Recently we announced our latest fundraise at a new valuation of $8.1 billion, earning us the title of "octocorn" just three years after our incorporation. The journey from March 2019 to now has been fast and furious, but this milestone presented a good opportunity for our founders to take stock of how Ramp got to this point and look ahead to the company’s next act. So last week our CEO Eric Glyman and CTO Karim Atiyeh sat down for a live fireside chat with Packy McCormick (founder of the popular Not Boring newsletter, Ramp customer, and investor) to do just that.
Watch the livestream replay here for a behind-the-scenes look at how we are thinking about the future of finance and building the business, product, and team to deliver that vision. You can also read our key takeaways below.
How Ramp helps companies become better versions of themselves
“Historically, financial services companies have focused on how to optimize their margins, incentivize customers to spend more and minimize the cost of rewards. This has resulted in a lot of zero-sum thinking. Instead of trying to outsmart customers, we have focused on building products that help companies become more profitable on the other side, even if that means generating less revenue for Ramp in the short-term. To date, we’ve helped customers save $135 million and have automated 400 years of manual work. By focusing on identifying areas that drive wasted money and wasted time in business, we are able to build more enduring companies.” - Eric
Companies grow when finance teams have more time for strategic thinking
"Imagine if you were trying to make life improvements but you weren't tracking [your fitness]. You'd have to spend a lot of time guessing what you ate, what you didn't, and guess your way into better health. If you have automated tracking, you're not having to waste time thinking about that stuff. You can actually think about how to interpret those numbers and make better decisions. And it's the same thing with finance teams. They're not spending their time chasing receipts and trying to guess their way into profitability or better performance. They actually have all the tracking and analysis pre-done for them. They can think strategically about the future and make better decisions." - Karim
"[We're] repairing the way that people interact with each other and actually having their time freed up so they can actually work on really valuable things, like figuring out how companies need to grow revenue, cut expenses, be more profitable—or, frankly, just go home. What we see happening is that the ratio of where people are spending their time is going from these low-value task-based items to actually much higher strategic planning." - Eric