SAN FRANCISCO-(WIRE OF BUSINESS)-Zip, the world’s leading intake-to-procure solution, today announced the $ 43 million Series B funding round led by YC Continuity with participation from Tiger Global and CRV. This brings Zip’s total funding to $ 81 million and the company’s value to $ 1.2 billion in just 18 months since it was founded, plus $ 25 million of Series A and multiple seed-round investments during that time. Zip’s enterprise-grade platform enables employees to make business purchases with a consumer-style experience. Founded in 2020 by Rujul Zaparde and Lu Cheng, Zip boasts more than 100 customers, including industry leaders such as Canva, Snowflake, Roblox, Coinbase, Airtable, Toast, Webflow and Databricks. The company has quickly grown to more than 130 employees – including top engineers from Silicon Valley tech innovators such as Airbnb, Meta, Google and Square. The latest round will be used to accelerate talent adoption and acquisition, with plans to double the number of employees by the end of 2022.
“The simple task of purchasing software or services has become hopelessly complicated in even the most innovative companies in the world, ”said Ali Rowghani, managing partner at YC Continuity.“As purchasing becomes increasingly decentralized, many stakeholders in the process – financial, legal, IT and the business users themselves – become increasingly frustrated. Zip is the first source of credibility for a modern decentralized procurement process. Zip provides an intuitive front door and clear visualization of the entire workflow so that each stakeholder has visibility into what is happening. We invested in the world class Zip team because they elegantly solved all of these business problems and created a product that consumers love buying, legal, finance, IT and business. ”
Zip is the New Concierge for Purchase
Finance and procurement teams from organizations of all sizes are struggling to keep up with the rapid adoption of technology and services driven by digital transformation. Conflict has only increased as purchasing decisions have become more decentralized. Zip provides an effortless reception experience for any employee who requests a business -related purchase; adjusting that purchase through complex approval workflows; and complete visibility for all stakeholders throughout the process.
Zip starts with the easiest experience in the world for employees to initiate a hiring request, whether it’s software, services or otherwise. The employee begins by filling out a conditional intake form. From there, Zip automatically generates a policy-based approval workflow involving any number of required stakeholders and steps, identically or sequentially. All stakeholders, from requesting to procurement to approving across all cross-functional teams, can see a clear view of the approvals required for their request. The financial, legal, procurement, IT, security and privacy immediately and anytime in time knows exactly what is going on for any request, at any stage.
Zip delivers a consumer-grade, intuitive one-stop experience-no training required of any kind. Conversely, a company’s typical hiring process requires three to six teams and different systems, five or more hours of training just to start a request and more than 25 emails. In a distributed spend environment, CFOs and procurement leaders require employee adoption of their centralized systems to reap the benefits of everyone following the official process. At Zip, CFOs and procurement leaders see huge improvements in spending visibility, savings and compliance by giving employees a fast, easy experience they’re happy to use.
“It’s incredible how quickly industry leaders across Procurement, Finance, and IT are moving to Zip, ”said Michael Denari, head of global spending and business systems at Canva. “Before Zip, employees were bothered with multiple duplicative intakes across different systems, while Zip now streamlines the utilization process into an integrated, friction-free experience. ”
In addition, the Zip platform provides pre-built, best-in-class and configurable no-code workflows for any non-technical employee to design a world-class process. The procurement workflow is inherently complex because it spans many different teams and systems. Zip takes a unique approach as the front-door and orchestration layer with flexible, pre-built connectors to key business systems including ERPs such as NetSuite, Workday and others; contract management software such as Ironclad and DocuSign; IT ticketing software such as Jira and ServiceNow; and most importantly, communication software such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. Pre-built Zip connectors on other systems allow each team to use their preferred software tools-without having to log into Zip. For companies that don’t already have some or all of these systems, approvers approve or reject natively Zip or Slack and email.
“Coinbase is the most trusted and secure crypto platform. It is very important for us to adhere to the best in class compliance and risk management standards, while creating a seamless hiring experience. In my 20+ years of acquisition, I have never been so excited about acquisition software. Our employees love Zip-it’s even become a verb here, ”said Cindy Yan, VP of source to pay and supplier management at Coinbase.
Zip co-founder and CEO Rujul Zaparde explained, “The explosion of SaaS and the decentralization of purchasing decisions have created massive friction for modern businesses. Day-to-day employees trying to solve business challenges and innovate through new software or service vendor purchases are severely disadvantaged by old, manual processes and clunky, legacy software that no one wants to log in to. ”
Zaparde continued, “I have personally witnessed how frustrating it is for business users to navigate byzantine processes in the procurement process. People are left wondering not only how to get started, but how to secure all the proper approvals to get what they need to do their jobs. This latest investment will allow us to bring our enterprise-grade platform to more forward-thinking businesses and fulfill our mission to reinvent the way organizations manage their acquisition process. ”
To learn more about Zip, please visit the website or request a demo.
About Zip
Zip is the world’s leading intake-to-procure solution. Providing a single platform for any employee to initiate a purchase or vendor request, Zip helps businesses have clear and timely visibility across all purchases, while dramatically improving the employee experience. The code-free configuration of the platform and smart workflow integrated into the diverse system allows businesses to automatically route requests for faster approval across financial, legal, procurement, IT, security and other teams. Leading businesses and high-growth startups such as Databricks, Canva, Airtable, Roblox, Webflow and over 100 others are using Zip to streamline their procurement processes while entertaining their users. business.