Q: Johann, for those who don’t know you yet — can you tell us a bit about your background and what led you to founding Supplied?
I’ve spent my career in product leadership roles at companies like PayPal, eBay, Booking.com, and most recently Bolt. Across all of those experiences, one thing kept surfacing: onboarding, compliance, and reporting requirements consistently pulled product and engineering resources away from building what customers actually wanted.
Particularly at PayPal and later at Bolt, I tried solving this problem internally and saw just how messy and fragmented it really was — reconciling multiple data sources, mapping transactions, verifying sellers, and preparing regulator-ready reports. That was the moment it clicked: this wasn’t a one-company problem, it was an industry-wide gap. Supplied was born out of that frustration — to build the compliance infrastructure layer I wished we’d had.
“Supplied was born out of frustration — to build the compliance infrastructure layer I wished we’d had.”
Q: DAC7 is at the heart of Supplied’s current work. Why is this directive such a big deal?
DAC7 is a pivotal moment because it’s the first time the EU has imposed such comprehensive reporting obligations on digital platforms. Every marketplace, gig economy platform, and rental platform operating in Europe has to capture, reconcile, and report seller data with precision.
The penalties for non-compliance are severe, and the operational overhead is enormous. For many companies, this is their first encounter with compliance at this scale, and it’s exposing just how inadequate their current systems are.
Q: Some people see DAC7 as just another EU regulation. How do you see it in the bigger picture?
DAC7 is the tip of the iceberg. Regulators globally are waking up to the fact that digital platforms drive a massive share of economic activity — and they want visibility, fairness, and accountability.
At the heart of it, this is about revenue. Authorities estimate billions are lost every year in unreported or underreported income. Side hustles, gig work, and alternative income streams are becoming more common as the cost of living rises, which only adds to the scale of the challenge.
Similar regimes were already implemented in the US and are now being discussed in Asia and several other countries. What we’re really looking at is a wave of reporting and compliance requirements that will only grow over the next decade.
For platforms, this isn’t a one-off project. It’s the new normal. And the companies that treat compliance as strategic infrastructure — not as an afterthought — will be the ones that scale confidently.
“DAC7 is the tip of the iceberg. What we’re really looking at is a wave of reporting and compliance requirements that will only grow over the next decade.”
Q: For platforms reading this, what should they be doing right now to prepare?
The worst mistake is treating DAC7 as a “spreadsheet problem.” Spreadsheets may work as a stopgap, but they don’t scale — and they actually compound the problem later when data grows, audits become more frequent, and regulations expand.
If you’re manually reconciling data across systems, building ad-hoc pipelines, and relying on last-minute reporting hacks, you’re already behind.
The smart move is to think end-to-end: how do we capture clean seller data at onboarding, how do we reconcile transactions across multiple sources, how do we ensure transparency, and finally, how do we automate reporting and submission?
Platforms that get those foundations right now won’t just be compliant with DAC7 — they’ll be ready for whatever comes next.
“The worst mistake is treating DAC7 as a spreadsheet problem. Spreadsheets don’t scale — and they actually compound the problem later.”
Q: And finally, where do you see Supplied’s role in all of this?
Our goal at Supplied is to be the compliance backbone of the digital economy. We’re starting with DAC7 because it’s urgent and complex, but our vision is much broader. Supplied orchestrates the entire journey: onboarding, verification, transaction management, reconciliation, data mapping, and automated reporting and submission.
In other words, we don’t just solve a piece of the puzzle — we deliver the outcomes platforms actually need and want: accurate reporting, reduced risk, freed-up product teams — and the ability to scale profitably without compliance becoming a bottleneck.
Closing thought from Johann:
Compliance shouldn’t be a tax on growth. With the right infrastructure, it can be an invisible advantage — building trust with regulators, partners, and customers, while letting platforms focus on what they do best: serving their users. At Supplied, that’s the future we’re building.
