So we started Zip to solve what we call the intake-to-procure process.” “The approval process was going to be across a plethora of teams. “If we needed to buy software for say $100,000 or work with an agency or hire a contractor, there was no clear one place to go to kick off that type of request,” Zaparde recalls. The premise behind the company was based on a mutual realization that a problem they had both faced in their careers was how laborious and time-consuming a procurement request could be. The two stayed in touch when Zaparde then worked at Y Combinator as a visiting partner for about a year before teaming up to build Zip. Later, while working in product management at Airbnb, Zaparde met engineering head Lu Cheng. Zaparde had dropped out of Harvard at the time to help grow that business. Zip co-founder and CEO Rujul Zaparde previously co-founded another startup, a car-sharing company called FlightCar, which shuttered and sold its technology to Mercedes-Benz in 2016. The startup has amassed over 100 customers, such as Canva, Snowflake, Roblox, Coinbase, Airtable, Toast, Webflow and Databricks. Tiger Global and CRV also participated in its latest financing, which brings Zip’s total funding raised to $81 million. Notably, the San Francisco company was founded in 2020, so it has achieved this unicorn valuation in about 18 months (this deal actually closed earlier in 2022). The process to make any purchase within a business can be long and cumbersome, involving multiple departments and lots of back and forth.Ī pair of Airbnb alums have teamed up to build a software business aimed at dramatically simplifying that process, or being, in their words, a “concierge for procurement.” That startup, Zip, has raised $43 million in a Series B round of funding led by YC Continuity at a $1.2 billion valuation.
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