As Pennsylvania’s chief procurement officer, David Yarkin would work straight from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with meetings stacked up and 5 minutes to check his email in between.
He barely had any time to vet suppliers on behalf of the state, as it requested proposals for products and services.
“In the RFP, we would ask suppliers to give references, and every single time they give out a reference it was highly coached and cherry picked,” Yarkin said. “We would throw up our hands hearing that they’re infallible and have never had any problems in 10 years. That’s not realistic.”
With little time to spare, limited suppliers and inauthentic reviews, procurement often felt like a guessing game.
Eighteen months ago, the industry veteran committed to fixing the problem. He spent time talking to other procurement experts who echoed his sentiment, proving it was a national reality.
“People don’t have time to make these calls, especially knowing they’re not fruitful,” he said. “The only way we will be able to keep up is the government augmenting what they do by bringing on more and more suppliers.”
To find a solution, Yarkin’s D.C.-based startup Procurated is building a tech platform that enables public sector organizations to incorporate peer reviews in their supplier selection process.
Procurated collects and shares verified reviews from employees in state and local governments, educational institutions and nonprofits, which collectively represent $3 trillion in annual spending. It allows purchasers to leverage authentic experiences of their peers to make quicker and more informed decisions when choosing high-quality suppliers.
Fresh off a seed funding round, the company recently hired the first members of its team as it looks toward an official launch.
Senior Director of Operations and Strategy Jessica Einstein joined Procurated after stints at LivingSocial, Curb and most recently Collage.com. Senior Director of Product Management Rebecca Moran previously led product management at Bethesda-based manufacturing marketplace Xometry and served in several roles at Politico. Director of Marketing Alex Stonehouse, its most recent hire and another Xometry alum, formerly helped launch Atlantic Media publication RouteFifty and managed social media at SocialCode.
The hires coincided with a $2.5 million funding round that closed last month, co-led by Chicago-based Limerick Hill and D.C.-based MayFive Holdings. The financing will go toward an official launch following a beta launch with Pennsylvania that went live June 24.
“One principle that is iron clad for us is that we will always have a product that is free to the government user and creates tremendous value for them.”
Yarkin said he’s thrilled with the response so far, as it works with 9,000 entities across the state and in recent weeks has trended toward hundreds of reviews a day. But measured growth is the name of the game.
“If we have thousands of reviews distributed in Pennsylvania, we have a product that’s useful,” he said. “If distributed nationally, they’re not as useful.”
He said the startup, through the beta and other testing, is figuring out where it makes more sense to densely cover one location then move to the next, or to use a shotgun approach to slowly increase density in every market in the country.
“One principle that is iron clad for us is that we will always have a product that is free to the government user and creates tremendous value for them.”
For now, Yarkin said, Procurated is working to reach a critical mass of reviews by procurement officials. After that, it’s moving toward perfecting the software on the user end, and once the user base is engaged, it plans to monetize platform.
The startup is looking to bring on a product designer and a couple of software engineers by yearend, according to Yarkin, projecting it will have a national product in 2020.
“Three years from now, I hope the site is the de facto method that folks in government and education use before making the selection of a supplier, whether it’s IT acquisitions or an office supplies purchase.”
