Startup of the month: Crown

Please give us a brief company description of Crown.‍

Crown is a procurement technology company specializing in electronic auctions (eAuctions) to enhance negotiation strategies. Crown brings back to procurement the best way to negotiate: use eAuctions. We provide the platform, create a program for our clients to pass 50%+ of their negotiations through eAuction and gain incremental 6% savings on this scope.

Tell us a bit about the founding story of Crown. When and how was Crown born?

For nearly 30 years, electronic auctions (eAuctions) have been misunderstood in procurement—used primarily as a price-cutting tool rather than a strategic negotiation method. Throughout my career, I’ve led over 300 eAuctions and trained more than 2,500 procurement professionals, and one thing became very clear: younger generations entering procurement expect a better, smarter way to negotiate. They don’t want to rely on outdated tools like Excel and long, inefficient email threads. They are demanding more transparency, structure, and efficiency in negotiations. Traditional procurement software wasn’t built to support this shift—it still treats negotiation as an afterthought. That’s why we created Crown: not just to improve procurement, but to create an entirely new category where negotiation is the centerpiece.

Tell us a bit about the team’s and your own backgrounds and what motivated you to start Crown?

When I founded Crown, I knew from the very beginning that building a strong, multi-disciplinary team would be essential to its success. While my background is deeply rooted in procurement, having spent 15 years at companies like Nestlé, Engie, and Sanofi, I didn’t want to just build another procurement tool - I wanted to redefine how negotiations happen in this space. To do that, I needed people who understood not only procurement but also startups, product development, and technology at scale.

That’s why, from the start, I brought together professionals from different industries: experienced startup operators, product specialists, UX/UI designers, and full-stack engineers. My Chief of Staff, Queta Gonzalez, has a decade of experience in strategy and scaling startups, having launched over 13 global accelerators at Techstars. Our operations lead, Louis Fremont, comes with a background in business strategy and scaling startups, complemented by leadership experience from the Army. On the product side, we have Olena Pylypiv, a specialist in building customer-centric products, and a UX/UI team that ensures Crown is designed for usability.

Technology is the backbone of Crown, so I partnered with Fabien Ungerer and Julien Leray, both seasoned full-stack developers. They lead a growing tech team that ensures Crown is a seamless, powerful, and intuitive solution for modern procurement teams. A key principle of Crown is diversity—not just in cultural backgrounds but in ways of thinking. Half of our team comes from Ukraine, and we’re proud to build an international company that reflects different perspectives. This mix allows us to challenge outdated procurement methods and build a negotiation-first solution that resonates across industries.

What motivated me to start Crown was seeing firsthand how younger professionals in procurement were frustrated with inefficient, outdated negotiation methods.

Who are typical customers for Crown? Which problems do you solve for them, and what’s usually their most significant pain point?

Crown primarily works with mid-to-large enterprises in manufacturing, retail, pharmaceutical and industrial sectors, where procurement plays a significant role in business performance. Our customers typically operate across Europe and the U.S., where procurement teams are actively looking for modern solutions to streamline negotiations and drive savings.

The biggest pain points we solve are inefficient negotiations, lack of transparency, and the difficulty of ensuring competitive bidding. Beyond cost reduction, eAuctions provide a standardized yet flexible negotiation framework that procurement teams can adopt globally. This is particularly valuable for international organizations managing complex supply chains and supplier networks across multiple geographies. By implementing Crown, they gain a scalable, technology-driven approach to procurement that aligns with their strategic goals.

How would you describe the core competence / USP of Crown with regard to your customers?

What truly sets Crown apart is its ability to act as an ethical third-party facilitator in negotiations, bringing trust and transparency to both buyers and suppliers.

At CROWN, we take a structured, data-driven approach to optimizing procurement. It all starts with a strategy workshop, where we work with procurement teams to create a truly relevant strategy behind their negotiation approach. During this phase, we ensure to have a clear segmentation of the supply base and the buyers. This structured approach allows us to assess supplier criticality and determine the best negotiation strategy. Once the supplier landscape is mapped, we analyze potential savings opportunities. This means identifying where cost efficiencies via eAuctions can be achieved while maintaining quality and reliability. Based on these insights, we propose eAuctions, selecting the right auction formats and structuring them to maximize competition and transparency.

