2023 Zip Year In Review: Exploring new horizons
Learn about the Zip's incredible impact and powerful new products of 2023.
As 2023 comes to a close, weâre taking a moment to reflect on what an incredible journey itâs been since our founding in 2020.Â
This year alone, we've celebrated a successful Series C round of funding, hosted our inaugural user and community conference Zip Forward, introduced generative AI into our product suite, and earned countless industry recognitions and award winsâweâre very grateful.Â
Letâs take a quick stroll through what we accomplished in 2023.Â
Zip research: traditional procurement is broken
We kicked off the year by sharing breakthrough industry research revealing that a staggering 1-in-3 finance and accounting professionals describe their procurement process as âbrokenâ.
Digging deeper, our research found that modernizing procurement processes was the favored solution to improve operational efficiency, enhance collaboration and team productivity, while also increasing spend visibility and control. We couldnât possibly agree more.
Zipâby the numbers
This year was huge for the Zip platform. As always, our goal is to redefine the experience of procurement, empowering teams to collaborate, enhance workflows, and streamline operations so employees can grow business faster.Â
Hereâs how Zip did that in 2023:
Funding secured, payments unlocked
One of our most exciting announcements this year came as a double-news drop!
In May, we announced a $100 million round of Series C funding at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation, with investment from Y Combinator, CRV, and Tiger Globalâfollowed up immediately by revealing Zip Intake-to-Pay, extending our industry-first Intake-to-Procure platform to now provide sophisticated Procure-to-Pay capabilities.
Offering end-to-end spend visibility and control, these new capabilities allow businesses to implement a holistic procurement experience, designed to be so easy that it requires zero additional training.
Then in June, we introduced Zip Vendor Cardsâan advanced corporate card solution enabling rapid vendor payments, all while strengthening control and spend visibility. Built to work in tandem with our Intake-to-Procure solution, Zip Vendor Cards provide businesses a unified, highly compliant solution to automate purchase requests and approvals from initial intake to issuing payment.
All in all, Zip is now processing >$35B in cumulative spend annuallyâand weâre just getting started.
The AI revolution in procurement is here
In 2023, we were laser-focused on product innovation. Fresh off the heels of our new payments features, in October we launched Zip AI.
Zip AI is our new generative AI assistant built directly into the Zip product suite, designed to automate previously-manual workflows, immediately flag legal and security risks, and provide valuable and intelligent business insights every step of the way.Â
Zip AI is already helping our customers accelerate their workflowsâwith over 521K Zip AI insights provided since launching the beta. The future is now.
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Our first community conference: Zip Forward!
In early November, our inaugural user conference Zip Forward premiered in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Our customer and community event brought together over 400 attendees, including featured speakers from Snowflake, OpenAI, AirBnB, Discover, Figma, and more.Â
Over the course of an inspired day at The Conservatory, we heard moving stories from our customers, profound keynote sessions delivered by industry leaders and experts, and shared data-driven insights directly from our team at Zip. We were also excited to unveil the latest powerful addition to our platform: Zip Sourcing!
Check out our full recap of the event for more from Zip Forwardâand be sure to get on the waitlist for Zip Forward 2024!
Celebrating customer wins and powerful partnerships
At Zip, we âre fully aware that our success comes not only from our incredibly talented team, but also from the partners we work with, and the customers we serve.
Our 300+ customers provide us with the feedback, support, and success stories that inspire us to keep building. In 2023, weâre pleased to share that Zip has driven $2.5 billion in savings for our customers through more than 1.5 million approvalsâwith our customers paying out vendors in 80 countries in more than 30 different currencies.Â
This year, we also introduced the Zip Global Partner Program, an international ecosystem of leading systems integrators, complementary ISVs, and premier consulting firms. With this partner program, weâre thrilled to team up with SAP to bring Zip into the SAP Store, and NetSuite, offering purpose-built integrations so companies can onboard Zipâs spend approval platform into the Netsuite instances they already use every day.
Building Our Global Procurement Community
The Zip team earned their miles this year, participating as featured guests at procurement and technology events across the globe. We went to Amsterdam for DPW, SAP Spend in Austria, Procuron in Barcelona, Procurement Foundry FORGE Engage in Atlanta, and SIG in Toronto, along with many more events here at home.
Our goal was to share the research and insights weâve gathered while building the next generation of procurement enablement to the global stage, and demonstrate how impactful our âsingle front doorâ intake platform can be for streamlining operations and increasing value at organizations.
Weâre proud of our community, and canât wait to share what weâre planning to bring to the field next year.
A year of recognition and honors
Zip is dedicated to modernizing spend controls across the entire intake-to-pay process. Weâre extremely grateful for the many awards and recognitions we received in 2023, further inspiring us in our mission to redefine how employees and company leaders experience procurement. Â
This year, Zip was fortunate enough to receive several accolades:Â
- Forbes Americaâs Best Startup for Employers 2023
- Everest P2P PEAK Matrix
- ProcureTech 100, Wing VC Enterprise Tech 30
- LinkedInâs Top Startups
- Spend Matters: â50 to Watchâ
- Tech Ascension: Most Innovative Fintech Solution Award
Closing the books
Itâs been quite a year of growth at Zip, shipping powerful new features, launching the future of AI in procurement, and building community with our inaugural Zip Forward eventâand this is just the beginning.
To close out the year, weâll turn to our CEO and co-founder Rujul Zaparde for his parting thoughts.