebrate this impressive milestone for FastSpring — from employee swag boxes and cookie deliveries to office parties with cake cuttings and toasts! 

Employee Swag and Remote Celebrations

FastSpring’s success wouldn’t be possible without our amazing team members, many of whom are distributed and remote across North America, Europe, Asia, and beyond. 

To help thank everyone for their contribution to this momentous achievement, employees received gifts such as premium travel backpacks and gourmet stuffed cookies!

Amsterdam

At FastSpring’s Amsterdam office, team members went all out to decorate the office space and celebrate with cake and champagne! 

Belfast

The Belfast team supported a local LGBTQ+ baker in Lisburn called Frootcake, which was a great way to recognize FastSpring’s anniversary and celebrate Pride Month at the same time!

Halifax

Since a few of our team members throughout Canada are originally from Ukraine, the Halifax office celebrated FastSpring’s birthday with a Київський торт (Kyiv Cake) and Живчик (Zhyvchyk), which are traditional Ukrainian treats. 

Austin

In Austin, Texas, a crew got together to celebrate with a lot of FastSpring orange! 

Santa Barbara

At our home office in Santa Barbara, California, the party planning committee went above and beyond!

FastSpring: Powering the Digital Economy® for Two Decades!

For twenty years, FastSpring has been powering global payments for SaaS and software companies, video game publishers, and other digital goods businesses. As a merchant of record, FastSpring provides a fully managed payment solution including checkout, fraud mitigation, comprehensive sales tax and VAT compliance, and more. Founded in 2005, FastSpring is a privately owned company headquartered in California with offices in the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada.

To learn more about FastSpring’s meaningful history in the fintech and ecommerce space, check out our podcast episode with one of the original cofounders and the original CEO of FastSpring Dan Engel, and current CEO David Nachman. Read more, watch, or listen here.

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post It’s Our Cake Day! FastSpring Turns 20 appeared first on FastSpring.

Likewise, in the tech-meets-ecommerce space, there were very few SaaS companies out there, live service gaming didn’t really exist yet, and software companies wanting to sell their software globally had very, very few options.

And the options that were available left a lot to be desired. 

That’s why on June 28, 2005, four tech founders — including Dan Engel, current Founder and Managing Partner of Santa Barbara Venture Partners — got together to found FastSpring. 

Twenty years later, we’re still going strong! Now led by CEO David Nachman and backed by Accel-KKR — and with technology more advanced and stronger than ever — FastSpring is celebrating its 20th anniversary by looking back on how we got here, applauding today’s team for our current successes, and looking forward to a bright future in the payments industry as an experienced partner our customers can trust. 

In this special celebratory post, we share:

• A special twentieth anniversary episode of Growth Stage, interviewing both FastSpring’s co-founder & first CEO Dan Engel and FastSpring’s current CEO David Nachman. Jump to podcast.
• A brief history of FastSpring, with some fantastically nostalgic photos of the team throughout the years. Jump to history. 

Growth Stage Podcast EP34: What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business

Building a lasting business isn’t easy. 

Knowing what really makes a company succeed long term can be even harder.

That’s why it can be helpful to learn from companies that have stood the test of time.

In this episode of Growth Stage, we celebrate FastSpring’s 20th anniversary with insights from its first CEO, Dan Engel, and current CEO, David Nachman. They share:

• What has helped FastSpring thrive for two decades.
• What mistakes to avoid when building your own business.
• What it really takes to build something that lasts.

Whether you’re planning to exit in two years or fifty, take a moment to step back and think about the long term future of your business. Watch or listen now!

Jump to video.  |  Jump to history. |  Jump to transcript.

Podcast Full Interview: Audio

Listen online or find it on more podcast services.

Podcast Full Interview: Video

Transcript available at the end of this post.

A Brief History of FastSpring (With Photos)

FastSpring was founded in 2005 with only $30,000, by a distributed team of four tech founders who only all got connected “through the transitive property,” Dan explains. “I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken, and Ken knew Ryan.” 

Dan had had an idea for a shopping cart upsell product — which didn’t come to fruition — but after meeting Jason Foodman in 2005, Jason pointed out that the upsell product couldn’t even exist unless they owned the shopping cart in the first place. So Dan asked, “Well, what if we create our own shopping cart?” 

And since Jason was already working with someone who wanted to create a product with the ecommerce infrastructure to compete with Digital River, FastSpring was born. 

Dan recalls that he, Jason, Ken White, and Ryan Dewell all connected remotely from four different U.S. states via email and messengers, not even meeting in person for about the first four years as they worked on FastSpring; “Maybe every six months there’d be a phone call.” Dan and Jason handled front-end sales, while Ken led “phenomenal customer service,” and Ryan “just was an awesome coder.” He recalls Ken describing Ryan as “probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building.”

Since all four guys had been CEOs already, they were all familiar with working on their own areas without needing much guidance. “We split up the business into silos, Dan explains. “Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role, and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well.”

The First Mission of FastSpring: The Golden Rule

Just what were the founders of FastSpring trying to build? 

“I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors,” Dan says. They each had felt wronged in some way when working with Digital River or with payment companies that weren’t built to work with software companies, so they set out to build a solution with a driving force to “put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

He also describes Digital River in 2005 — only about nine years old then — as already having become an inflexible “technology dinosaur.” 

“So we wanted to build that next generation system.”

“I think that’s really what our driving force was: to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

“And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that,” he recalls. “And we did. Took a while, but we did.”

FastSpring’s Growth Trajectory

After a humble start in 2005 with only four ambitious people and $30,000, FastSpring took a little while to get off the ground. Dan remembers that “Not raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer — all those things made us go slower.”

But FastSpring eventually began growing quickly when they became popular in the Mac software community, which became their initial niche. “Eventually, we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers,” Dan explains. “But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.”

Besides having next generation technology and blowing away customers with service, FastSpring also offered pricing that contemporary competitors couldn’t beat.

“So how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained I think 98.7 % of our customers, year after year after year, in an SMB business with thousands of customers,” Dan recalls. “I’m a venture capitalist now; I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

“I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.”

Dan Engel, Co-Founder and first CEO of FastSpring

By 2010, FastSpring had grown significantly, with Deloitte & Touche’s 2011 Technology Fast 500 awards ranking FastSpring the #1 fastest-growing company in the Greater L.A. area and #13 in North America. 

Then in 2018, Accel-KKR purchased a majority stake in FastSpring. By then, FastSpring counted companies such as Microsoft and Adobe among its customers, with services provided by around 80 FastSpring employees. 

FastSpring’s Mission Today: Unleashing Innovation Around the World

Today, FastSpring is a global leader in the payments, subscriptions, and tax management space as a leading merchant of record. With offices in Santa Barbara, Amsterdam, Belfast, and Halifax, FastSpring has grown to have over 130 employees serving 3200+ companies throughout more than 200 regions, with support for 21+ languages and 23+ currencies — all while filing over 1,000 tax returns every year, so that the companies who use FastSpring don’t have to.

Providing an industry leading platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital products businesses to sell and monetize their products around the world is a privilege we’ve earned over the last 20 years, but we haven’t forgotten where we came from. 

Current CEO David Nachman echoes original CEO Dan Engel’s thoughts about FastSpring’s mission, but builds upon it. What gets David excited is enabling and democratizing the software industry so that people anywhere in the world can build software and compete with bigger, more capitalized players in highly developed markets.

“It’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way,” David explains. “What hasn’t gotten easier is selling it globally.” In fact, in many ways, thanks to increasingly complex tax codes, proliferating payments options, and the increase of fraud, selling software cross-borders or monetizing a game outside of an app marketplace has only gotten harder. 

“So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours,” he says. “And that’s what we do.”

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world.”

David Nachman, CEO of FastSpring

“By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world,” David continues. “That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it excites a lot of people here.”

Twenty years is quite a milestone, so we’ll be celebrating all month! That includes cake cuttings and toasts with our team members around the world on June 28, our official incorporation day and 20th birthday. Check back later this month for photos, and here’s to the next 20! 🥂

Podcast Transcript

David Vogelpohl (00:04)

Hello everyone, and welcome to Growth Stage by FastSpring, where we discuss how digital product companies grow revenue, build meaningful products, and increase the value of their businesses. I’m your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community through my role at FastSpring, and I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. In today’s episode, I’m super excited. What we’re going to be talking about is what it takes to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (00:32)

We’re going to do that through the lens of celebrating 20 years of FastSpring, the company that puts on Growth Stage and joining us for that conversation to celebrate FastSpring and talk about building an enduring business. I’d like to welcome first FastSpring’s original CEO and one of the original cofounders, Mr. Dan Engel. Dan, welcome to Growth Stage.

