{"id":109415,"title":"SpaceFlow: AI-native procurement services for the physical economy","tagline":"An extension of your team handling sourcing, planning and contracting. ","body":"**TL;DR:** SpaceFlow is an AI-native procurement services company for businesses that make, move and serve physical goods. We help procurement teams bring more spend under management, execute source-to-contract work and turn identified savings into realized savings without adding headcount or replacing existing systems.\n\n\u003chttps://youtu.be/lS9pBj_LeV8\u003e\n\n### The problem\n\nProcurement must absorb changing demand, supplier issues, and growing volume without increasing cost or risking continuity. Every existing option fails on the same axis:\n\n* **Internal teams:** expertise and judgment, fixed capacity. It takes years to build and when someone leaves, the tacit knowledge that keeps operations running is lost.\n* **SaaS:** automation and visibility without execution. The customer still staffs the operation, supervises it, handles exceptions, and owns the result.\n* **Outsourcing:** capacity, expertise, and accountability, permanently labor-linked. More volume, suppliers, and locations require more service-delivery headcount.\n\nThe unmet need is operating capacity that **takes responsibility for completing the work** while becoming faster, more consistent, and more profitable as volume grows.\n\n## The insight\n\n* **Software can recommend actions; it cannot assume commercial authority.** The customer keeps execution, exceptions, and supplier outcomes. Whoever owns the exceptions owns the expertise, and expertise is the entire product in procurement.\n* **Incumbents cannot follow.** Consulting and outsourcing firms store process knowledge in employees and grow revenue through staff hours. Automation directly cannibalizes that model.\n* **The economics are breakable.** Traditional services sit below software economics: Accenture at Rule-of-22.6, Genpact at 24.1. An AI-native operator can reach **Rule-of-60**.\n\n## What we built\n\n**The proprietary platform SpaceFlow uses to operate procurement for customers.**\n\n* A **process-mapping engine** converts interviews, SOPs, approval rules, and existing system configurations into executable workflows. A supply-chain consultancy estimates it cuts customer launch from **26 months to 4**, a 6.5x jump in deployment capacity.\n* It **executes procurement end to end**, from demand and production planning through sourcing, contracting, purchase orders, exception resolution, and reconciliation, across the customer's own systems.\n* Operating across companies in the same vertical turns cross-company experience into **proprietary process and supplier intelligence**, while pooled demand creates **group-purchasing power**: better execution, prices, resilience, and terms for every customer.\n* The same platform **monitors service levels, resolves exceptions, and remains accountable** for completing the operation. Per-action autonomy limits, approval queues, and an immutable audit log make every task provable.\n\n## Proof so far\n\n* **Live:** $400M a year of supplier spend under management, zero systems migrated. Multiple six figure contracts signed.\n* **Demand for delegation:** our first customer cancelled 3 planned procurement hires, the CSCO invested his own money, and two chains are signing to progressively outsource purchasing, one planning a procurement team 90% smaller by 2027.\n* **Results:** 3x faster RFQ cycles, off-contract spend down 42% at one customer, $120K a year saved at another.\n\n## Where this goes\n\nSpaceFlow will replace legacy service providers across the physical economy. Traditional service firms grow by hiring; SpaceFlow grows output faster than headcount, targeting **$1B in revenue with headcount capped at 100**. \n\n## What's in it for you?\n\n1. **You run a physical-goods company with $100M+ supplier spend:** send us 12 months of PO history and we'll map one lane and size the savings, free. [spaceflow.tech](http://spaceflow.tech) · [emre@spaceflow.tech](mailto:emre@spaceflow.tech)\n2. **You know an operator like that:** intros are gold. \n\n### **About the team:**\n\n**Emre Isik (CEO)**  studied computer engineering at the University of Cambridge and dropped the master's to build SpaceFlow full time. Before that he researched embedded AI for motor control at UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, published a machine-learning paper on reasoning with small data, and trained with Turkey's international informatics olympiad reserve team at 15. \n\n**Ali Eren Aytekin (co-founder)** left engineering at Istanbul Technical University to build SpaceFlow.  He was Microsoft Imagine Cup EMEA runner-up for a genetic-signal classifier that hit 98.3% accuracy, and co-authored the published paper on low-data reasoning. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ali-eren-aytekin-6305a41aa/) . He talked his way into an invite-only AI showcase in Istanbul, came out with a procurement problem from the CEO of a UK medical manufacturer, and shipped the solution with the team in two weeks. That deal became the learning SpaceFlow grew from.\n\n**Hakan Enes Aksu (co-founder)** left information engineering at Boğaziçi University to build SpaceFlow. He has been shipping commercial software since 16, when his Reddit ad-automation service earned $40K in revenue, and he later built a tender-matching engine that reads public tenders against a company's product catalog and sold it to a corporate customer for five figures. He scored in the top 500 out of roughly 3 million students in Turkey's national university entrance exam. [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/hakan-enes-aksu/)","slug":"SSl-spaceflow-ai-native-procurement-services-for-the-physical-economy","created_at":"2026-08-06T15:30:00.856Z","updated_at":"2026-09-19T07:05:24.525Z","total_vote_count":36,"url":"https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/SSl-spaceflow-ai-native-procurement-services-for-the-physical-economy","share_image_url":"//bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/yc-og-image-c440a0ad1dacfb86eeeb343717479cc54d256614449b4ef719977a0a451f8bc8.png","company":{"id":33311,"name":"SpaceFlow Technologies, Inc.","slug":"spaceflow-technologies-inc","url":"https://spaceflow.tech","logo":"https://bookface-images.s3.amazonaws.com/small_logos/161339dc99cea591f4bd07fbb627aaa0b7771a88.png","batch":"Summer 2026","industry":"B2B","tags":["Fintech","Logistics","Manufacturing","Supply Chain"],"search_path":"https://bookface.ycombinator.com/company/33311"}}