Ramp hits $16B valuation at 2,283 days — CEO Eric Glyman on AI-driven growth and the 98% of businesses not yet on Ramp

Congratulations, Jordy. Get that mallet ready. I got a gong head coming up. The news. What happened today? Tell us. $2,283 and we're at $16 billion valuation. I've been waiting to do that one. Yeah. Is that the number of days since you started the company? That is. That's how long we've been at it.

Um we have a long way to go and guys couldn't be happier to be here. So is the job finished? Job's not finished. There you go. I don't think so. That's great. Uh what what is coming up? What can we expect? Uh are are there is there a clear public roadmap?

Are I mean the the the number of features launched last year and this year is a ton. What can you tell us about the product? Look, I I I think the the world is moving faster than ever. for your the whole introduction of this segment was uh you about folks working on AGI, ASI, whatever it is. Yeah.

Um you know I I don't know how far we are along that path but I can tell you AI is definitely smart enough to do your expense reports. It can definitely do bill payment runs. It can definitely speed up accounting. And those are the kind of uh I I think real innovations and support.

We're actually bringing customers today over 40,000 businesses, you know, and so we're we're putting it deeply into the product and we can go through all that. Uh we're also using it to ship a lot faster. All of last year, we thought we moved fast. We were pretty proud that we shipped 207 features.

Uh so far in just the first five months, uh that number is over 270. So we're moving a lot faster thanks to the help. How big is the team now? Um we are uh over,00 people currently. It's remarkable. And how much has that grown over the last few years? Is that accelerating?

Because it seems like there's a narrative where like you can do more with less, but obviously you're trying to grow as fast as possible. So are you growing headcount and the amount of features you're shipping and the size of and and the footprint of the businesses that you serve as well?

It it's all growing, but certainly at different rates.

Um so first I mean the business itself um it's really unusual usually just it's like law of physics the bigger companies get gravity weighs you down you just go uh more slowly and I think the most unusual thing and you know Trey at foundersson pointed this out um in an interview with Bloomberg uh revenue growth has actually been faster uh so far in 2025 than even 2024 at much larger scale uh and so revenue growth is is picking up as well as purchase volume um the team size is growing too.

Um, but to your point, we're seeing leverage. Uh, I think around this time last year, uh, I I want to say we were somewhere, you know, 700 to 800ish, uh, folks. Uh, and so what we've grown, um, the pace of the the top line and the bottom line has grown much faster.

Uh, and and when I look at, um, you know, last couple things, developer productivity is way up.

uh over the last four months the average engineer at ramp uh is um shipping uh 50% more commits um you know in a given day uh than they were just months ago and so more productivity from developers and from you know I think the best go to market uh organization uh in the business you know look that team is growing you have teams that are extraordinarily productive and so you know at at the core we're hiring across all of them um but we are seeing these gains you're in a unique position where you interface with a huge swath of the American business community.

Uh h how do you track kind of the the general vibe or the outlook of American business leaders right now? There's a lot of uncertainty. There's geopolitical news every day on the cover of the Wall Street Journal. Um how are just everyday American businesses feeling?

I I think right now as far as the you know data shows I would say like fairly hopeful and optimistic. Um I mean back in 2022 when interest rates really spiked um I mean you would see a sudden pull back uh in terms of spending um we put these out regularly. It's it's now monthly reports. If you go to ramp.

com/data you can see our benchmarks across industries and verticals. I think the biggest warning sign is spend on advertising is starting to slow down as well as some spend on recruitment. Um computers, things that are usually some leading indicators about how bullish companies are.

Um but if you look month by month, companies are tending to actually spend more and so still optimistic.

But I I I think that the other big thing that's really top of mind for folks and and and we take really seriously is almost where you started um uh where I think every certainly the valley companies are being asked by their boards what are you doing about AI but you know this is true of of of small businesses of of old school enterprises you name it and I I think that for most of the 40,000 businesses we serve um they don't have a single software engineer uh let alone an engineer working just for their finance teams.

And so, you know, it's a big part of why we spend over half of our our payroll ultimately, uh, just on research and development, which is an extremely high ratio. Um, we want to be these organizations finance teams, these these engineers for these finance teams.

So, um, uh, those are the main things that we hear about that we see. Yeah, it's interesting like there's there's like new headlines every day and yet the market has been kind of just kangarooing around, jumping up and down.

And I think it reflects that kind of like there's some uncertainty but still enough optimism in the system that we're not seeing like a full full pullback. Yeah. I mean there's there's so much broader geopolitical uncertainty it's hard to make super big long-term strategic decisions of should we grow headcount 10%.

Should we should we've been there's been a number of like of like almost false starts where it's been like oh we're going into a radically different tariff regime and then it's like a tariffs actually kind of rolled back. It's like, oh, there's like this narrative.

And then, so if you're actually planning, like by the time you have the all the staff meetings to plan for the thing, it's like kind of over and then you're kind of just back to business as normal. So, you got to chop wood.

Um, how how do you how do you continue to build uh build in this sort of um general like how do you how do you continue to have this mindset of being day one, right? The growth is just absolutely insane.

I think uh you're in a position right now that that every CEO when they go raise their first dollar of venture capital, they they want they they they imagine this, you know, playbook where a couple thousand days in, they're a multi-billion dollar company, but it it rarely happens.

What's you know, what what kind of wisdom do you do you look to in terms of, you know, continuing to just motivate the team day in and day out? We're having Saquon on the show uh later, which we're excited to talk to him about kind of that that championship mindset.

