Scout RFP

Alex Yakubovich and his college friends started as web developers in Cleveland, Ohio, building websites for small businesses door-to-door in the early 2000s. They pivoted to building online ordering software for restaurant chains after a local pizza chain requested it—perfect timing for just before the iPhone launch. By graduation in 2007, they had six-figure revenues and raised $500k in angel funding. The business grew rapidly, eventually serving 50+ major chains (Panera, KFC, Boston Pizza) and processing hundreds of millions in transactions annually. They were acquired by Living Social in 2012 for "tens of millions."

While working on that platform and later at Living Social, Alex experienced the painful RFP (Request for Proposal) process repeatedly. When selling 6-7 figure deals to enterprise restaurant chains, every single procurement required navigating clunky, manual processes. Internally at Living Social's 5,000-person company, he witnessed procurement teams drowning in volume and visibility issues. The insight was clear: this massive, expensive problem had no good solution.

Rather than jumping into product development, Alex and co-founder Stan made a bold commitment: "Let's not build anything until we talk to at least 200 people in procurement." They ended up interviewing nearly 300 procurement professionals across industries, spending about six months on research alone.

The research revealed a paradox. Enterprise procurement software existed (SAP, Oracle, Coupa, Jaggr), yet nobody was actually using it. When asked what tools they used, customers would list platforms; when asked what they *actually* used, they'd admit to manual email and spreadsheets. The legacy software was "clunky" and required weeks of training and multi-quarter implementations. Alex and his team were inspired by TurboTax—if Intuit could make complex US tax code accessible to everyone, why couldn't they do the same for procurement?

They decided on a radically simple first product: a one-page interface that solved three specific problems. RFP attachments bounced in inboxes—they built a message center. Suppliers didn't confirm receipt or intent—they added visibility. Question-and-answer chaos (20 suppliers = 20 sets of questions)—they centralized Q&A management. That was it. When shown the MVP, prospective customers would ask, "Is that it?" But after using it, they'd say, "This is awesome. It saved me so much time."

Alex and team went back to many of the 300 procurement professionals they'd interviewed. They charged $89/month initially—low enough to validate willingness-to-pay without overselling a limited product. To reach customers, they used a template: "I'm a founder. We're not selling anything. You look like an expert. We want to understand the industry. Can we chat for 30 minutes?" Procurement people, they discovered, were generous and passionate. The first ~50 cold outreach contacts were hard, but once referrals started flowing, momentum built.

Early sales were founder-driven. Alex and his co-founders attended trade shows, sponsored events, and chased prospects down hallways. Customers took a chance on the smaller company because they believed in the vision and founders' commitment. A critical promise: "You will be happy with this, or it will be soon—and we'll work with you." Delivering on that promise, Alex learned, was everything in procurement, where trust is currency.

The philosophy of "adoption over features" became Scout's north star. No training manuals. No weeks-long implementations. Customers like Uber and Salesforce—distributed teams across the globe—were up and running in a day, launching sourcing events that same day. Traditional platforms took weeks and had poor adoption.

One big mistake: early in the restaurant ordering business, a major customer asked them to build the backbone of their entire ordering system on Scout's platform. Alex's team declined without fully understanding the need. That customer spent hundreds of millions building it themselves. Had they listened deeply, they might have landed a transformative engagement and built a more scalable system.

Content marketing and owned events became the primary growth engine. Scout published webinars, case studies, white papers, and distributed heavily on LinkedIn (where procurement professionals congregate). In year three, they launched Spark, their own industry conference—held at SF Jazz Center (year two) with hundreds of sourcing professionals and industry leaders like Jeff Immelt. It's grown so fast they ran out of space.

Scout RFP now has 150+ employees, over 200 customers (including Adobe, Levi's, Salesforce, Starbucks, Airbnb, Uber, Dropbox), and has raised over $60 million in funding. They've expanded beyond RFPs into supplier management, contract management, and strategic sourcing planning. The core lesson remains obsess over customers—not procurement's reputation as "boring" or "sleepy," but the passionate, talented people doing crucial work for enterprises worldwide.