Dan Engel (00:53)

Thank you very much. I’m excited to be here and I’m excited we made it to such a successful 20 year journey.

David Vogelpohl (01:00)

I can’t imagine what it must be like to look back on your legacy and have this be something so enduring be part of that. And I know you’ve done a lot since then. And I’m kind of curious to learn a little bit more about that here in a bit. Also joining us for this conversation to kind of take a look at the past and where we are now. I’d like to welcome FastSpring’s current CEO, Mr. David Nachman. David, welcome.

David Nachman (01:23)

Great. Well, thank you, David. I’m also super excited to be here and I definitely owe some gratitude to Dan. Wouldn’t be in my role today if it weren’t for what he did 20 years ago today.

Dan Engel (01:30)

Mm-hmm.

David Vogelpohl (01:33)

Now it’s so interesting to think about those long-term effects our short-term decisions sometimes have. And so we’re going to try to peel back as much as we can here on this episode, ⁓ to give folks a view into what it takes to build an enduring business, what mistakes to avoid along the way and how to build a business that stands the test of time.

So ⁓ we’ll kick it off. David Nachman, I’d like to start with you. ⁓ For those, maybe this is their first time seeing the Growth Stage podcast or they’re not familiar with FastSpring. Could you explain what FastSpring is and what you do here?

David Nachman (02:13)

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. What we do is pretty straightforward. We are an end to end e-commerce platform for companies that sell digital goods on a global basis. So it’s often software companies, it may be gaming companies, maybe other forms of digital goods, but the commonality for everybody that’s selling on our platform is they’re trying to reach a global audience, which isn’t really an easy thing to do.

in commerce and payments. There’s a tremendous amount of complexity there. And they’re all selling digital goods. So that’s what we do. I am the CEO of the company. I joined the company about six years ago, just over about a month ago from six years ago.

David Vogelpohl (02:55)

Oh, wow. Congratulations on the six year mark there. A little over 25 % of FastSpring’s history, it sounds like. And then Dan, tell us about your connection to FastSpring and what you’re doing now.

David Nachman (03:01)

⁓ yeah.

Dan Engel (03:07)

Well, let’s see. It was ⁓ 2005 that ⁓ I met our co-founder Jason Foodman. And I had an idea for something we wanted to do having to do with upselling into shopping carts. And Jason said, well, that is a really good idea, but we’re not going to be able to do it unless we own the shopping cart. ⁓

And I said, well, what if we create our own shopping cart? And Jason said, well, it just so happens I’m working with a guy on that concept to compete with Digital River, which was the 800 pound gorilla at the time that had come out in 1994, went public, became worth a billion dollars. And so we decided that we would build that e-commerce infrastructure and shopping cart capability. We never ended up doing my idea

having to do with upsells, but obviously the foundational part that we needed is what became the business over time.

David Vogelpohl (04:05)

And this is you, right? Is this from around the time of the founding? These are the original founders, correct?

Dan Engel (04:11)

Yeah, that could be. I’d have to see exactly what year that was, but that’s uh — Jason’s all the way to the right hand side on the other opposite end of me. then Ken and Ryan. And what’s interesting is I only knew Jason, but then he knew Ken and Ken knew Ryan. So through the, I don’t know, transitive property or whatever it is, we all kind of knew each other. And that’s how we started working together. And we were all in four different states from one another.

And ⁓ we did it despite not being in the same place. And we actually went for about four years, I believe, without ever even seeing each other. Everything was just email and ICQ, which is chat. And maybe every six months there’d be a phone call. But some of the guys weren’t the type of people that were dying to get on the phone or meet in person that didn’t have the same personality as maybe Jason and I did as kind of the more salesy front of the business.

David Nachman (04:50)

Thanks

David Vogelpohl (05:05)

Was that the balance between you four where you and Jason were more on the business side and the other two for Ken and what’s the other person’s name? Yeah, Ryan. ⁓ and they were more technically focused.

Dan Engel (05:15)

Ken and Ryan. Yeah, totally. Yeah,

Ryan just was an awesome coder. He was probably the best guy on the planet to build what we were building. I mean, that’s what Ken said at the time, because he had built a company called RegNow, sold it to Digital River. By the way, all three of the other guys built and sold companies like FastSpring to Digital River. So we knew this space really well, and they knew it even better than I did. But yeah, Jason and I were on the business side, and Ken…

is amazing dealing with people through email. But he won’t pick up the phone. But we had phenomenal customer service that he led. And Ryan just wanted to code and wanted to own it himself. Didn’t want other coders. Didn’t want to spend time managing other coders. He just wanted to build his dream, again, the next generation of what he had built before using Java technology and doing things in a way that would be much more beneficial over the long term.

David Nachman (05:46)

answer.

you

Dan Engel (06:08)

over the existing solutions like Digital River, which became kind of the technology dinosaur that was inflexible. So we wanted to build that next generation system.

David Vogelpohl (06:17)

It sounds like there was a lot of synergy there between you four and a good balance. And it seems like you and Jason were able to kind of team up, I guess, on the business side and then Ken and Ryan on the technical and customer success side. It’s also interesting to hear about your virtual posture as co-founders back in that day and using ICQ and thriving in that kind of environment.

Um, of course, way pre pandemic, this was 2005 when the company was founded. Um, and then to hear about how much Digital River played a role in your company, in your lives back then, and to think of FastSpring’s enduring nature, even going beyond, you know, Digital River, um, uh, offering in existence, I guess, uh, recently kind of winding down there. Um, and to think about how that’s an interesting representation of FastSpring’s enduring

Dan Engel (07:06)

Mm

David Vogelpohl (07:13)

⁓ but maybe that’s one of the ways I might think about an enduring business. ⁓ I’ll start with Nachman on this question. David, to you, what does it mean to build an enduring business? What is that? How do you define that?

David Nachman (07:29)

Yeah, I think, I mean, the first thing I would say for a business to be enduring is it’s got to be adaptable. This business, like just about any business, there’s ebbs and flows and there’s times when everything is going great and there’s times when it’s a lot more challenging. And, you know, in my experience, like there’s a lot of things that need to go into strategy and execution to succeed as an enduring business. But I think the foundation of all of it is the team and the culture.

If you look at the businesses that I think have endured over time, it’s often the team and the culture that really, really stand out because the challenges are going to change over time. And you need a team that knows how to adapt to that. And if you’ve got the right team and people are passionate about what they’re doing, know, in my experience, generally they’re going to figure it out.

None of us have a perfect crystal ball. Certainly, I’m sure Dan, when you started this company 20 years ago, you had no idea what some of the challenges might look like today. But I think you built a great cultural foundation that I think still persists today. I think a lot of the elements of the culture that were there when you started it are still like a real, real strength for us. So to me, that’s kind of the foundation of all of it to build an enduring business.

David Vogelpohl (08:47)

Yeah. I like that idea of flexibility. What’s the saying — “Steady seas don’t make skilled sailors,” and like,

Dan Engel (08:48)

you

David Vogelpohl (08:53)

⁓ being able to roll with the punches and adapt and survive and thrive. I could see that being critical to building an enduring business. ⁓ Dan, what about you? What does it mean to build an enduring business?

Dan Engel (09:06)

Well, it’s kind of the same things because what he’s talking about there about adaptability and flexibility, that’s exactly what I was saying earlier. We specifically built a system from the ground up ⁓ that had the adaptability component that was missing from the competition.

