Ecommerce brands built their marketing stacks when the goal was simply to send email and text at scale – but those legacy systems now extract 50-75% more in fees than AI-native alternatives while delivering the same rules-based, one-size-fits-all experiences that consumers increasingly tune out. The economics are broken: brands pay more, customers receive less, and no incumbent has yet built a single platform that connects identity recognition, product intelligence, creative intelligence, CRM, and advertising into one unified commerce layer. Queen One, the Brooklyn-based company founded by ex-Wunderkind executives Ryan Urban and Maricor Resente, who together generated more than $35B in attributed revenue for client, built exactly that: the industry’s first fully AI-governed Commerce CRM, powered by 30+ competing AI models that create individualized streams for every consumer rather than the segmented rules and journeys brands hate building and customers hate receiving. In just over a year since its first institutional round, the company signed more than 300 launch partners, grew to 140+ employees, and opened its 30,000-square-foot Rise and Fly Vision Centre headquarters in Williamsburg.
AlleyWatch sat down with Queen One CEO and Founder Ryan Urban and COO and Founder Maricor Resente to learn more about the business, its future plans, and recent funding round, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
We raised $25 million in new funding from Mercury Fund, Full In, Connecticut Innovations, CP Overture, Charge Ventures, Inspired Capital, and existing investors. This brings Queen One’s total funding and performance-based incentives to more than $37.5 million.
It’s our Series 88X — we’re here for infinity and beyond. Our investors are going to get an 88x return, and they’re also in it to win it for the long run.
Tell us about the product or service that Queen One offers.
Queen One has built a powerful brand technology that brings life, energy, and revenue to websites and communication portals.
We’re setting out to organize not just every brand, but every product, SKU, and good in the history of the world. For each of these trillion-plus goods, we’ll tell hundreds of stories — the story, the energy, the intent, and the utility behind every product ever made.
How has the business changed since we last spoke last summer?
Rise and Fly.
When we last spoke, we were introducing the market to Queen One and the need for a new era of commerce. Since then, we’ve launched the industry’s first fully AI-governed Commerce CRM, signed more than 300 launch partners, grown to 140+ employees, and opened our 30,000-square-foot Rise and Fly Vision Centre in Williamsburg.
We’ve also expanded the vision considerably. Queen One is the AI infrastructure for commerce — connecting recognition, product intelligence, creative intelligence, CRM, advertising, and the consumer experience, all within one platform.
What was the funding process like?
The funding process is like dating.
Most people try to do the funding process with this spray-and-pray mentality: I’ve got to talk to 100 people, 200 people, 300 people. That’s not actually how it works.
At the end of the day, when you’re a founder, you want to work with people you know you have chemistry with and who are going to build with you for a really long time. And you can’t do that with a number. You have to do that with intuition and feeling and the right feeling of partnership.
The investors that actually decided to invest in us knew within the first 20 minutes of the conversation.
It’s like when you go on a date. You already know if you’re going to go on a second date with that person. You know if you have chemistry — it’s the same thing with investors because, at the end of the day, these are just people who are going to help you build your company.
The reality is, you have to know who people are when things get rough. And you need to know who they are in the beginning. You have to show your crazy early. That’s the investment.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Last year we raised capital on our vision for commerce – future tense.
This year we raised on the value of our product – past tense.
We had the discipline not to raise in 2026 until Queen One’s product was at One. Queen Won. We had to have a winning product that proudly delivered beauty and performance. The brand experience had to be so good that email revenue was up at least 50% while reducing costs by at least 50%.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?,
Easy. Honestly, it’s the size of our vision and the aggressiveness of how we want to take over the market.
A lot of our investors basically said, “I’ve been waiting for somebody to build a company like this.”
And then everybody came to us from a slightly different place.
Half of our investors spend so much time in commerce. Some of our investors know us really, really well. Others are highly, highly inquisitive and really understand deal flow. And then you have investors who are just looking for super, super hungry people.
It’s a different vibe for everybody. But I think ultimately it comes back to the same thing: the size of what we want to build and how hungry we are to go build it.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
We have to build our commercial team.
We also have to make strategic acquisitions. We want to bring the right companies, technology, customers, and teams into Queen One and then prove that we can operate them together.
And then we need to raise our next round.
Those are the real milestones: build the commercial machine, onboard strategic partners, make strategic acquisitions, have four to six months of combined operations, and get ourselves ready to raise the next round.
What advice can you offer companies in New York that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Don’t die.
That’s really it.
At the end of the day, starting a company — whether you’re funded or you’re not funded — is all a game of perseverance.
Fundraising is a full-time job. Building a company is a full-time job. You just have to make sure you don’t die until you can raise your next round or you’re funded by your customers.
Most people just give up when things get hard. Be persistent.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
Dominance.
We delivered beauty and performance. There’s a massive top line revenue gap between our platform and ancient incumbents like Salesforce, SAP, Adobe, Klaviyo, Listrak, and Attentive.
Near term, it’s about taking significant market share from legacy CRM, scaling our commercial organization, making sure all 200 million brands in the world know that Queen One is here.
The SaaS Apocalypse is here, and Queen One is the grim reaper for Martech.
What’s your favorite summer destination in and around the city?
Honestly? The Queen One Rise and Fly Vision Centre.
It is the destination. Right on the water in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with views of Manhattan.
It’s the best place to work, and it’s become the place where we bring together our team, customers, partners, investors, and friends. We’re constantly hosting events and bringing people into the Queen One world.
So, yes, I’m biased. But the Vision Centre is my answer.
