The Tax Expert Who Actually Filed the Taxes
Most founders solve problems they read about in think-pieces. Kevin Liu solved a problem he had personally paid $20,000 to ignore. When his co-owned Shopify brand missed a state filing deadline, the penalty arrived fast. The lesson was immediate: sales tax compliance was not a back-office problem you could delegate later. It was a operational landmine that detonated precisely when a brand started succeeding.
That particular sting, familiar to any ecommerce operator who navigated the post-2018 compliance landscape, is what sits at the foundation of Numeral. Liu brought something rare to the table: the combination of a licensed California CPA with Big 4 training at KPMG, and the operational scar tissue of having built dropship accounts into seven-figure businesses and co-owned an eight-figure Shopify brand. He had not read about the problem. He had filed through it.
Along with co-founders Sam Ross and Jake Moffatt, Liu launched Numeral in 2022, joined Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch, and built toward a product that could handle the full sales tax lifecycle - nexus monitoring, state registrations, filings, remittances, and exemption management - for brands that simply want to stop thinking about it. The company's stated goal: spend less than five minutes a month on sales tax. For most customers, it's working.
"We help e-commerce owners automate the entire sales tax lifecycle."
- Kevin Liu, Co-Founder, NumeralThe 2018 Supreme Court ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair is the event that made Numeral necessary. Before Wayfair, online sellers generally only collected sales tax in states where they had physical presence. After it, any significant ecommerce activity could trigger nexus - and with it, the obligation to register, collect, and remit taxes across dozens of state and local jurisdictions. For small teams running lean brands, that was a compliance burden they had never budgeted for.
Liu, who was building ecommerce businesses at exactly that moment, watched the complexity compound. The 47 states that charge sales tax don't agree on definitions, rates, or filing schedules. They often can't agree on what counts as taxable at all. A vitamin in one state is exempt. In another, it's not. Navigating this by hand, for a brand operating in multiple states, meant hours of work per quarter per state - or an expensive accounting retainer that most DTC brands couldn't sustain.
The Wayfair Effect
The June 2018 Supreme Court decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. overturned a 1992 ruling and allowed states to require out-of-state online sellers to collect sales tax based on economic activity rather than physical presence. The result: thousands of ecommerce brands suddenly had multi-state tax obligations they had never prepared for. Numeral was built to absorb that complexity entirely.
Big 4 Trained. Shopify Scarred. Founder Ready.
After graduating from UC Berkeley, Liu went the conventional route - KPMG, the Big 4, where he earned his CPA license and learned how companies actually handle tax obligations at scale. That training gave him a working understanding of compliance architecture that most ecommerce operators never develop, because most operators are too busy running operations to learn tax law.
But the accounting career didn't hold him. The pull of building something of his own was stronger. Liu left KPMG and entered ecommerce - first with dropship accounts that scaled into seven figures, then into co-ownership of an eight-figure Shopify brand. These weren't side projects. They were real operating businesses with real supply chains, real customers, and very real tax obligations across very real state lines.
That dual background - certified public accountant meets merchant operator - is what makes Liu's role at Numeral distinct. The company's product isn't built by engineers guessing at what accountants want. It was designed by someone who understood both the regulatory logic and the merchant's lived experience of getting a surprise penalty notice. The empathy isn't constructed. It's occupational.
Numeral's founding team reads like three distinct skill sets assembled around a single problem. Sam Ross, the CEO, ran ecommerce businesses that generated over $50M in combined revenue after product roles at Airbnb and Teespring. Jake Moffatt, the CTO, is a self-taught engineer who started coding at age 12 and spent over a decade building compliance software at companies like Snapdocs and Alto Pharmacy. Liu covers the tax expertise, the operator perspective, and the knowledge of exactly what it feels like to open a penalty notice that could have been avoided.
Numeral: Sales Tax. Solved.
Numeral's pitch is clean because the problem is concrete. Sales tax is not vague regulatory risk - it is specific forms, specific deadlines, specific penalties for specific failures. The platform handles all of it: nexus monitoring and alerts, state-by-state registration, rate calculation and collection at checkout, filing and remittance across all jurisdictions, exemption certificate management, and government correspondence through virtual mailboxes. Customers include Brex, Character.AI, EightSleep, Ridge, Graza Olive Oil, and Manus.
The pricing model is intentionally simple - $150 per new state registration, $75 per tax return filed - rather than the percentage-based fees that made some competitors' costs unpredictable as brands scaled. That flat-fee structure appeals directly to the operators Liu has spent years being. Predictable costs in an unpredictable compliance landscape is itself a product feature.
The funding timeline tells the story of a product that landed. Y Combinator and Uncork Capital backed the seed. Benchmark led the $18M Series A in March 2025. Six months later - unusually fast, by venture standards - Mayfield led a $35M Series B that valued the company at $350M. Benchmark returned. Uncork returned. Y Combinator returned. Mantis, the VC fund co-founded by members of The Chainsmokers, joined the cap table. Revenue grew 3.5x in the preceding year.
That growth has come partly from expanding the addressable market. Numeral initially focused on ecommerce brands navigating state-level sales tax. The Series A reflected an expanded thesis: 25 states now tax SaaS software sales, opening a significant segment that had previously assumed itself exempt. Numeral now serves over 3,000 businesses - ecommerce brands and software companies alike - with coverage across 70+ countries including global VAT and GST compliance.
How He Got Here
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UC BerkeleyGraduated from the University of California, Berkeley. Earned his California CPA license while working at KPMG, one of the Big 4 global accounting firms.
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KPMGGained hands-on experience in corporate tax compliance and accounting at one of the world's largest professional services firms. Left to pursue entrepreneurship.
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2018 - 2022Built multiple ecommerce businesses: 7-figure dropship accounts scaling into 8-figure Shopify brands. Co-owned a brand generating $10M+ in annual revenue. Navigated the post-Wayfair multi-state tax landscape firsthand.
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2022Co-founded Numeral with Sam Ross and Jake Moffatt. The founding insight came directly from their shared experience managing sales tax compliance for their own ecommerce businesses.
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YC W23Numeral accepted into Y Combinator's Winter 2023 batch. Raised a $4M seed round from Y Combinator and Uncork Capital.
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March 2025Numeral raised an $18M Series A led by Benchmark Capital, expanding from ecommerce into SaaS tax compliance as 25 states began taxing software sales.
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September 2025Numeral closed a $35M Series B led by Mayfield, valuing the company at $350M. Total funding reaches $57M. Company now serves 3,000+ businesses in 70+ countries.
The Details That Define It
Kevin Liu left a Big 4 accounting career at KPMG to sell things on Shopify - and ended up using those tax headaches to build a $350M fintech company.
Numeral's founding team includes a coder who started at age 12, an Airbnb PM who built $50M+ in ecommerce revenue, and a KPMG-trained CPA who ran 8-figure brands.
The 2018 Supreme Court ruling in South Dakota v. Wayfair is the single regulatory event that created the market Numeral now dominates.
Numeral's Series B came just six months after its Series A - unusually fast. The company grew revenue 3.5x in the preceding year, and every prior investor came back.
Kevin Liu on E-Commerce Sales Tax
On the DTC Podcast, Kevin Liu breaks down the 2018 Supreme Court ruling that changed everything for online sellers - and explains how Numeral was built to absorb that complexity entirely.