That’s why Digital River doesn’t exist anymore. That’s why we were able to ultimately leave them some degree in the dust because they weren’t able to change with the times. And we knew, because we all had been customers of Digital River. mean, everybody was back then. It’s a long time ago. And we knew that they couldn’t deliver when we needed new functionality and features. They were stuck. Right. So that was a really big part of it. But I think culturally, you know, the biggest advantage FastSpring ever had

was based on culture and how we treated our people, meaning like the employees, the partners we had, and then how that trickled down to how they treated the customers. And we had a theory, which is not too novel, but isn’t practiced as much as it should be, that customers should be treated like gold. And we had happened to be in an industry where the competition felt very much the opposite. ⁓ They just

A lot of these companies were led by kind of arrogant folks that didn’t think too much about the customers. And, you know, you’d write into PayPal, nobody had ever sent you anything back or Digital River couldn’t get your account manager to respond. So we came up with rules like you’re going to hear a response within, I think it was 24 hours, even on weekends, even on holidays, ⁓ guarantees like that. And we absolutely delivered on it. We strive to wow.

every single customer, both the end user and our merchants, you know, the software companies. And the kind of things that they were saying were, and I don’t know if it’s still on the website anymore, but the old testimonials that I used to throw up on the website were like, I feel like I just left the spa, or I’ve never had this kind of experience in a services business before. We were blowing people away. And how were we able to do that when we had like four support reps and our competition had like 250?

because we’re just normal people that cared. That’s all. And those were the kind of people that hired and people like themselves who gave a damn. And we had been in the shoes of the customers who were frustrated working with Digital River. So we tried to build a business that would be the opposite. And it totally worked. And also it’s an advantage that we had, which didn’t really cost money, that nobody could beat. No competitor could beat. They could try to match it.

you know, blowing away your customers and wowing them with the experience, but they couldn’t ever beat it. And so part of what made the company so enduring is we had low prices and couldn’t really beat us on pricing. We had next generation technology instead of kind of the inflexible dinosaur tech of our competitors. And we blew you away with customer service. So how do you, how do you get anyone to switch away from FastSpring? They didn’t. We had retained

think 98.7 % of our customers year after year after year in an SMB business with thousands of customers. I’m a venture capitalist now, I invest in software companies. I’m yet to find a company in all these years that matches what FastSpring obtained in its metrics.

David Vogelpohl (12:16)

I can attest that nature has lived on and we see similar levels of success in ⁓ our business today, including winning awards like a ⁓ gold Globee and silver Stevie for that customer success. I think that foundation you laid and the seeds you planted are still bearing fruit.

Dan Engel (12:37)

Good. That’s great to hear.

David Vogelpohl (12:39)

Excellent. Yeah. Super cool to see that, ⁓ endure the test of time. Cause I know service can be one of those areas that definitely erodes over time, especially over like a 20 year history. ⁓ it was also interesting to hear you talk about how, if you have a team, if you hire a team and develop a team who cares, that’s like so critical to building that differentiation in that enduring nature.

And I thought that connected well to what David had shared a little earlier around flexibility and developing teams in that same way to address challenges that you have no idea what’s coming around the corner. ⁓ and I thought that was an interesting connection there. ⁓ speaking of like how, speaking of missions by sake of example, what was FastSpring’s mission in the beginning, you talked about like being better than Digital River, but like, was it more than that? Like, how did you view the mission of the company at that time?

Dan Engel (13:33)

I think we wanted to build a business that treated its customers the way we thought we should have been treated as software vendors. Everything that was wrong with the experience of working with Digital River and its competitors and non-software specific platforms like PayPal, we wanted to correct that because we felt wronged ourselves.

⁓ So I think that was a big part of the mission. And we thought if we were just normal, nice people that cared, we could accomplish that. ⁓ And we did, took a while, but we did. And we did displace a lot of those alternatives. ⁓ mission-wise, I think that’s really what our driving force was, ⁓ is to put some good into an industry that had a lot of bad experiences.

David Vogelpohl (14:21)

David, 20 years later, how do you define FastSpring’s mission now?

David Nachman (14:26)

Yeah, so I think a lot of what Dan just shared is still very true and very important in what we’re doing. ⁓ What gets me excited is kind of the bigger trend we’re playing into in enabling. And for me, it’s about democratizing the software development industry. And what I mean by that is if you look over the last 20 years, since the company was founded, barrier after barrier has come down that allows people

to build software anywhere in the world at any scale and compete with much bigger, much better capitalized players in highly developed markets. going way back, open source, developer tools, cloud computing, online marketing, now we’ve got the AI boom. So it’s gotten dramatically easier to build software anywhere and do it in a really, really competitive way. What hasn’t gotten easier?

is selling it globally. It’s actually kind of gone in some respects in the opposite direction. Tax complexity around the world has gone up a ton. Enforcement has gone up a ton.  The regulatory environment around data has gone up. Payments has gotten a lot more complex. The proliferation of payment methods around the world uh is pretty incredible, and the adoption of a lot of these payment methods  is really high. Fraud

⁓ is going up. I don’t know if it’s exponentially, but it’s certainly going up at a high rate and the complexity of that fraud is going up. So you’ve got this paradox of, you can develop software now at any scale anywhere in the world, but it’s not easy to bring it to market successfully without a solution like ours. And that’s what we do. ⁓ and if you look around the world, there’s, know, no monopoly on development talent in places like Silicon Valley. And there’s talented developers everywhere in the world now.

but there were barriers to them competing. So By democratizing software development and commercialization of it, ultimately, we’re playing into a trend of unleashing more innovation around the world. That’s kind of the big lofty mission that excites me. And I think it does excite a lot of people here.

Dan Engel (16:18)

you

David Vogelpohl (16:39)

Excellent. Love hearing that. ⁓ Dan, so we’ve talked about like it’s a 20 year episode, right? So we’re doing like the worm and fuzzy stuff, but I want to go to like the stuff that made you lose sleep at night in the early days of FastSpring. Tell me about a big mistake you made that like almost tank the company or just like took you in a really bad direction. I mean, we are publishing this, so like take that into heart there, but

Dan Engel (16:53)

So.

David Vogelpohl (17:08)

Was it, was it deprecating this website? mean, this is a fire of a 2025 website, but like, me about the mistakes you

Dan Engel (17:11)

Ha ha!

looks a little pruney to me. ⁓ Well, obviously we made lots of mistakes. think, you know, one key decision was we kept coding really just within Ryan’s domain and didn’t hire a bunch of developers. And I think there were benefits to that and costs. And sometimes we were frustrated we weren’t going faster. ⁓ Because when we came out, a company also came out around the same time. unlike us who did everything

by the way, with $30,000, I put ten grand in, that’s all I ever put into FastSpring. We had a competitor, the head also sold their company to Digital River and they put like 35 or 50 million into their company and they started eating our lunch. So that made us kind of frustrated and concerned because they were getting a lot of clients we had hoped to get. So that was one decision. And also I think using

Java, think, had a lot of benefits, but also I think it slowed us down as well. Now, in the long term, it was beneficial and a great decision because it kept us flexible and extensible. But let’s see. So one of the scarier things that happen is, so when you’re processing payments, there’s risks that you might process in payments that are violations of, say, your relationship.

in your agreement with say a Visa or MasterCard. And we got really good at policing and avoiding any transactions going through the system that would violate any of those agreements. like with hackers, you figure out a solution to avoid the hacking and then the hackers find a way around it and then you find a solution to solve that and then they find a way. So it wasn’t perfect, you know, it’s life. And we had a particular incident where some

content got through that we did processing for is a tiny amount, but it still was very problematic. And that was very costly to us. We had to deal with MasterCard and you know, to have an angry MasterCard is a real problem because you can’t stop working with MasterCard if you’re accepting credit cards, right? That kind of got this duopoly or whatever you want to call it. So that was an example of a really scary experience when we had to deal with, you know, people like Visa MasterCard and

some of the risks around processing that could have really hurt our business and changed things. ⁓ And I would say, in terms of the team that we had, we got along incredibly well. It probably didn’t hurt that we weren’t in the same office and hardly ever saw each other. That can really have a lot of benefits. The biggest fight we ever had, and when we had it, I thought, my God, this is gonna be such a battle for years, was picking the name.

⁓ After we had that, that was like a real battle and I didn’t know what the future would bring. And we went years and years with really not having any fights, maybe until the end when we were selling the business and not everyone wanted to necessarily sell at the same price and money gets people to fight. But ⁓ other than that, ⁓ we really made a great call with the kind of team that we had as founders because we had a team of four former CEOs.

which meant we were all able to kind of do our own stuff without anybody needing to help us. Right. And so we, we, we, we, we split up the business into silos, Ken handled support, Ryan development, me on the sales side and also all the CEO role and Jason on the sales side and some other stuff too. And that worked really well. but, ⁓ anyway, so those are some thoughts on some of the things that were challenges over the years. and,

not, raising capital, going slower, sticking with Java, sticking with one developer. All those things made us go slower. And for me, made me anxious. ⁓ but some of the other partners, they were okay with waiting and having the business take a long time. And it sure did. My wife, ⁓ nicknamed it “SlowSpring,” ⁓ because, ⁓ you know, it was like year three and a half or something and we still weren’t getting anywhere. And I kept telling her, it’s right around the corner.

David Nachman (21:15)

it.

Dan Engel (21:22)

Finally, things picked up. They picked up because we became popular in the Mac software community. We found a niche, right? ⁓ I don’t know what would have happened to FastSpring if we hadn’t found that niche. ⁓ But eventually we took over for Digital River and others as kind of the leading provider for Mac developers. But until then, it was a very slow moving train and we didn’t know what was around the corner.