From there, we manage the entire eAuction process - creating the event, training suppliers to ensure smooth participation, and providing live support to ensure optimal results. In essence, we don’t just help companies negotiate better deals; we build a strategic procurement roadmap that ensures long-term cost savings and efficiency.

How do you usually integrate your solution into your customers' existing IT infrastructure? Where do you complement, where do you substitute and what is usually needed from the customers’ side to make that happen?

Crown stands apart as a third-party platform, meaning we do not require integration with any procurement or ERP system. This independence is a key advantage, allowing us to operate seamlessly across industries and company structures without complex technical setups. Instead of forcing integration, we focus on deep collaboration with our clients, working closely with their procurement teams to understand their unique negotiation challenges and auction needs.

At Crown, we believe that eAuctions are a tool - not the whole negotiation. Auctions should be used strategically as part of a broader procurement approach, and that’s where our expertise comes in. We don’t just provide a platform; we bring a proprietary methodology that ensures our clients maximize the value of eAuctions. Through our Operations team and Customer Success approach, we work side by side with procurement teams, guiding them on best practices, helping them structure their auctions, and ensuring they are fully prepared to engage suppliers effectively.

This hands-on approach is what makes Crown successful. When clients seamlessly integrate auctions into their workflow, they quickly see the impact—and once they experience the benefits, they naturally continue to use them as a key part of their procurement strategy.

As auctions are at the core of Crown’s value proposition, can you quickly explain why auctioning is underutilized today in procurement and what changes it requires operationally to steer negotiations through Crown?

Despite their proven effectiveness, eAuctions have been underutilized in procurement because they were historically seen as aggressive price-cutting tools rather than strategic negotiation enablers. eAuctions are a quite powerful tool, not a weapon. Crown changes this perception by positioning auctions as a fair and structured method to drive value rather than just cost reductions.

Operationally, companies need to shift from ad-hoc negotiations to a more systematic approach, ensuring supplier participation and clear rules for each auction. However, eAuctions are powerful tools, and like any powerful tool, they can be dangerous if not used ethically. If auctions are purely leveraged for price suppression without consideration for supplier sustainability, they can create significant risks—leading to strained relationships, supply chain instability, and even long-term value destruction for both buyers and suppliers.

The role of auctions should never be about driving prices to unsustainable levels but about creating a structured, transparent, and competitive negotiation process that benefits all parties. That’s why at Crown, we have ethical rules at its core and we implement a Code of Conduct that all participants—buyers and suppliers—must agree to before engaging in an auction. This ensures that every auction follows clear principles of fairness, transparency, and mutual value creation. By setting the right ethical foundation, we empower procurement teams to use eAuctions responsibly, ensuring that negotiations remain competitive but sustainable, data-driven but human-centric.

How do you see the enterprise tech stack in procurement evolve in the next couple of years and how does crown fit in there not only today but also in the future?

Procurement is undergoing a profound transformation, with technology playing an increasingly central role. The procurement tech stack will evolve to incorporate automation, advanced analytics, and more sophisticated negotiation tools, enabling teams to make better, faster decisions. While many procurement solutions focus on spend tracking or supplier management, they neglect the most crucial part of procurement - negotiation itself. Our goal is to ensure that negotiation is no longer treated as an informal, scattered process but as a structured, technology-driven discipline.

A key pillar of this transformation will be AI-powered decision support. At Crown, we envision AI assisting procurement teams in optimizing auction strategies, analyzing supplier behavior, and providing real-time insights that improve decision-making. However, we are firm believers that AI should serve as an enabler, not a black-box decision-maker. Procurement is about relationships, strategy, and human expertise, and AI should reinforce those strengths rather than automate them away.

This is why Crown is not just introducing eAuctions but building a structured methodology that procurement teams can trust and adopt at scale. We believe that in the future, technology will not replace negotiation—it will elevate it.

What’s your general vision for Crown’s future? What are your goals for the next 12 months and how will Crown look like in 5 years from now?

In the next 12 months, Crown aims to expand its reach by working with more enterprise clients, refining its auction methodologies, and establishing itself as a leader in procurement negotiations.

Over the next five years, Crown envisions integrating RFP AI evaluation that drives better negotiations, contract management, and spend analysis.

‍