Statsig, an experimentation platform that allows teams to tie product efforts to key business metrics and quickly iterate as features are launched, was founded in the Seattle area in 2021.
Like many early-stage companies, Statsig didn’t have a dedicated finance department before they started making sales. So it was Vijaye Raji, Statsig’s founder and CEO, who went through the checklist of legal requirements for setting up billing and payments.
The Statsig team wanted to get compliant—but didn’t know where to start
Even though Statsig was less than a year old at the time, they were right to start thinking about sales tax early. Software companies at this stage could already be on the hook for sales tax in multiple states, cities, and even countries.
But it’s hard to know when, where, and how to become compliant. Each jurisdiction has its own tax rates and rules, registration and filing processes, and classifications for software products like Statsig.
Raji quickly realized that finding the right path to compliance for Statsig wouldn’t be easy.
“We didn’t fully understand the tax implications of selling SaaS to companies in other states. And then it was complicated even more by different states having different rules.”
Raji turned to his network to find out how other SaaS companies were solving this problem—and that’s when he discovered Anrok.
Solving sales tax early was a “no-brainer” thanks to Anrok
Raji was pleased to find out how simple it could be to get a sales tax solution in place.
“One of the things that made it a no-brainer for me was that you can integrate Anrok for free,” he says. “You don’t have to pay anything until you start hitting tax thresholds. So you really don’t have a reason to not start solving this problem right away.”
The Statsig team uses Stripe for billing and payments, and were able to connect Anrok and Stripe with a quick no-code integration.
“Once we took care of that small amount of integration work, we were all set,” Raji says.
Statsig spends 90% less time dealing with sales tax
Now, every invoice created in Stripe has the right sales tax added in real time, and Statsig’s transactions flow back to Anrok to build a picture of their sales tax liability.
Raji still takes care of any sales tax-related tasks for the Statsig team—because with Anrok, he’s able to check sales tax off the list in less than an hour a month.
“Everything just works behind the scenes,” he says. “I only spend a few minutes each month verifying and approving the returns that Anrok prepares. If I had to do all of these tax calculations myself, I’d be spending at least 10 hours a month. So Anrok has cut the time we spend on sales tax by 90%.”
Like many startups, Statsig is growing fast, which means their sales tax picture will only get more complex. But Anrok is built to scale with SaaS companies, so even as Statsig grows, Raji will be able to keep compliant and protect the company’s revenue—while spending very little time on sales tax.
“That level of automation, and hours of my time saved—time being the scarcest of resources—is pretty important for me,” Raji says.