David Vogelpohl (21:44)

think that’s a bold lesson for people watching and listening who are just starting out and thinking about how to get traction about how you were able to kind of niche down in your core ICP and find that, you know, kind of handhold foothold to start moving further up the mountain. I also thought you had tension in some of the mistakes where you talked about the desire to go faster and invest more, but then you talked about growing pains around things like dealing with hackers and

maybe processing transactions you shouldn’t have and how that affected and put risk into your business. And so like with FastSpring, you know, we’re offering payments and subscriptions and tax compliance and a lot of startups are like compliance. What are you talking about? I’m blowing and growing. I’m, ready to go. Do you think that like maybe moving slow and being more purposeful did have value other than just being, you know, “SlowSpring” and making you a little frustrated with the growth?

Dan Engel (22:41)

Probably. Two of my partners would say definitely yes. They would be, yes, they are more patient people than I am.

David Vogelpohl (22:44)

Would those be Ken and Ryan?

Nice. I like that. ⁓ But yeah, I think about that a lot, you know, in this day, I don’t know how much you’ve kept up with the merchant of record space, but there’s a decent number of startups getting into it. And so I just imagine what it must be like to start from near zero and develop these rules, and this experience, and this understanding, and a platform that reacts to it all. ⁓ Certainly a grand adventure, but definitely no easy task.

Dan Engel (23:15)

Yeah.

It

was, and I think one error was that we didn’t really have expertise in the whole merchant account payment processing business. I mean, yes, software and what used to be called shareware, and the Digital River side of things. But the actual — like all the intricacies of working with like, Visa, Mastercard, Discover, AmEx, PayPal, and doing global payments and different currencies and different really didn’t know that stuff.

And so sometimes we learned some hard lessons because of our ignorance. ⁓ It would have, if I were to do it again, I would bring someone involved in the early days who really had spent, I don’t know, 20 years in that payment we didn’t have to figure out what we didn’t know. I think that was costly to us. And I think that was something missing, a missing ingredient that fortunately, we were successful despite it.

David Vogelpohl (24:07)

Did you underestimate the complexity of payments?

Dan Engel (24:10)

I think so. Yeah, I think so. ⁓ And the deep understanding that was needed to really know what we were working with and what we were doing and how it was viewed by others playing all different roles in the industry, the ISOs, IPSPs, the Visas and Mastercards, the acquiring banks, the gateways, we just didn’t really have a great understanding of how all of those different parties were seeing us in their world.

And so we didn’t necessarily navigate it the best way that we could have if we had known more.

David Vogelpohl (24:45)

Sage advice. ⁓ As you look back at your time with FastSpring, founding it, bringing it up, eventually selling it, and the roles and companies you’ve led since then, what lessons did you learn in your FastSpring days that you took forward into your future adventures?

Dan Engel (25:03)

Well, you know, we built FastSpring to not be able to fail because we had all been serial entrepreneurs and had built businesses. Some worked, some didn’t. And one thing that I figured out is if you don’t have a clock tied to money and burn, it’s really hard to go out of business. so…

We built the business from scratch with almost no money. Like I said, I put in 10 grand and the co-founders contributed their time for no cash, just for equity, right? Significant equity, founders equity. ⁓ And so the only way the business could fail is if we lost interest. Nothing external could really make us fail. It really was in our control. So it’s a question of, we lose interest before we get enough customers that this business is big enough that we care about it? And it’s making a difference for us. So with that,

⁓ It gave us quite a runway to be able to figure things out, which took really four years to really start taking off. And believe me, the first three years wasn’t just fun. And of course, while you’re building it, you don’t know if you’re ever going to make it, so you might be wasting your time. So it’s not always the most motivating every day. But I’ve built every business since like that, ⁓ where it’s either profitable for day one or it just doesn’t have that burn and that pressure.

Because what’s the number one reason businesses go out of business? They run out of cash. So if you can get rid of that risk, you’ve got a really good chance of making it. So I’ve had a lot of successes in my career. FastSpring is one of them. There’s a whole bunch of other things I’ve done and all that. And the thing that they all have in common is they all failed before they succeeded. I mean, people don’t see that. They just see the news headlines and great exit for FastSpring, or Picasa, or what I did at Google, or

GoTo Meeting in Santa Barbara. But all those things failed first. So the only reason I’ve been able to figure out how to build these businesses successfully now, including my venture capital firm, is because of all the things I did that failed in the past. And so I think that’s the biggest lesson that I bring forward to every business I do and hope to pass on to other entrepreneurs and to my children and whatnot, that it’s really the failures where you learn how to succeed.

David Vogelpohl (27:12)

I imagine what that must be like. So these are the years and the number of employees from back in those days. And you were saying like, it really took you better part of this time period to get it ramped up. And then you can start to see the business grow over time. It’s very efficient business still during that time.

Dan Engel (27:29)

Well, keep in mind, so in 2013, that was 23. They weren’t really employees, 12 full-time. The rest were part-time contractors. We made them employees later after we sold the business. But that was at a time we were doing over $100 million in revenue. We had 12 full-timers. So it was very efficient and we did not in any way measure ourselves by number of people. It was by revenue and profit.

David Vogelpohl (27:51)

That’s great to hear. ⁓ so Dan has founded the business with his co-founders and they’ve gone on this grand adventure, eventually selling the business. ⁓ Nachman, tell me the backstory between about when you joined the business and what you were kind of doing right before that.

David Nachman (28:11)

Yeah,

I’ve been in B2B tech just about my whole career. Immediately before joining FastSpring, I was running a business that had a very highly tailored content management platform for local government.

So it was cities and counties, they would host a website on it, but also we would power a lot of the constituent facing functionality. you we sort of powered the digital city hall strategy that, you know, a lot of local governments are moving towards. We had sold that business to someone who was really consolidating all of the gov tech industry.

Dan Engel (28:32)

.

David Nachman (28:53)

And I found my way indirectly to FastSpring, was drawn to it for a whole host of reasons. But that’s ultimately, you know, what brought me here or the backstory in terms of what I was doing before I got here.

David Vogelpohl (29:08)

And then as you entered the business, what were your perceptions at that time? ⁓ How did you think about FastSpring’s mission then versus now? ⁓ We had this great meeting the other day where we were like, where did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined the company? What about for you, David? What did you get wrong about FastSpring when you first joined?

Dan Engel (29:24)

Okay.

David Nachman (29:29)

Yes, I think some of

the same things that Dan mentioned. I’m not sure that I necessarily underestimated the complexity of payments, but I’m not a payments guy by trade and experience. We had a lot of generalists even at that point in the company. We had a lot of really passionate, a lot of really talented people. And I’ve kind of always been one of those people who believes, OK, if you get the

know, get smart people that are driven, they’re going to figure out problems. And yes, but they’re not going to figure them out as quickly. In many cases, it’s someone who’s got the pattern recognition of having seen that same problem 15 times before. ⁓ And I think I waited a little too long ⁓ to really bolster a lot of our domain expertise in the business. And as I started to do that, ⁓ just

Dan Engel (30:05)

you ⁓

David Nachman (30:23)

What it did in terms of accelerating the business was pretty profound. And it was one of those where I sort of stepped back and said, wow, I should have done that a long time ago. I’d say the other thing is when I came into the business, my perceptions were very positive of the business. Great solution, great customers, business growing at a very healthy clip. So it was a very healthy business. wasn’t a turnaround of any sort. It was how do we take it to the next level?

Dan Engel (30:30)

Okay.

David Nachman (30:52)

So what was missing in my mind was that it really wasn’t built to scale

to anywhere, you the size we are today or, where we think we’ll be over the coming few years. And like a lot of small businesses, a lot of single points of failure, you know, some of that was people, some of that was vendors, some of that was technology. The business sort of survived and thrived on individual heroics. So, you know.

not a lot of ⁓ systems in place, processes, et cetera. And we didn’t really have a leadership team that had scaled to where we wanted to go. So I felt like we did need to bring in people that were more experienced and kind of knew the journey that we were embarking on. And I think a little bit of what I got wrong there.

⁓ in some of these initial hires was I was very focused on getting people that, you know, kind of knew how to operate at scale. And culturally I missed on some of them in terms of abandoning a lot of what’s made the company so special and so effective, which is kind of the entrepreneurial scrappiness. And it’s a, you know, it’s a rare breed of person that has that hands on entrepreneurial scrappiness and can also scale. ⁓ you know,

Dan Engel (32:08)

you

David Nachman (32:14)

Often those are great founder type people that could do magic that a lot of more experienced company people can’t do, but they don’t scale as well. ⁓ So initially I did bring some of those people in and it just, they weren’t the right fit. ⁓ And over my first few years here, I started to really realize what’s the culture that really correlates with

success in our particular business. And part of it is this is the most dynamic, most complex business I’ve ever been at for its scale. I mean, we’ve got a very global footprint. We’re operating in highly regulated industries. We’re dealing with payments. We’re dealing with software. We’re dealing with complexity around tax. We’re dealing with a lot of regulation around data. It’s kind of infinitely complex. And this goes back to this notion of adaptability. ⁓

Dan Engel (32:47)

Okay.

