How Boloo retained a key developer in Hungary without a local entity

About Boloo

Boloo is a Netherlands-based software company that runs an all-in-one platform for sellers on bol.com, the Dutch e-commerce marketplace. The platform covers the full workflow a bol.com seller needs: AI-powered product research tools (including a product tracker, niche explorer, and Alibaba scanner), growth and automation features (email campaigns, automated invoicing, AI customer support), and analytics. Boloo serves sellers at every stage, from those starting their first bol.com listing to established businesses scaling past significant monthly revenue.

Boloo B.V. is headquartered in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands, and was founded by Skah van Bijnen.

The challenge

Boloo's challenge was not about moving into a new market. It was about keeping a developer they had already built their product around. When one of Boloo's developers relocated to Hungary for personal reasons, the team faced a clear choice: find a way to keep him employed legally from Hungary, or lose him. Boloo is incorporated in the Netherlands and had no legal entity in Hungary: no payroll infrastructure, no registered employer presence, and no in-house familiarity with Hungarian employment law. Employing someone across the Dutch-Hungarian border compliantly is not something a small software team can manage without specialist knowledge and significant administrative effort.

Setting up a local entity in Hungary from scratch would have taken months and created ongoing overhead that was disproportionate for a single hire. The pressure was real: the developer was a key contributor, and the window to find a workable solution was short.

What was at stake

Employing someone in Hungary without a locally registered employer creates real legal exposure. At a minimum, Boloo needed to ensure the developer was properly registered with Hungarian tax and social security authorities, receiving employment protections under Hungarian labor law, and classified correctly from the start, rather than in a way that left either party exposed to retrospective compliance risk.

Without a proper employment structure in place, Boloo would have been in a position where the developer was working for a Dutch company from Hungary with no legal employment relationship in the country where the work was being performed. That situation carries risk of back-payments and regulatory attention from Hungarian authorities if discovered, and it leaves the employee without the protections Hungarian law is designed to provide.

Beyond the legal exposure, there was a straightforward operational risk: without a fast solution, Boloo would lose a developer they had trained and built their product workflow around. That cost is difficult to put a number on but far higher than any EOR fee.

Why they chose Rivermate

Boloo evaluated several options before committing to Rivermate. Three things stood out in Rivermate's approach, according to Skah van Bijnen: flexibility, a cost structure that worked for a single hire without a local entity, and the quality of the working relationship on offer.

Rivermate was able to accommodate Boloo's specific situation: a single developer in Hungary, a company without any Hungarian presence, needing a solution that didn't add unnecessary cost or complexity. The team's responsiveness and willingness to engage with the specifics rather than offer a generic product mattered to a small company that needed a partner, not a platform.

What Rivermate did

When Boloo came to Rivermate, the immediate priority was establishing compliant employment for the developer in Hungary before the window closed. Rivermate set up the legal employment structure in Hungary under local labor law: registering the developer as an employee, handling the payroll setup, and taking responsibility for the ongoing administrative processes: social security registration, tax filings, and monthly employment administration that Boloo's team did not have the capacity or expertise to manage internally.

The working relationship has continued and expanded from that first hire. As of publication, Rivermate employs five or more people on Boloo's behalf through its Hungarian entity, with all employment managed through Rivermate's platform and ongoing support available from the team.

What this means for similar companies

If you run a small or mid-sized software company and a key team member relocates to a country where you have no legal presence, you face the same trade-off Boloo faced: lose the person, or find a way to employ them compliantly from the new location.

Opening a local entity is rarely the right answer for a single hire. The setup time, legal costs, and ongoing administrative overhead are disproportionate unless you plan to build a team in that country over time. An employer of record makes it possible to act quickly: Rivermate holds the local entity in Hungary, employs the person under Hungarian law, and handles payroll and compliance, while the working relationship stays entirely between you and your team member.