Eric Glyman’s Post

It’s day 1905 at Ramp. Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Ramp Travel, a new solution designed to make booking travel and managing travel expenses more intuitive, low-cost, and streamlined. Today, 1 in 5 (20%) dollars spent on Ramp cards go towards flights, hotels, and other trip-related entertainment - double the 10% of just a few years ago. Companies are hungry for travel as a means of uncovering new growth, but are hamstrung by outdated, expensive tools that employees hate, or consumer booking sites that might be cheaper and easier to use, but lack controls to enforce travel policies. Either way, hours are wasted at the end each month on manual expense reports and cumbersome reconciliations. But, these tradeoffs don’t need to exist. Companies deserve total control over their travel spend without being saddled with fees. And their employees deserve a delightful booking experience without the additional work. We’re excited to deliver on this vision with Ramp Travel.  Our mission has always been to help companies spend less money and time, and this launch is a significant step towards that goal. Employees can book flights and hotels directly through Ramp, with real-time visibility into what’s in-policy and dynamically adjusted rates based on travel destinations. On the trip, Ramp AI handles the rest. On the ground, the quality of life improvement for employees is substantial. Receipts are automatically assigned to trips, and all expenses are seamlessly integrated into our platform. Put more simply, on other platforms, you have to do your expenses as you go (or 1-3 months later); on Ramp, your expenses do themselves. As the saying goes, “your margin is our opportunity.” We are not a travel company and aren’t in this to take price, we’re a savings company and are in this to deliver value, control, and a better experience for the customers we serve. Our new partnership with Priceline allows us to offer our customers access to a global selection of inventory from major airline partners and hotel affiliates at competitive rates, while maintaining the high level of control and visibility that Ramp is known for. Rather than ratcheting up the price through hidden fees, all savings are passed directly to our customers. We’re excited to see how Ramp Travel helps businesses streamline their travel processes, save money, and enhance the overall travel experience for their employees. As always, we love feedback, so try it out and let us know what you think.

On the time Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston tore me a new one and changed the future org structure of Ramp: At YC, we attended weekly office hours where every startup shared 1/ their weekly growth %, 2/ their biggest problem, and 3/ what they were doing to solve it. That week in summer 2015 our startup Paribus had grown 20% w/w, our biggest problem was that we were getting too many customer support tickets, and our proposed solution was to hire a customer support person (as the third hire at a then two-person startup). Jessica pointed out that if our solution was to hire someone to deal with customer issues, then next week when we grew more we’d have to hire another person, then another, and so on. Her point was that the real solution isn’t solving tickets, it’s listening to customers and building a better product so customers never need to write in the first place. She told us how Brian Chesky of Airbnb, an icon even then, would still walk around wearing a Jawbone headset so he could personally take support calls, hear customer feedback and deal with problems immediately. She (kindly and graciously) schooled us in front of the group, and it was one of the best learning moments I’ve had as a founder. In a sense, every customer support ticket is a privilege – someone took time out of their day to write about how to improve your product. But it’s also a failure – you could’ve saved them that time by making the product better and more intuitive in the first place. You can’t out-hire a bad product, or compensate for poor taste with a big support team. Support is not a cost to minimize, it’s a key function every company should take seriously. When you listen to customers and make your product intuitive, you get output graphs like the below – where the rate of active user growth far exceeds the rate of support tickets. To this day, almost a decade later, support reports into product at Ramp

Bloomberg: “People say you’re so nice, but don’t you need to be more ruthless?” Ramp employees: 😳 I do think being nice, treating people right, and doing simple things well is underrated. The company is succeeding because of it, not in spite of it. We’re going to double down on what worked. Come at us (if you please, and thank you)! And thank you Edward Ludlow and the Bloomberg Technology team for the welcome and great conversation! For the full segment, please see https://lnkd.in/enyzMPd7

The story of Ramp has never been told in such detail. We gave John Coogan unprecedented access for months and he really nailed it. For the full 30 min story, see: https://lnkd.in/e_PH4aAZ This project is the result of 3+ months of collaboration and 20+ interviews with employees, investors, partners, customers, and others who have seen this company from the beginning. It is truly the story of Ramp: who we are, how we got here, what we’re doing on behalf of our customers, and where we’re going. More than anything, this video is about the spirit, values, and culture that make this company great. It’s about the speed, customer-obsession, creativity, and craftsmanship that this team brings to work every day. Thank you to everyone who joined in this and made it incredibly special -- Karim, Megan, Calvin, William, Geoff, Sam, Max, Veeral, Kenneth, Keith, Liz, JJ, Dan, Delian, Michael, Packy, Lulu, Jo and so many more! This give much more context to the company's history and this week's $150M fundraise https://lnkd.in/eTwdpK8w. I am deeply grateful to our customers, partners and our team.

It’s tee time. We are thrilled to announce the players who will represent Ramp in the season’s first Major in Augusta, GA — Zach Johnson, Sepp Straka, Matthieu Pavon, Denny McCarthy, Ben An, Ryan Fox, Luke List, and Neal Shipley. Best of luck to all the players, we are rooting for you!