David Nachman (33:11)

You have to have some level of scrappy entrepreneurialism to thrive in this business. But it also has to be paired with, you know how to scale a business and it’s not all about, hey, I’m just going to do the heroics to get us to the next challenge. It’s no, I’m going to build a foundation where if I’m not here, this business will still run quite well. So.

Dan Engel (33:25)

you

David Nachman (33:37)

So I think, you know, there are definitely things I got right, but there were some things I got wrong in trying to make that transition from more of a startup company to a really scalable company.

David Vogelpohl (33:48)

Yeah, that’s kind of like an awkward teenager-y zone a little bit. that’s a whole, sorry, go ahead.

Dan Engel (33:48)

Hm.

David Nachman (33:51)

That’s right. ⁓

We definitely went through our awkward teenage phase. I hope we’re out of that now.

David Vogelpohl (33:57)

Yeah.

Knock on wood on that one for sure. I still got to build the enduring business of the future, right? ⁓ We’re kind of getting towards the end here, so I want to make sure to hit on a couple of things here in the last little bit. Nachman, since I’m on you, I’ll stick with you for this one. But if somebody’s out there and they have a startup and they’re listening to all these points of view,

David Nachman (34:03)

That’s right.

David Vogelpohl (34:22)

maybe taking some notes along the way, but what’s the one thing that that person should ⁓ get from listening to you about building an enduring business? What’s your number one piece of advice?

David Nachman (34:33)

It’s embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ You can’t build an enduring business doing the same thing for any period of time. period of time is shrinking with every given year. mean, given what’s going on with AI right now, ⁓ know, the timeframes over which things evolve is just collapsing. it’s, you know, constantly think about how your business is going to be.

reimagined and go do that. ⁓ Don’t let somebody else do that to you. You’ve got to get out in front of it.

David Vogelpohl (35:08)

Great one, embrace change and change before you have to. ⁓ Dan, what about you?

Dan Engel (35:14)

⁓ I would say treating your own people extremely well and having that then trickle down to how they treat your customers and the concept of treating your customers like gold and bending over backwards to ensure that they are just wowed by the experience of working with you compared to what they’re used to from alternatives. And then I think in terms of building a business, removing the obstacles as much as possible that

lead companies to fail, including dealing with things like burn upfront.

David Vogelpohl (35:46)

I it. I love the people first thing. I think this is like the Dan Golden Rule. Treat others as you want them to treat your customers. I love it. ⁓ All right. ⁓ Last question. Sorry about that little mic pop there. Dan, um we’re going to show this recording to the FastSpring team and they’re pretty much all going to listen to it and watch it. Do you have a special message for them to celebrate the 20 year FastSpring anniversary?

David Nachman (35:53)

Thank

Dan Engel (36:16)

A special message. Well, you know, I guess, you know, it’s I’m glad that everybody’s part of something with the humble roots and mission that we originally started on to try to offer a better alternative in an industry that was plagued with some negativity. But I think, ⁓ you know, I challenge everybody to really think about how to make the next 20 years of FastSpring successful, dealing with all the change. Change has been a big ⁓

theme here in our conversation. So we have all the different things happening around, say, AI, or how people purchase software, or what Apple’s Store looks like, and what they can and can’t do. All different facets are going to continuously change. And so I hope folks are thinking about how they can continuously adapt to ensure that FastSpring survives and thrives through all the shifts ahead. Some will be good and some will be bad for the company so that we can have this kind of a conversation again after another 20 years.

David Vogelpohl (37:12)

Nice, I like it. Dan, thank you so much for joining us for this conversation. It was super interesting to hear about your backstory and some of the things that went into building such an enduring business. But thank you so much for joining us today.

Dan Engel (37:27)

You betcha. Thanks for having me and congratulations on the 20 years and thanks everyone for doing such a great job at the business.

David Vogelpohl (37:33)

Thank you, of course. then David, thank you for joining and picking up the torch and then sharing your backstory here at the helm.

David Nachman (37:41)

Well, thank you for having me. I’ve enjoyed the discussion. I’ve learned some things about the business. I don’t think I knew Dan, so it’s fantastic to get the time to interact and learn a little bit about our roots and history.

Dan Engel (37:50)

Okay.

David Vogelpohl (37:52)

Excellent. And for those watching and listening, if you’d like to learn more about FastSpring, you can visit FastSpring.com. Thanks for joining us for the Growth Stage podcast. I’ve been your host, David Vogelpohl. I support the digital product community as part of my role here at FastSpring. And I love to bring the best of the community to you here on Growth Stage. Thanks everybody.

The post What It Takes to Build an Enduring Business: Celebrating 20 Years of FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.

Or, you can simplify the system with one global merchant of record. 

When Excire became a popular enough product line that it was being sold in both Europe and the U.S., Managing Director Mathias Martinetz and CTO Thomas Käster knew their current online checkout setup — having one solution for Europe and one for the U.S. — was not efficient. 

“And we had a lot of manual work,” Mathias says. “Basically, each and every sale had to be manually organized and given to our tax advisor.”

And if they wanted to continue scaling their business and expanding into more countries, they needed a better system. 

That’s when they discovered the merchant of record model and, subsequently, FastSpring.

Completely switching online commerce systems can be daunting, especially when switching from one type (such as a very basic online checkout or web shop system) to another (such as a comprehensive merchant of record). But Mathias and Thomas did their due diligence, and they’re glad they found FastSpring.

Here’s what they did to ensure they’d find the right merchant of record (MoR) and have a successful transition.

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, video game, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

Excire Needed a Simpler Payments and Taxes System

Excire is an award-winning line of photo and video management software products that help photographers organize, find, and cull their photos at lightning speed. With Excire Foto as a standalone product or with Excire Search as an Adobe Lightroom plugin, photographers can leverage meta data and AI for keyword search, facial recognition, grouping shots, image analysis, and more.

As the product line grew in popularity and the team was able to move from only selling Excire in Europe to selling it in the U.S., they found themselves with two separate shop systems. 

“As we were growing and wanted to grow more, we were looking for a solution that would allow us to have only one shop, but that could also be used around the world,” Mathias recalls. 

Thomas adds, “We encountered some technical challenges, which is to be expected when managing an ecommerce system independently. Additionally, we faced issues with our tax workflows, which were no longer sufficient to support the level of growth and scaling we had already achieved.”

They appreciated the value of offering localized currencies and payments to buyers, but as it was already unwieldy to have two online shops for two regions, they didn’t want to add more shops as they moved into new regions. They also knew they didn’t like managing all the sales taxes the way they had been, and that more growth would only make that even more difficult.

There had to be a better way, so they started looking around to see what other companies were using. 

Similar Software Companies Recommended FastSpring

Mathias and Thomas reached out to some contacts of theirs at another software company, and that company referred them to FastSpring. 

“The interesting thing for us is,” Thomas says, “if I see similar companies using FastSpring in the same way as we’d like to use it, that’s a good sign that FastSpring was the right decision for us.”

Without having to think for very long about it, they can easily list a handful of software companies in their industry who also use FastSpring, which makes them even more confident about their decision. 

Talk to Similar Businesses About THEIR Experiences

Besides just noting that many businesses like theirs were already using FastSpring, Mathias and Thomas recommend asking them for more information about what it’s actually like to use a particular payments platform or merchant of record. “Get their experience,” Mathias advises. 

Thomas adds, “In the end, you never know, right? When you decide to switch off an existing technical system completely and onto a completely new system, you never know if it will be the right decision.” So besides just observing what your own competitors are using, reach out to businesses you’re friendly with and “Talk a lot to the people.”

Pay Attention to the Responsiveness of Each MoR’s Team as You Begin Reaching Out

Excire was fortunate to have a very short list of possible ecommerce solutions, as FastSpring seemed like the clear winner just based on how many other companies were already using it. 

But if you have a few options on your list — or if you want to validate that the one you’re leaning toward is eager to meet your needs – you can learn a lot from how a possible vendor’s team responds to your initial inquiry. 

This may seem counterintuitive, as most people and organizations will be eager to ensure the first experience you have with them is excellent. And Thomas says that it’s not always easy to make a decision based on those first impressions. 

