Ramp’s next chapter: Building the first finance automation platform that saves you time and money

Today I’m excited to announce Ramp closed a $300 million Series C funding round. My deepest thanks to our customers, partners, and the Ramp team who made this round possible. 

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I’m grateful to Keith Rabois, Napoleon Ta, Delian Asparouhov, and the team at Founders Fund for continuing to be staunch supporters of Ramp since the very beginning and leading this round. Redpoint, Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, Coatue, Spark Capital, Stripe, Box Group, Conversion Capital and Lux Capital are also among those who deepened their investment and commitment to our vision for transforming how businesses manage their spend. We also welcomed Iconiq Capital, Altimeter Capital, Vista Public Strategies, A* Partners, Definition Capital, Honeycomb, Flexport, Lachy Groom Fund, Olive Tree, and Kinetic to the team. 

The raise isn’t the news here

The raise is an important validation of our growth—but it’s not the main news. 

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The real headline is that we’re building finance automation that will help companies save even more time and money than we’ve done to date. When I think about how much time finance teams still waste chasing receipts and expense reports, it’s mind-boggling. Finance operation tools are clearly overdue for a shake-up, something that legacy financial companies have failed to address for decades. 

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In contrast, Ramp has only been in business for 890 days but during that time we’ve built a corporate card and financial software that is actively saving businesses money. Today, I’m proud to say we’re serving fast-growing startups and established businesses across every sector, from healthcare to construction, education, and tech. Customers are saving 3.3% on average when they switch to Ramp, thanks to our savings insights and real-time spend reporting. This is tangible money saved that customers are reinvesting into activities that actually grow their business. 

Broken processes still cost businesses too much time and money  

While we’ve made great strides in reducing wasted spend, there’s so much more we can do to rescue businesses from the painful processes that they use every day. From my conversations with customers, we consistently hear the need for better-designed, easy-to-use software that frees people from the traps of busywork. Travel booking, invoice processing, contract negotiations—those aren’t the reasons why you started a company, yet they’re the kind of mundane tasks that cost you and your team countless hours and resources.  

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Software purchasing is especially rife with inefficiencies. Zombie subscriptions, underused resources, and redundant software eat up your budget. What’s even more outrageous is how often you’re overpaying for solutions due to opaque pricing and one-sided negotiations, particularly for big-ticket items. As consumers, we would never settle for these sorts of practices. As businesses, why do we allow vendors to waste our time and money? It’s time to rethink how we buy software and bring more transparency into the process.

Ramp is building finance automation to save you time and money

At Ramp, we believe the solution to these broken processes is not the points-based rewards cards offered by so many legacy institutions and newer startups. Nor is it a siloed workflow tool or a new banking stack. These are fundamentally incomplete solutions. 

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Rather, a complete solution is a finance automation platform that does three things in tandem for you: eliminate busywork, identify savings opportunities, and actively secure those savings for you. This last piece is critical—most companies don’t go far enough to help businesses actually realize savings.  

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Imagine if your team could do all of the following on a single platform:  

• Control: Digitize expense policies to eliminate out-of-policy spending and combat fraud
• Spend: Use corporate cards with embedded controls that actively save as you spend
• Benchmark: See how your spend compares against the industry and automatically detect savings opportunities 
• Save: Maximize the value of your procurement by using built-in negotiations services to get the best rates available 
• Close: Automate expense reporting and accounting via machine learning on your chart of accounts 

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This is the finance automation platform that we’re building at Ramp. With Ramp, you’ll get corporate cards and payments with built-in expense and accounting automation software, all in one beautifully designed, easy-to-use, and free solution.  

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Accelerating our roadmap

Karim, Gene, and I started Ramp two and a half years ago with a singular goal to help companies spend less, through corporate cards and software that offer transparent cashback and greater control. In our next phase of growth, we’ll extend beyond spend management software to build out our full vision: a finance automation platform that actively saves you more time and money so you can focus on growing your business. 

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We’re moving at light speed towards that goal with the acquisition of Buyer, a negotiation-as-a-service platform that saves its clients an average of 27.3% on large purchases such as annual software contracts. It is an exceptional team and service—we are thrilled to have them join the Ramp team.

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Soon Ramp will be able to go beyond simply identifying savings opportunities and actively secure those savings for you. Up to now, we’ve provided savings insights based on your past transactions but now we’ll be able to proactively save you money before you spend. We’ll help you get the best price on everything from travel to software, using benchmark data derived from the millions of transactions on Ramp while sparing you from the tedious back-and-forth with vendors. In doing so, we’ll bring greater transparency and efficiency to B2B payments. No other company is offering this unique combination of pricing intelligence and service. 

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Helping give businesses their time and money back is our mission. It’s how we’ll help you and your company focus on your mission.

Tomorrow is day 891 for Ramp

I’m incredibly proud of how much we’ve accomplished since day 0 of Ramp. I’m also keenly aware of how much further we have to go to transform the way companies manage and spend their money. With our new funding, our team will be accelerating our pace of innovation. 

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To our customers, thank you for choosing and using Ramp. Keep sending us your feedback. If Ramp has helped you find value, please share the word. 

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To business leaders who want to combat wasted productivity and spend, I invite you to give Ramp a try. 

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To operators who are looking to build the financial automation platform of the future, join us—we’re hiring. 

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And to all other financial companies in the space, let’s push the envelope and build financial innovation that truly helps businesses grow faster.