Eric Glyman on Ramp's government pitch: the US has 4.5M federal credit cards for 2M employees and 80,000 casino charges

you get back to on a million meetings and panels. See you guys later. Yeah, we'll see you later. And let's bring in Eric from RAMP. Welcome to the stream. Let's hear for Eric Limon. Uh is has has your panel already happened or is it coming up? It happened this morning. It happened this morning. It was a ton of fun.

We were we were locked into the stream. Um but uh give us the over was fired up. Yeah. Give us give us the high level. Uh what what is the pitch and uh how did it go? It was fantastic.

Look, I I think um for private companies, startups, whatever it is, for a lot of years, getting more from every dollar spent is just obvious, right? You know, a dollar saved is not a dollar earned. The average American business has an 8 and a half% profit margin. So, a dollar saved is 12 earned. Yep.

You know, um the government is thinking about this. Of course, there's a lot of tax dollars in, but the deficit is growing every year.

And so whether it's Doge and the folks there or other parts of the government, everyone is starting to think about um how can we start to apply modern tools to drive savings and in many ways ramp is at the forefront of it.

Um uh a lot of the payment systems that are used by the government from the treasury which doesn't require um at least in the past who was sending the payment, why did we send it, what was the purpose and additional payment? Now they're starting to get put in to on credit cards.

They're still using old antiquated designs where you have one system for cards. Yep. But your actual expense policy doesn't drive how these cards behave. And so there's people who are able to go and use cards for purposes that are not really advancing taxpayer interest.

And so we we talked about this um both, you know, at a high level. So Senator Joanie Erns talked about how she um she's approaching it, how the Doge team is approaching this.

Um uh and then Keith and and I shared a little bit from the RAM context how how we is there a story that you're particularly drawing from of a more recent tech company selling into the government that's not in the defense tech obviously we all know the SpaceX Palunteer and all stories but uh at a certain point Microsoft must have said hey we're going to try and sell Windows into the government or we're going to try and sell Outlook or Excel into the government uh but that's a long time ago it's a huge company are there other uh companies that aren't maybe government first but have developed best-in-class government sales functions that you look to or or as like interesting anecdotes.

Are there other case studies that you've uh heard about that are interesting? Is there anyone out there? It's I mean I I I just think um I mean a couple things I I don't think people realize the scale of how large the US government is. Yeah. Between federal, state, local education. Yeah.

Um, one of the most mind-blowing stats that I learned is one in six Americans who work work for the US government. That's wild. It is huge.

And I think at some scale, if you want to go and and be a, you know, a scale technology provider, financial service provider, healthcare provider, you're going to work with the government. I just think so.

And and so one of the openers this morning um was a secretary of the interior, Doug Berg um who um you know he had started an an accounting software um uh company called um Great Plains. He sold it to Microsoft and I think Microsoft is a great example of it. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Um that's probably the best example that I can in terms of a government and and interestingly they're one of the big tech companies that never really blinked in their support of the government when there was that era in 2015 2014 where a lot of the tech companies were saying hey maybe we want to stay away from the US government for a variety of reasons.

So it's good to see that there's like a resurgence here. uh in terms of like technically or not even technically but just like the sales process uh is that wildly different than a normal sales process or is it somewhat like just selling to a Fortune 500 company?

I look at it I mean not not to not to interrupt but I think that the dynamic if you're if you're a uh scaled up you know fintech company and you plan to be in business in 50 years like you said you know you're going to be working with the government at some point.

So, it's more about figuring out the right ways to do it early on and also not being, you know, understanding like always having urgency because I think that every American can get behind um can get behind efficiency, right? It it it became political over the last, you know, 90 days due to Doge and stuff like that.

And like you said, one out one out of every six people works uh in some way for the government, then obviously that's going to get political.

But when I when I look at it, you know, it's just about how do you uh defense uh if you're if you're dual use or you're you know, primarily serving the private market uh or private companies.

It uh you can you can think I feel like a lot more long term versus the defense, you know, defense tech companies that are here and they're like if I don't get the government this year, I'm done, you know?

And so I think like having that I'm sure that sort of like long-term thinking around partnership with the government has driven a lot of your decision making. Oh for sure. I mean look it's um I mean maybe a couple things.

I mean first I I I actually just think there's like a very I I think some of the story of technology I I I think about you know Steve Jobs's old famous quote of you know a computer is almost like a bicycle for the mind. It allows you to go faster, do more, think at an accelerated rate, and ultimately achieve more.

Um, and so I I think it's not well, it's it's great that people are trying to modernize defense. I think that there's a lot of people doing many types of great work. You know, departments of veteran affairs, departments of of of whether it's like its education, interior, there there's people doing important work.

And I I think one of the examples that often I I think just makes clear and connects with people is you know there are um I think about a million um uh folks serving in in in armed services and they're doing expense reports too.

Y um and you take you know some of America's most courageous you people who were who were serving sacrificing a lot to do this and then you say you know what I'm going to make you do hours of expense report on a nuclear submarine for years and I was like what was that like you know and he was like a lot of paperwork lot of paperwork I was like I can't believe you're you're 30,000 leagues under the sea doing paperwork but he was like yeah that was my don't get me wrong like it's like you should explain why but it's like actually like it would be great if a lot more of the work was to, you know, defending the country, um, going in in the VA, serving our veterans, whatever it may be.

So, I think that there's like a a human and moral side to it. Um, but but to the other question you asked of working with the government, in some ways, it's this was all like pretty organic. I mean, there was a tweet um uh put out I think in February um that you know I I think there was 4.

7 million credit cards issued for um I I think there's about half the number of federal employees and people were wondering where are all these extra cards and so a lot of cards were turned off and and at the time um you know we reached out to someone who was a former customer um put us in touch and so it's early we're involved in the same process as as everyone and I think you you know, no matter who does it, I I I just think that the way I would almost describe it is people would find it ludicrous if our air force was flying with propeller planes in a jet age.

And yet that's kind of what's happening with with the tools we use to, you know, make expenses, do our accounting, um, make sure add a stationation is clear.

These are old disperate systems that you know I I think private industry has has has adopted tools like ramp lead in the forefront of it's integrated your expense policy drives what you can buy it does your expense report your accounting and so however it goes I just think countries be a lot better off using modern technology yeah I mean the the the thing that I thought was fascinating is they couldn't actually turn extra cards fully off it was a dollar a dollar limit which is like system Even speaking of that, like you know, you'd think, okay, let's go and turn a limit, you know, to zero or $1 or whatever it may be.

I've heard stories of individual people because of the way the portal was designed spent 4 days going one by one job. It's not as because no one has done something like this, but it's like when when you look into um these things that you think should be trivial are very hard when you have old systems like this. Yeah.

It's amazing. Well, we'll let you go and we'll bring in co-founder to dig deeper into the bowels of the financial system. Uh, welcome to the