But he clarifies, “Even from a first impression, the FastSpring team does a better job than the competitors.” The Excire team had also approached an MoR company that had a team based in Germany, so Thomas and Mathias could speak with that team in their native language. 

“But the first contact with them was not as good as the first contact with FastSpring,” he continues. Besides the technical requirements he wanted to ensure were met, “The way the team took care was very important for the final decision to go with FastSpring.”

Define Your Needs Clearly and Communicate Them to Potential Vendors

Observing competitors, talking to similar businesses, and initiating contact with various vendors are all important parts of the external planning phase when evaluating a new ecommerce system, but there’s an important internal planning phase too. 

As Chief Technical Officer, Thomas is very hands on with the technical aspects of their various systems, so he knows how important it is to know what you need and communicate that to potential payments platforms. 

He explains it this way: “Summarize and describe your own necessities, or the aspects that are most important to you. Especially, what are the requirements of such an ecommerce system? When you explain it in the best way you can, then you’ll get the best, most concrete answer from the FastSpring team.”

There were several sessions back and forth between the Excire team and FastSpring as they worked through the technical details of what their team needed and how FastSpring could meet those needs. Thomas said those sessions helped them “come to the point where we were really sure about our decision to go with FastSpring.”

He continues, “I guess this is something every company needs to do on its own first: to check all the aspects that are important to them, and to communicate those aspects in a clear manner.” 

Besides wanting to combine their international payment systems into one simpler system that could continue expanding their global sales, Thomas and Mathias were also looking closely at competitive pricing, payment failure systems, ease of international pricing management, newsletter systems, subscription capabilities, and integrations. 

The Excire team also found FastSpring’s pricing better than the other merchants of record they evaluated.

Upgrade to a Merchant of Record Like FastSpring

It was looking at and talking to companies similar to Excire that tipped off Mathias and Thomas to the merchant of record model as the answer to their global payments and taxes question.

“That’s how we found out that the solution could be a merchant of record,” Mathias says. “So that’s how we got more into it and found out that there is an advantage: that all tax and currency related activities can be handled much, much easier than if we would do it on our own.”

Switching from separate systems for different regions to one global solution would be an upgrade, but finding an ecommerce model that also managed sales taxes and VAT for Excire sales would provide an even greater improvement to their operations.

FastSpring has also made many of the smaller, day-to-day management tasks easier. For example, Mathias says that “We can easily define prices worldwide; that’s quite smooth. And it was helpful to implement a subscription model, right, Thomas?” 

“Yeah, that’s for sure,” Thomas adds.

When Excire initially launched on FastSpring in 2023, they ran into some challenges with email and analytics integrations. The FastSpring team worked hard to meet Mathias’ and Thomas’ needs, prioritizing additional help for the Excire store integrations and finding ways to meet their needs.

Thomas says of their more recent subscription launch, “This kind of integration was very easy.” He says that their integration requirements may be more complicated to fulfill than some companies’, but that the communication between FastSpring and their licensing vendor has been “really easy and robust.”

Partner With FastSpring to Simplify Your International Software Sales

Are you looking for a merchant of record that will partner with you to grow your business internationally? 

FastSpring provides an all-in-one payment platform for SaaS, software, gaming, and other digital goods businesses, including VAT and sales tax management, payment localization, and consumer support. 

Set up a demo or try it out for yourself.

The post How Excire Simplified Their International Software Sales (and Taxes) With FastSpring appeared first on FastSpring.

Missed the chance to chat with one of our expert team members in person at the shows? You can still schedule a personalized demo, or to read more about how FastSpring supports game developers, visit fastspring.gg/.

Pocket Gamer Connects 2025

The FastSpring team kicked off the week at PGC San Francisco 2025 with a strong presence on the show floor. If you stopped by our booth, you may have chatted with Sr. Account Executive Leif Bisping, Sr. Account Executive Brandon Smith, Key Sales Development Representative Arturo Rubio, Key SDR and Team Lead Melvin Zaid, Sr. Director of Pre-Sales and Implementation Adam Cohen, CMO David Vogelpohl, or Head of Gaming Chip Thurston.

Besides repping FastSpring at our booth, on Monday Chip Thurston presented “Marketing Web Shops – Forbidden Fruit Or Ripe Opportunity?” As someone who has himself refined D2C marketing and monetization strategies at major mobile publishers, Chip knows the impact web shops can have on a game when marketed properly. 

Chip’s presentation covered key points such as:

• Why conversations about D2C marketing seem to start with “the first rule about web shops is that you don’t talk about web shops.” 
• What we do know about what game publishers can and cannot do to market their web shops.
• Some of the more unique aspects of D2C marketing, such as how you can reach players, what you can say, and where you can land your players. 
• What we can learn from specific use cases, such as leveraging free daily claims to drive web portal traffic.

You can check out PGC’s video of Chip’s session here. 

Community Clubhouse @ GDC 2025

From PGC, the FastSpring team transitioned right into GDC with a Community Clubhouse event on Tuesday, which we sponsored in partnership with Keywords Studios, alongside industry leaders like AWS for Games, Microsoft, and more. 

We kicked off GDC by sharing the stage with Nexus and Keywords Studios in a panel covering “D2C X-Ray Vision: What Top Publishers Do to Scale Web Shop Success.” 

The panel discussed looking ahead to D2C in 2025, including:

• How publishers are seeing success and where they’re going to double down their efforts.
• The current state of regulations and how those are likely to change this year.
• Sources of player hesitation for D2C purchasing and opportunities to mitigate them.

Read more about the panel on GDC’s 2025 schedule. 

That night, FastSpring hosted a happy hour with some of the best and brightest at GDC!

We then had a fantastic presence in the GDC expo hall Wednesday through Friday, with Senior Tax Manager JT Grewal and Senior Product Marketing Manager Braden Steel joining the booth crew to add even more tax and product expertise to our onsite team. 

Join Us at the Next Show!

After a truly great week in San Francisco, we were sad to see it end, but we know there will be more! Be on the lookout for future updates showcasing our content from the show, and don’t forget to watch our events page to find out where you can meet up with us next! 

Monetize Your Game With FastSpring

FastSpring is how gaming publishers sell in more places around the world. For nearly two decades, FastSpring has been a trusted payment provider you can use to sell games or in-game items on your website, web shop, or embedded directly into your game with fully customizable and branded checkouts just for you. FastSpring allows you to offload the complexity of global payments, sales tax and VAT compliance, player payments support, and many other aspects of payments management. Spend less time managing your payments and compliance and more time making great games! To learn more about how FastSpring supports game developers, visit fastspring.gg/.

The post GDC 2025 Recap: FastSpring Went Big in SF! appeared first on FastSpring.

As FastSpring continues growing rapidly as a business throughout the next few years, the company also aims to set the standard in its industry for Customer Success and Support. This will require FastSpring to continue to expand its global presence, continue to strengthen and deepen customer relationships, establish new methods of interacting with leading customers, and enhance its ability to act as a highly consultative partner to customers to help fuel their growth and success.

“I am pleased to welcome Lindsay into the company to lead the Global Customer Operations team through our next chapter of growth,” said FastSpring CEO David Nachman. “Lindsay brings a wealth of experience leading global customer teams in high growth environments, as well as incredible depth of knowledge and experience in payments and ecommerce.” 

Said Walker, “FastSpring’s global customer organization and partnership approach extends beyond our best-in-class technology. We actively collaborate with our customers to share valuable insights, foster innovation, and unlock customers’ full potential in a dynamic and shifting global economic environment. As Chief Customer Officer, I know that by working together, we can create a thriving ecosystem where businesses can transcend borders and achieve lasting success in a competitive digital landscape.”

Most recently, Walker spent 4.5 years as the SVP of Customer Success at Checkout.com, where she built the customer success organization during a period of rapid expansion with a focus on a diverse enterprise customer base. Prior to that, Walker commercialized and scaled the customer success function at Adyen as VP of Account Management. She brings knowledge of the MoR model from her 4.5 years at Digital River’s World Payments subsidiary, and served in customer-facing and partnership leadership roles at other payments companies, including WorldPay and GlobalCollect (now part of Worldline). She has extensive relationships throughout the industry and has played a leadership role in critical industry associations such as the Merchant Risk Council.

About FastSpring

FastSpring powers global payments for SaaS and software companies, video game publishers, and other digital goods businesses. As a merchant of record, FastSpring provides a fully managed payment solution including checkout, fraud mitigation, comprehensive sales tax and VAT compliance, and more. Founded in 2005, FastSpring is a privately owned company headquartered in California with offices in the UK, the Netherlands, and Canada.

