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About Foldy

Built by people who lived the paperwork problem

Foldy started with two immigrants in Germany who always felt behind on paperwork, because it never comes when you expect it, and you never have time for it when it does.

Feel confident with every German letter, and free your head for life.

Our story

Maria and Nickolay both moved to Germany and ran into the same wall every immigrant, expat, and international student eventually hits: official letters. Tax office, Bürgeramt, insurance, landlord, all in dense bureaucratic German.

And the paperwork never waited for a convenient moment. Applying for Elternzeit, Elterngeld, and Kindergeld, getting a birth certificate translated, and registering for Kita, all while caring for a newborn. Chasing down property paperwork just to rent or buy a place to live. Gathering payslips and talking to lawyers after an unexpected layoff. Different chapters, same pattern: life happens, and the forms don't care.

An hour of paperwork is never just an hour.

So together they built Foldy, not only for themselves, but for the growing community of people who told them the same story in different words. A letter comes in, Foldy tells you what it means and what to do next, and nothing about your paperwork needs to leave your phone or land somewhere you don't trust.

Foldy reduces the cognitive load, so your time and energy can go to what actually matters.

Meet the founders

The two people who lived the problem and decided to fix it.

Maria Tarbaieva, Co-Founder and CEO of Foldy

Maria Tarbaieva

Co-Founder & CEO

  • Moved from Ukraine to Germany in 2015 and has handled German paperwork ever since
  • Worked on document management software at Leverton when AI could do little with documents; now leads business, product, operations and sales at Foldy
Nickolay Tarbaiev, Co-Founder and CTO of Foldy

Nickolay Tarbaiev

Co-Founder & CTO

  • Leads the technical side of Foldy: architecture, infrastructure, security and the on-device privacy layer that protects your data before it reaches AI
  • Background at FlixBus and SMG, building systems that hold up at scale for millions of users

Why this matters now

German paperwork is hard even for Germans, and twice as hard for people who moved here.

How people handle letters today

  1. Scan them or pull them in from apps
  2. Drop them into folders or drives
  3. Build their own system to track tasks
  4. Paste them into a chatbot, or pay someone to explain them

16.4million

people in Germany moved here from abroad, roughly one in five residents. Every one of them deals with official letters in German.

3 in 4people

in Germany feel overwhelmed by the language of official letters, and 69% have to read them several times.

€75an hour

is roughly what a personal assistant costs to handle it for you.

1 in 6people

who try Foldy upgrade to Pro.

The same problem exists wherever people move to a country with its own bureaucracy, like Austria, Switzerland or Italy, and Foldy is built to follow them. Foldy already works in English, German, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian. It is free to start, with Pro and Business plans for individuals and teams. See pricing.

Sources: Destatis, Mikrozensus 2025 (16.4 million). Taxfix survey with Qualtrics and Wortliga, 2024 (3 in 4). The cost figure is a Foldy estimate. Upgrade rate: Foldy app data, September 2026.

Alexandra
“Official letters: understanding them and acting on time while working on everything else… Foldy has been a game changer for me.”

Foldy updates

  1. Collage from the Reaktor Wildau masterclass with Helmut Ness on product and business models(opens in a new tab)

    Design thinking masterclass at Reaktor Wildau

    Foldy joined Reaktor Wildau's Batch 2 for a two-day design thinking masterclass with Helmut Ness of Fuenfwerken Design AG.

    Read the post(opens in a new tab)
  2. Maria Tarbaieva at sunset at the BACB summer network meeting(opens in a new tab)

    At the BACB summer meeting with Reaktor Wildau

    Foldy joined investors, business angels and founders from Berlin and Brandenburg at the Business Angels Club's summer network meeting, as part of the Reaktor Wildau startup group.

    Read the post(opens in a new tab)
  3. Maria Tarbaieva pitching Foldy at Startup Landpartie Neuruppin(opens in a new tab)

    Second place at Startup Landpartie Neuruppin

    Maria pitched Foldy's privacy-first approach to documents against eight other startups, in front of a jury including seed + speed Ventures and Brandenburg Kapital.

    Read the post(opens in a new tab)

Supported by

Reaktor Wildau

Foldy is part of Batch 2 of Reaktor Wildau's nine-month start-up programme in Brandenburg, with mentoring, masterclasses and coworking.

Foldy Business

Hiring people from abroad? Official letters keep arriving long after onboarding, and your HR team often ends up reading them. With Foldy Business, your employees get their own private place to understand and handle that mail, for €24 per user per year.

Partner with Foldy

We work with advisors who support people moving to Germany, like Maria Brodt, who helps expats with financial planning. Relocation agencies, HR teams and advisors, let's talk.