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Formula for startup success: Find large highly fragmented industry w low NPS; vertically integrate a solution to simplify value product.
@rabois
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Passed a gas station with gas at $2.96 today.View quoted post on X
It’s truly remarkable how easily and willingly people will be manipulated.
How does a corporate card startup become a $60B AI product factory?View quoted post on X
In our first on-camera interview a decade in the making, Ramp co-CEO Eric Glyman (@eglyman) answers just that question.
Today, @tryramp is best known for its corporate cards, or maybe its marketing stunts with the likes of Kevin from ‘The Office,’ Tony Hawk and a 70-minute Broadway musical about paying bills.
But Eric says his $60B startup, NYC's most valuable, feels less like a fintech and more like a productivity company driven by one simple question: If a business spends $100 to make $200, how can Ramp improve that ratio?
Nearly 100,000 companies use Ramp today for everything from expenses to managing AI spend. But Eric says that when he zooms out to the millions who still aren't customers, Ramp feels painfully early still.
On The Upstarts Podcast, Eric shares why he’d rather run Ramp like Amazon than Google; why Ramp hires for proof of work, not credentials, from a 14-year-old intern to a 28-year-old CTO; and how being the first customer for Anthropic’s Claude Code and Cognition’s Devin led Ramp to build its own AI tools.
Plus: The real story of Paribus, his first startup with co-founder Karim Atiyeh (@karimatiyeh); what they learned at Capital One; and a warning for Instinct and Muse.
This season is presented by @Atlassian and @chargebee 🫡
CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction
01:51 What Ramp Actually Does
03:27 From Gym Charges To 1% Of U.S. Corporate Payments
05:13 Glass, Inspect And Building AI Tools For Itself
07:45 An AI Sales Assistant Before ChatGPT
09:45 How Ramp Decides What Products To Ship
11:14 First Customer For Claude Code And Cognition’s Devin
13:09 Why Ramp Wanted To Build Like Amazon, Not Google
15:42 Hiring For Proof Of Work: The 14-Year-Old Intern
18:43 A .300 Batting Average And ‘Growth Without Fear’
21:17 What Ramp’s Founders Learned At Capital One
24:00 The $1,000 Flight Refund Behind Paribus
26:34 Bots, A Cease-And-Desist, And A Lesson For Instinct And Muse
32:00 Marketing 101: Bill Pay The Musical And Kevin In A Glass Cube
36:01 Business Books And Helping People Do Their Life’s Work
39:03 How A 28-Year-Old CTO Catalyzed A Co-CEO Change
43:55 ‘Still So Early’: How Ramp’s Founders Stay Hungry
55:26 John Wooden And Why Ramp Competes Against Itself
Thanks for watching!
@rabois led our Series A in February. Today he's leading our Series B.View quoted post on X
This year: 30M+ plays a day, 40M+ mini apps made, daily users up 20x+.
We made this announcement as a mini app you can play.
link.prod.sekai.chat/lYm9lR