Click here to read the post on PR Newswire.

The post Press Release: FastSpring Announces Payments Veteran Lindsay Walker as New Chief Customer Officer appeared first on FastSpring.

What Are Recipe Docs?

Recipe Docs are like your personal cookbook for integrating FastSpring into your business. Whether it be on your website or to backend systems, our Recipe Docs guide you through the steps to build out experiences that are tailored to your specific business use case. Each recipe cuts right to the heart of implementation without the need for any extra storylines like you’ll find in recipes across the web. The recipes include detailed and specific instructions and “ingredients” (e.g., sample code) that you can use to replicate the process in your own environment, making integration easy and quick.

Why Recipe Docs Are a Game-Changer

Not every user has a team of technical experts on staff ready to tackle complex implementations. That’s where our Recipe Docs come in. These step-by-step guides help you navigate the process of integrating FastSpring’s features without needing to rely on back-and-forth with our support team. Recipes empower you to take charge of your implementation by providing clear directions that demystify the process.

Some of the powerful capabilities you can unlock through Recipe Docs include:

• Capture Order Data from FastSpring Checkout: Allow for real-time access to transaction details for further processing or integration with your other systems.
• Preferred Payment Methods: Customize your checkout to offer the payment options that work best for your customers, boosting conversion rates.
• Encrypt the Session Object: Ensure secure, complaint handling of user data to protect user privacy.

What’s Available Now?

Currently, FastSpring offers six detailed recipes, covering both API and SBL integration methods. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just getting started, these recipes provide an excellent starting point for integrating key features into your existing workflow.

Some examples include:

• Seamlessly adding new payment methods to improve the customer experience.
• Authenticate accounts via account ID to ensure proper access to your products.
• Using subscription management tools to improve customer retention.

The great part? You can easily assess whether FastSpring’s integration options align with your business goals before diving into a full implementation.

Built for Your Success

One of the standout benefits of Recipe Docs is the ability to self-evaluate FastSpring’s integration capabilities. By following these recipes, users can independently test and explore what’s possible with the FastSpring platform — saving time and avoiding potential roadblocks. 

Got Ideas for More Recipes?

The FastSpring Recipe Docs are continually evolving, and we’re always open to hearing what additional recipes you think would be helpful. If you have suggestions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you!

Explore Recipe Docs and start building your ideal FastSpring experience today. Or, reach out to our team directly.

The post Discover FastSpring’s Recipe Docs: Simplifying Implementation for Users appeared first on FastSpring.

The Benefits of FastSpring’s Owlbot Search

Owlbot search provides numerous benefits:

• Speed: Instant responses to your queries save you time.
• Accuracy: AI algorithms sift through vast amounts of data to find the most relevant information.
• Self-Service: AI assistance empowers users to find answers independently, reducing the need for support tickets.
• Continuous Improvement: Feedback loops enable Owlbot to learn and improve over time.

Understanding AI Limitations

While AI search is a powerful tool, it’s important to understand its limitations. AI is not perfect and sometimes provides answers that include terms like “typically” because the exact information might not be in the documentation. If Owlbot provides an inaccurate answer or a “Typically…” response, it often indicates that documentation on that specific query may not exist. This is why it’s so important to provide the thumbs-up/thumbs-down feedback so we can review and make adjustments. 

Here are some examples:

• When searching for “How to reset my password,” you might get an answer like, “Typically, you can reset your password via the account settings.”
• For “Why is my invoice not showing up?,” the AI might respond, “Typically, invoices may not appear due to incomplete payment information.”

These responses indicate that the AI is providing the best possible answer based on available data, but that data may not cover every specific scenario.

If it seems the AI answer doesn’t solve your problem, rate it with a thumbs-down and reach out to our Support team for personal assistance.

How to Get the Most out of Owlbot’s AI Search

Common Issues With Search Prompts

We often notice that search prompt problems fall into two categories:

• Too General: One-word prompts like “invoice” or “payment” are too broad and can lead to vague or irrelevant results.
• Too Complex: Prompts with too many variables or overly detailed questions can confuse the AI, resulting in less accurate responses.

Best Practices for Crafting Effective Search Prompts

To get the most out of AI search, follow these two basic guidelines:

1. Be Specific but Concise

Provide enough detail in your query to give the AI a clear context, without including unnecessary information that might confuse it. The goal is to strike a balance where your query is precise and focused, helping the AI deliver the most relevant answer.

Examples:

• Too General: “Payment”
  • This is too broad and doesn’t give enough context for the AI to understand what specific information you’re looking for.
• Too Detailed: “I need to know how my customer can update their payment method because they tried doing it last night and encountered an error message saying the card was declined and they want to switch to a different card but are unsure of the steps.”
  • This includes too much information, which can overwhelm the AI and lead to less accurate results.
• Specific but Concise: “How can my customer update their payment method?”
  • This provides enough context to guide the AI towards the specific information you need without adding unnecessary details.

2. Avoid Ambiguity

Clearly state what you need to know. Avoid vague terms and ensure your query is straightforward, leaving no room for multiple interpretations. This helps the AI understand exactly what you are asking and provides a more accurate and relevant response.

Examples:

• Ambiguous: “New payment feature”
  • This query is vague because it doesn’t specify which functionality you’re referring to or what information is being requested.
• Clear and Simple: “Can I hide certain payment methods with the Preferred Payment Method?”
  • This query clearly specifies the functionality and desired action, helping the AI to provide a precise response.

By avoiding vague terms and being specific about what you need to know, it’s easier for the AI to understand your request and deliver the information you’re seeking.

View Full Documentation via Traditional Search

Sometimes, the AI response you receive may not suffice, and you might need to delve deeper into the documentation. 

If so, you can type in your keyword and click on the Command or Control + K button in the search window (or utilize the keyboard shortcut) for a traditional document search. 

This allows you to review the full documentation, ensuring you have all the information you need. 

You can also provide thumbs up or thumbs down feedback on each full documentation article, as well as providing feedback comments (a text box will pop up once you have clicked on one of the thumb ratings). 

Leave One-Click Feedback on the AI’s Answer

Use the thumbs-up or thumbs-down buttons to rate the AI’s response. 

This helps us understand and address any shortcomings in the way the AI created the answer, which will help us improve the AI’s answers for the next time you use it.

The Importance of Your Feedback

For Owlbot search to be truly effective, your feedback is essential. At FastSpring, we rely on thumbs-up or thumbs-down feedback to understand whether the AI’s response met your needs. 

It’s important to note that this feedback isn’t about whether you liked the answer but whether the answer was helpful and relevant.

Without your feedback, we are limited in our ability to refine and enhance our AI search capabilities. Each piece of feedback helps us fine-tune our algorithms, leading to more accurate and useful responses in the future.

FastSpring Is Your Partner for Support

By following these best practices, you can maximize the effectiveness of AI search and ensure you receive the most accurate and helpful information. 

Your feedback is not just valuable but essential in helping us improve our services. Together, we can make AI search an even more powerful tool for all FastSpring users.

Not yet benefiting from the award-winning support FastSpring provides for software companies and their customers? FastSpring handles the entire payment process, from checkout to remitting end-of-year taxes for SaaS companies. To learn more about how FastSpring can help you scale quickly, sign up for a free account or request a demo today.

The post Navigating FastSpring’s Owlbot Search: Tips for Clear and Effective Prompts appeared first on FastSpring.

FastSpring Customer Success Team Gets Exceptional Results

Our customer success team was honored with this award thanks to three key achievements: 

1. Exceptional Results

We consistently surpass targets and achieve unprecedented growth, exceeding customer expectations and showcasing our dedication to excellence.

2. Strategic Agility

We take a proactive approach to identifying opportunities, implementing innovative solutions, and adapting to market changes — all of which reflect our strategic vision, keeping us ahead in the industry.

3. Customer-Centric Culture

We prioritize customer satisfaction, nurture a collaborative culture, and ensure seamless teamwork across departments, demonstrating our commitment to exceptional service and successful project execution. 

What Our Customers Say

These accomplishments are echoed by FastSpring customer feedback responses about their customer success managers (CSMs), including: 

• “The customer success manager collaborated with us on revamping our customer journey and redesigning the checkout experience by implementing an embedded checkout, resulting in a notable boost in conversion rates.”
• “Our customer success manager played a pivotal role in enhancing our average order value (AOV) by facilitating FastSpring’s integration of a shopping cart in the fourth quarter of the previous year. This integration empowered our customers to make multiple product selections within a single order instead of being limited to a single product choice without the convenience of a cart.”
• “Our dedicated CSM has consistently demonstrated exceptional responsiveness and proactivity in her role. We are truly delighted to have her as a dedicated CSM for us, and her contributions have been instrumental in our success.”

