🔎 Spotlight #26: Inside Zip
Because controlling spend is the new growth strategy.
The founding story: fixing how companies actually buy things
Zip was founded in 2020 by Rujul Zaparde and Lu Cheng, two former Airbnb employees who saw firsthand how broken enterprise procurement really was.
Despite companies investing billions into ERP systems and finance software, the actual process of requesting, approving, and purchasing tools was chaotic. Employees didn’t know how to buy software. Finance teams had no visibility. Procurement teams were stuck chasing emails and spreadsheets. Shadow IT was everywhere.
Zaparde and Cheng realized something simple but powerful: before you optimize procurement, you need to fix the intake.
So they built Zip as a procurement orchestration platform. Not another ERP. Not another legacy procurement suite. Instead, a modern layer that sits on top of existing systems and makes purchasing actually usable.
What started as a workflow tool has evolved into a central nervous system for how companies request, approve, and manage spend.
What Zip actually does
At its core, Zip is an intake-to-procure platform.
That means it gives employees a single place to request anything they need to buy, from SaaS subscriptions to agencies to hardware. Behind the scenes, Zip routes those requests through the correct approval chains, integrates with finance and ERP systems, and provides visibility into spend before money goes out the door.
Key capabilities include:
• Guided purchasing workflows
• Automated approval routing
• Integration with systems like SAP, Oracle, and Coupa
• Real-time visibility into company-wide spend
• Vendor onboarding and risk management workflows
Instead of procurement being a blocker, Zip aims to make it a streamlined experience for employees while giving finance leaders control and data.
It’s not flashy. It’s operational plumbing. But in enterprise software, plumbing wins.
Funding and team at a glance
💰 Raised over $190M in late 2024, valued at $2.2B
🏦 Backed by investors including Y Combinator, Tiger Global, BOND, YC Continuity, and CRV
👥 1000+ employees
🌎 HQ: San Francisco, CA
🖥️ Website: ziphq.com
The competition and how Zip compares
Zip operates in the broader procurement and spend management ecosystem. Competitors include:
• Coupa
• SAP Ariba
• Oracle Procurement Cloud
• GEP
• ServiceNow (workflow layer)
Traditional procurement tools tend to be heavy, ERP-native systems that require complex implementation. Zip’s edge is that it focuses on orchestration and user experience first.
Instead of replacing your ERP, Zip sits on top of it.
That positioning has helped them win over modern CFOs and procurement leaders who want visibility and control without ripping out existing systems.
In many ways, Zip is doing for procurement what companies like Ramp and Brex did for corporate cards. Make it easier. Make it visible. Make it modern.
Expanding north: Zip opens its Toronto office 🇨🇦
Zip recently announced the opening of a Toronto office, marking a meaningful expansion into Canada’s growing enterprise tech ecosystem.
This move is not random. Toronto has quietly become one of North America’s strongest hubs for fintech, enterprise SaaS, and AI talent. By planting roots here, Zip gains access to a deep talent pool while strengthening relationships with Canadian enterprises and multinational companies operating in the region.
It also signals something important: Zip is not just building a US-centric procurement tool. They are scaling into a global procurement platform. Expansion into Toronto reflects long-term ambition, not just opportunistic growth.
$6B in customer savings: proving procurement is a growth lever
Zip recently reported that its platform has helped customers save over $6 billion through smarter procurement workflows and AI-powered automation.
That number matters.
Procurement has historically been seen as administrative overhead. Zip is reframing it as a margin protection engine. By improving intake visibility, automating approvals, and centralizing purchasing data, companies are identifying redundant tools, negotiating better vendor contracts, and reducing unauthorized spend.
The article also highlights Zip’s work with major global enterprises, reinforcing that this is not a mid-market experiment. Large, sophisticated companies are relying on Zip to modernize purchasing at scale.
In today’s environment, where efficiency is king and CFOs are under pressure, demonstrating measurable cost savings is a massive competitive advantage. Zip is not just selling workflow software. They are selling financial impact.
And in enterprise software, impact wins.
My take
Zip is tackling a problem that almost every growing company runs into but few think about until it becomes painful.
Procurement is messy. Requests live in Slack threads, approvals get buried in email, finance teams lack visibility, and spend creeps up quietly in the background. It is not flashy work, but it is mission critical. Zip brings structure and clarity to that chaos.
What I like most is that Zip positions procurement as a strategic lever, not a back office chore. By centralizing intake and layering in automation and AI, they are helping companies move faster while staying financially disciplined. In this environment, that balance matters more than ever.
If you care about operational excellence, scalable systems, or building companies that can grow without losing control of spend, Zip is absolutely worth watching. This is the kind of infrastructure that becomes invisible once implemented, but incredibly hard to live without once removed.
🧭 Zip Roles
These are some pretty cool roles at Zip at the moment. I encourage you to keep in tune with future LaunchPad job posts to see any new exciting roles that pop up at Zip and many other cool firms!
That’s a wrap on Spotlight #26
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope these spotlights help you discover companies worth your time, and make the job hunt feel just a little bit less overwhelming. Keep an eye out for next Tuesday’s LaunchPad job drop, and if you know someone looking to break into tech or level up, feel free to share this with them too.
Here’s to building something cool, or better yet, joining something cool. 🚀
