Openlaw, a European platform for digital legal and notary infrastructure, has closed a $3.3 million seed round for its platform beglaubigt.de.
The round includes YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim (via Y Ventures), Moonfire Ventures (founded by Atomico co-founder Mattias Ljungman), Zeno Ventures, Combination VC, Orange Collective and a group of prominent angels, including numerous Y Combinator alumni and founders with successful exits. Openlaw was accepted into Y Combinator F24 Batch.
In the US, incorporating a company can take as little as 24 hours. In Europe, the reality is very different: founders face 27 national legal systems and more than 60 different corporate forms. In many of the continent's largest markets, including Germany, Spain and France, company formation requires notarisation.+
In Germany, setting up a GmbH typically takes six to eight weeks. For founders, that means navigating a maze of agencies, forms and procedures with little clarity on what needs to happen when or where.
Germany’s startup problem isn’t just incorporation — it’s everything after
Nearly 60 per cent of founders are dissatisfied with Germany as a business location according to the DIHK Report 2025, and three-quarters are calling for faster, simpler regulation, as intended in EU-Inc’s 28th regime.
The EU Inc. proposal aims to make company formation across Europe faster and less bureaucratic.
But what comes after incorporation, tax registration, commercial register entries, business addresses, and ongoing administration remains complex and fragmented across jurisdictions.
This is where Openlaw steps in: not to replace existing institutions, but to serve as the digital infrastructure that supports founders from first incorporation through to running their business, starting in Germany, Europe's most bureaucratic market, via the platform beglaubigt.de, with the long-term ambition of expanding into additional European markets.
In Germany, the company is already leading the way with beglaubigt.de: the platform digitises the entire formation process, from incorporation documents and notary appointments to commercial register entries and transparency register filings.
What used to take eight weeks, beglaubigt.de reduces to as little as three days. The platform works with around 300 notary offices on behalf of its customers, handling administration, scheduling, document preparation and register filings, while legal counsel and notarization remain with the notaries.
Less than a year after launch, beglaubigt.de counts established names like neobank Qonto, Holvi and Sevdesk among its partners and has served over 25,000 customers on its platform.
With Germany's first fully automated incorporation API, founders can start the entire company formation process directly from their Qonto account, without ever leaving the platform.
From unicorn exit to legaltech
Openlaw was built by two founders who experienced Germany's bureaucratic formation process firsthand. Through Y Combinator in San Francisco, they also learned how it should work.
CEO Alexander Sporenberg was part of the founding team at Razor Group, which reached unicorn status with a $1.7 billion valuation in just 15 months. Across hundreds of M&A deals, he saw firsthand how notary appointments, registration processes and red tape became the real bottleneck.
CPO Felix Gerlach began his career in the Rocket Internet ecosystem before founding Passbase, a global identity verification platform backed by Lakestar, Cowboy Ventures and Costanoa Ventures. Passbase was acquired by Parallel Markets in 2023.
"Europe doesn't lack innovation, and it certainly doesn't lack talent. What it lacks is efficient infrastructure. At Razor, we built a unicorn in 15 months, but waiting for notary appointments nearly derailed us. In the US, it would have taken days. That's exactly what we're solving with Openlaw, so European founders don't fail because of bureaucracy," says Alexander Sporenberg, CEO and co-founder of Openlaw.
“For us as Europe's leading finance management solution, the incorporation process is the starting point to accompany entrepreneurs along their journey."
"With beglaubigt.de integrated into our product, customers can go from opening an account to incorporating their company seamlessly. It saves founders precious time and makes starting a business significantly easier," says Malte Dous, Managing Director Central Europe at Qonto.
With the fresh capital, Openlaw plans to expand the product offering of its German platform beglaubigt.de: beyond GmbH, UG and GbR formations as well as tax-optimised holding structures, additional register processes and ongoing bookkeeping will be fully available on the platform.
Openlaw is starting with beglaubigt.de in Germany and plans to expand across Europe.
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