SocialBee’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Bee Ovi Negrean is continually impressed by FastSpring’s support and customer success. Read more about his experience here.

The Globee® Awards

The Globee® Awards, named with a portmanteau of the words “global” and “business,” were created to recognize various types of organizations around the world, specifically in business and technology categories. They present awards in nine categories, including Customer Excellence, American Business, Business, Cybersecurity, Disruptor, and Women In Business.

From the Globee® Awards for Customer Excellence Gold Winner page:

“To be recognized as a Gold Globee® Winner, an entrant needs to attain an impressive average score of 9.0 or above, or have the highest score in their category, according to the judgment of the evaluators. This distinction marks the recipient’s superior performance, innovation, and leadership in their field, distinguishing them as leaders of excellence. The Gold Globee® Winner accolade celebrates not only the individual or organization’s notable achievements but also encourages the broader industry community to aim for and achieve high standards of excellence. It is an acknowledgment of the winner’s hard work, talent, and commitment to their area of expertise.”

We know how hard our customer success team works to ensure our customers and their businesses succeed, so we’re not surprised they’ve been honored with this award! 

If you want your SaaS, software, video game, or digital goods business to benefit from FastSpring’s continued commitment to customer success, set up a demo or sign up to check out the platform yourself.

The post FastSpring Customer Success Team Wins Gold Globee® Award appeared first on FastSpring.

Join us at the Lingotto Conference and Exhibition Centre in Torino, Italy from June 13 to 15 for an extraordinary event dedicated to all things WordPress. 

Immerse yourself in a diverse array of programs, workshops, and presentations, where industry experts will share their wisdom and cutting-edge trends will be unveiled. Embrace the spirit of collaboration and giving back during the Contributor Day on June 13, where you can contribute to the WordPress project and make a lasting impact. Also on Contributor Day is another way to make a lasting impact for the future of WordPress through the Youth and Teens workshop! Young minds aged 10-16 will dive into the world of WordPress and beyond, guided by expert educators and business owners. Attendees will create their own websites, explore VR and AI, and learn essential internet safety.

You must also explore the beauty of Torino. Experience the rich culture, tantalizing cuisine, and awe-inspiring sights that this dynamic city offers. Torino, a city rooted in history extending beyond two millennia and the first capital city of Italy, is historically known for its baroque architecture and delicious cuisine. In recent times, Torino is equally famous for being one of Italy’s main industrial and most diverse cultural hubs, attracting talent from all over the world. Connect, learn, and be inspired in this captivating city, where technology meets tradition and innovation thrives amidst cultural splendor.

Where to Get Tickets

Still need tickets? Head over to the registration page to grab your ticket to get access to incredible speakers, unparalleled networking opportunities, and proprietary software that will maximize your experience even more! Tickets include entry to the conference days (June 13 to 15), including lunch, snacks and coffee, as well as an invite to the official WordCamp EU After Party. As a ticket holder, you’ll also get the opportunity to register for the Contributor Day (June 13).

How to Connect With FastSpring at WordCamp EU 2024

Stop by our booth or connect with the team via the WordCamp EU 2024 app to learn more about subscription management, international taxes, and how using a merchant of record can enable you to collect payments faster for your games. Schedule a demo now or at WordCamp EU 2024 in person! 

FastSpring is how plugin, theme, and SaaS companies sell online in more places around the world. We handle every payment need from subscription management to tax collection, remittance, and more so your business can go farther, faster. We’re also the leading merchant of record for global software companies — powering over a billion dollars in worldwide transactions every year. We’ll manage your checkout, VAT and sales taxes, compliance, and more, freeing you to focus on what you do best: building great software. Sign up for a free account or request a demo today to learn more.

The post FastSpring at WordCamp EU 2024! appeared first on FastSpring.

After a rejection by the U.S. Supreme Court in January allowed the lower courts’ rulings to take effect, Apple responded immediately by filing court documents that outlined its plans to comply, but those plans preserved most of Apple’s high fees. 

The evidentiary hearing regarding Apple’s subsequent compliance began on Wednesday, May 8. AP reports that Judge Gonzalez Rogers “questioned whether Apple has set up a gauntlet of exasperating hurdles to discourage the use of alternative payment options in iPhone apps,” despite the court order. 

Hearing Focused on Whether Apple Policy Is Still Anti-Steering

The AP piece further notes that Judge Gonzalez Rogers’ tone suggested Apple’s implementation has primarily focused on protecting Apple’s own profits, rather than complying with the intended outcome of her order to allow steering and increase iPhone users’ ability to easily switch to other in-app payment options. The article points out that according to Epic documents, Apple is still blocking developers from steering consumers to other payment options with lower pricing options.

The AP article continues that as part of the hearing, the Apple executive over the iPhone App Store, Matthew Fischer, disclosed that Apple has only received and approved applications for 38 apps to display links to other payment systems, “a fraction of the roughly 2 million iPhone apps available in the U.S.”

PC Mag points out that this low application number — 38 out of the 65,000 app developers that offer in-app purchases — is likely due to cost, since the 27% Apple fee plus the cost of credit card fees would likely result in a higher overall cost to developers. 

Apple Executive ‘Unaware’ of Higher Overall Cost Issue

A LAW360 piece from Friday, May 10 recounts that day’s proceedings as Epic lawyer Yonatan Even and Judge Gonzalez Rogers questioned Apple Finance Vice President Alex Roman. Even pointed out the 3% lower fee from Apple — 27% for transactions taking place outside an app on Apple devices, as opposed to its usual in-app 30% fee — and then Epic also provided evidence that the average cost of payment services in the U.S. is 3.5%, with a yoga app CEO testifying that he pays 3.5% to 6.5% fees for payment processing. After Roman said he was not aware of that, Even reiterated that the goal was to set a fee that would allow developers to offer users a better price by asking Roman if he understood that. Judge Gonzalez Rogers is quoted as stating to Roman that “‘It sounds like you all made lots of decisions with no data,’ she said. ‘It sounds to me as if the goal was to maintain … the revenue that you had in the past.’” Access the LAW360 article here.

FastSpring Pleased to See Judge Side With Epic

FastSpring CEO David Nachman states that “We’re pleased to see the judge side with Epic in this exchange, and we’re hopeful that the court will require Apple to allow steering for app and game developers without fees and unnecessary restrictions. FastSpring’s mission is to democratize global commerce for software and digital product companies, and we join our customers in celebrating this progress toward open commerce in mobile.”

FastSpring CEO David Nachman participated in Epic’s antitrust case against Google. Read FastSpring’s press release on the December 11, 2023 ruling in the case.

Additional Antitrust Case Against Apple Launched by US Justice Department

In addition to the Epic Games case, the U.S. Justice Department launched an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in March 2024, alleging that Apple has monopoly power in the smartphone market, including (among others) in the area of digital payments. 

For more information:

• Visit our game monetization page to learn more about how FastSpring supports game developers.
• FastSpring CEO David Nachman participated in Epic’s antitrust case against Google. Read FastSpring’s press release on the December 11, 2023 ruling in the case. “This is a win for gamers and studios.”
• Get tips on How to Sell a Mobile App or Game Outside App Stores.
• Listen to a podcast episode with the CEO of Skillshot Media and Ghost Gaming about Marketing Your Video Game Outside of Game Marketplaces & App Stores.
• Already using a merchant of record to monetize your game directly to consumers? Here are seven great reasons to use FastSpring as an additional D2C solution, or learn more about four Xsolla competitors in 2024. 

Related industry news and opinions:

• Is What Epic Wants for App Stores What Other Game Developers Actually Want? (December 2023)
• News: Potential Apple App Store Policy Changes Due to EU’s Digital Markets Act (November 2023) 
• News: Tentative Settlement in Google Play Direct-to-Consumer Antitrust Lawsuit Announced (September 2023)
• What the Epic Games vs. Apple Injunction Means for Software Companies (October 2021)

About FastSpring

FastSpring powers global direct-to-consumer (D2C) payments for game studios and publishers. As a Merchant of Record, FastSpring provides a fully managed payment solution including checkout, fraud mitigation, and 100% automated sales tax and VAT compliance. With FastSpring, gaming businesses can level up quickly in the global market and do what they do best, build great games. Founded in 2005, FastSpring is a privately owned company headquartered in California with offices in the UK, Netherlands, and Canada. For more information, please visit https://fastspring.com/solutions/gaming.

The post News: U.S. Federal Judge and Epic Games Challenge Whether Apple Has Complied With Order to Allow Payment Steering appeared first on FastSpring.