Ramp turns 5 today, and I want to share what we’ve learned about what it takes to build a great company. In 1827 days, this team has built one of the fastest growing startups in history and a talent dense team. More importantly, we’ve recovered over $1 billion and 10 million hours for customers, allowing their finance teams to be leaner and more strategic. The secret is this: there is no secret to building a great company. It’s a long, patient process with no shortcuts, no tricks, and often little glamor. Building a business is hard, and not in a flashy way. Once in a great while, it means sleeping on the office floor or scrubbing toilets (done both) — but the vast majority of the time it means doing simple things well. It means taking your work seriously, treating people with decency, and earnestly giving your best effort. Doing that consistently for years and years is the hard part, maybe harder than scrubbing toilets. Over two years ago I shared our growth playbook publicly (https://lnkd.in/e-6YSbxs). Despite growing headcount 3X and monthly customer purchase volume by more than 10X, it's actually remarkable to see that little else about how the Ramp team operates has changed. The things that got us to day 1000 — hiring on potential, caring about customers, focusing on data, and simply being kind — are the same things that got us to day 1827, and they’ll be the same things that get us to day 10,000. Although growth doesn’t come from hacks, it does come from habits and incentives. Our habits are to care about people and obsess over excellence, and our incentives are simple: make our customers more profitable and efficient, because we only succeed if they do. That ethos is shared by the 725 Ramplings I’m tremendously proud to call colleagues. This is one of the most talent-dense teams in tech, with a high-velocity engineering culture, a commitment to elegant design, and one of the highest performing sales operations anywhere. Across these and other teams, every role here is mission-critical; we have no second class citizens at Ramp. So how do you build a great company? One day at a time, together with great people. Thank you to our team, John Coogan for sharing more about the company's early story, and our customers for everything -- today we are celebrating you: https://ramp.com/5years, and see you on Day 1828. cc Karim, Gene, Calvin, Geoff, Diego, Nami, Colin, William, Lexi, Cristina, Aaron, Galina, Cody, Jo, Fax, Scott, Jacob, Sam, Jacob, Adele, Jen, Yunyu, Max, TK, Michael, Benjamin, Jaclyn, Sandy, Alison and many more

A subtly profound line from Jiro Dreams of Sushi stuck with the Ramp team: “To make delicious food, you must eat delicious food.” Neal Wu has the raw horsepower to make a profound impact anywhere, whether at a company like Ramp or now Cognition (Devin). But what made him extraordinary wasn't just his brilliance (3 IOI gold medals), it was his care of craft - by developing taste in sales (actually joining the team), he was able to engineer systems that actually made the sales team radically more productive. Cognition clearly showed Neal's care of craft in their product and launch https://lnkd.in/gH2m8khM; I think his approach is part of why, in a short period of time, they've done more to convincingly demonstrate what the next phase of useful AI applications will look like than any AI research giant was able to.

Today at Ramp, we’re thrilled to announce our acquisition of Venue.  Cofounders TK Kong, Young Kim, and Kevin Chan saw a need for a simplified procurement process, then set out to build it — backed by Sequoia Capital. As the Venue team joins us to continue their work with Ramp Procurement, I’m excited to share some new features that have been unlocking savings for our customers—including one who was able to reduce their request-to-approval time by 90%. - Control spend from the beginning. Collect every detail upfront, leave comments and tag your teammates, automate approval flows, integrate with Ironclad for quick and easy contract reviews, and sync your POs to your ERP automatically. - Guide your employees through their requests, every step of the way.  - Consolidate your financial stack. With cards, expense management, and procure-to-pay in one place Ramp helps you get more done with less. Ramp powers over $10B in Accounts Payable spend each year. We're excited to deliver even more with Ramp Procurement, and turn what's typically clunky and slow into a simple and delightful experience. cc Karim, Gene, Calvin, Sam, Nami, Geoff, William, Jacob, Megan, Colin, Max, Jacob, Alison, Jo, Chris, Aaron, Shivani, Edwine, Jake, Mark, Michael

As 2023 comes to a close, I want to thank you – our customers & community – for your partnership. Today, the average business on Ramp saves 5% per year on their expenses – we’re just getting started. This year, the Ramp team shipped a new feature every three days (including weekends). Every day, over 1000 new users onboard to Ramp. It’s only day 1730. This year, we launched Procurement to help finance teams deepen their control and visibility. Over 40,000,000 approval workflows have already been automated. This year, we launched Price Intelligence to help admins and employees work at superhuman speed. Over 1,300,000 zero-touch expenses have already been completed. This year, we prevented over $1.7 billion dollars in out-of-policy spend. That’s spend that can go towards growing your team, scaling your business, or rewarding your team. We hit the road. From NetSuite's Suiteworld, AFP Annual, and Intuit QuickBooks Connect, to dozens of events at our new headquarters in New York, to our pop-up coffee & donut truck in San Francisco. That’s not all. Just this year: - Teams that rely on Microsoft 365 can now approve spend requests, review transactions, automate receipts, and access AI-powered insights directly through Microsoft Copilot and Teams. - Employees using Gmail and Outlook can now work while Ramp auto-collects receipts from their inboxes - Those traveling for work can take Uber or Lyft rides and order UberEats with their expenses instantly submitted. - Admins can keep employee data in sync by linking Ramp to leading HRIS solutions like ADP. - More businesses are closing their books faster thanks to top accounting firms like PwC, Baker Tilly, and Aprio who have joined our network of partners. All while saving our customers over $600,000,000. Looking towards 2024, our mission will be the same as it’s been since day one of Ramp: Help more businesses save time and money. We are ready to go to work for you. cc Karim, Colin, William, Edwine, Geoff, Sam, Nami, Nick, Max, Michael, Jacob, Gene, Megan, Sandy, Jenny, Jacob, Abby, Michael, Galina, Lexi, Jake, Diego, Nik, Mark, Benjamin, Maddy, Kiran, Yunyu, and many more working hard on the Ramp team!