But um what what what do you kind of draw on to to keep that drive high? You know, I I uh you know, John, I'm I'm happy that you you posted this earlier. You know, for me, this this creates a lot of emotion. You you you mentioned it straight away. Look, um we did hit this $16 billion valuation.

Uh it really should be a day of celebration, but you know, I'm I'm sad, too. I'm I'm thinking about the 98% of businesses that, you know, are not on ramp um that are uh losing time, that are losing money, um are still experiencing that worst hour of their month doing expenses the old way.

And you know, there there's just no need for it. And so I I think um you know, there's an element of of just uh you know, trying to solve a problem and make the world a better place is uh what gets us up and out of bed in the morning. I I'd also say, look, I'm I'm happy you're you're interviewing Saquon.

He is he is an inspiration and a motivation I think to to a lot of us. And it's not just that he's he's great at what he does. I think there's lots of uh folks who who are extremely talented.

Um I I think you know time and time again his focus on uh you know whether it's letting the young guys eat um you know uh uplifting others, bringing folks who should have been in the parade lifting them over the gates to bring them in.

Uh I think the the drive that he has of uh seeing others on the team win is really motivating. I mean, there's a lot of folks who I think RAM famously hires um you know, freshman interns, dropouts, uh folks early in their career and take a bet on them.

And for me, um seeing folks come in uh succeed, um get great at their craft and build teams in the space to do that is is uh on a more serious note, very genuinely motivating. And so those are the things. Yeah.

Keith Boy talks about that idea of like if you're not if you don't have something burning in your belly to go build and like become a founder like you should go work for a company uh that's that's scaling has product market fit is going to be high growth but set you up for success if you're yeah learn what excellent looks like what greatness really is and what good management looks like make the transition from individual contributor to manager or back or something like that and like you can tell that he's talking about ramp obviously he's like basically like go work at ramp Um yeah talk I mean I I think it'd be the the thing that I think would be most interesting is like talk about the scale the scale of your ambition right I think it's helpful to think about it okay 2% of the businesses in in the US are running on ramp that's great we obviously want to get the other 98% we're we we work on it here every we're going to do that we're going to get 100% of the business on ramp but then the real challenge starts because then we have to encourage entrepreneurship to create new businesses to create new ramp customers exactly That's the real long-term goal.

The second I mean the second lover. But on a serious my question about the 98% is like how many of them just aren't doing any expense reporting at at all and are just like yeah I have a credit card and I don't know how much people spend versus paper receipts versus other solutions.

Do you have an idea of like the pie chart of what American like there's millions of businesses like what is the most common like you know um alternative that's currently in place. Yeah. No, and I'm happy you pointed this out.

I mean, the the one and a half% we think is by volume of corporate and small business card transactions. Um, by businesses, there's it's probably closer to 99%. Um, so there's about 3 and a half million uh to four million B businesses that have five or more employees.

And so typically at this point you're you're employing others. You're you're keeping some book and books and records hopefully paying taxes um and um you know keeping those records and and so you know when we look at that 40,000 is a lot but it's it's tiny. It's it's not yet one and a half%.

There's about 30 million businesses. Um a lot of those are LLC's maybe with a single employee or no no employees. And so the number is much starker. And I and just to drive this home, you know, guys, like it is 1 and a half% if we just look at card volume, but it it turns out there's other ways to pay for things.

Um you know, there's a um check wires. Um we we also shared for the first time uh the volume uh on uh non-card purchases has exceeded card volumes ultimately on ramp. And so we're just getting going. I think our market share is closer to 0% and one on that.

uh and I've you know it's also been brought to our attention there are there are more countries than just the US too and so you know there there's there there's just a huge amount of of scale this opportunity and and I think um honestly like uh you know I it may be a bit injust but I think I think you're actually right John like most businesses uh never get off the ground uh if they do I think one in eight fail in a given year um and uh most businesses are operating on really slim margins uh and if you actually go and you know uh you can increase uh when you look at the average American business um the eight and a half% profit margin uh mathematically uh if you can either um you know a penny save is not a penny earned um you know a dollar of savings is actually worth 12 a.

5 earned uh on the top line and so if you can actually go and you know add percentage points to the bottom line I think not only will a lot more businesses is make it and live to fight another day.

But I I think that a lot of folks who have huge talents but you know don't have specialization in finance um don't have expertise in this field if you can go and actually just get this out of a box through software or just build a business that you're passionate about I think the world gets a lot more interesting and so I actually think it's a very real point that you're you're bringing up.

Yeah, it's crazy how how like I don't know like culturally you can change the mindset of every employee.

Like I mean our producer like will send requests to us on ramp for like individual pieces of equipment he's buying and and and that is like incredibly fine grain but it makes sure that we're not like spending too much on on random stuff.

Uh and and and that that type of like you know every penny matters culture is something that like ramp makes it easy to actually like enforce that in a way that's not very cumbersome but you can still instill that that that uh that like behavior which I think is really really valuable.

Well, I have some breaking news here. Uh a Jeb Bush post just in the timeline. The silence this morning was deafening, but he came out and said, "Ranch Ramp reached a$16 billion valuation. Ramp isn't just a tech story. Businesses across the US are saving billions of dollars because of their technology.

Eric and Kareem are making our economy stronger and I thank them for it. This is American innovation at work. So, let's give it up for Bush and the whole RAM team. Um, it is he's been he's been a backer for like years now, right? Yeah. Yeah. He got in early early and right, you know. So, fantastic.

I I have to give a a shout out to the governor, too. I mean, unironically, like I have to say there's a lot of uh investors, venture capitalists, angels listening to this podcast. And by the way, you're you're totally right. This is the best place to come to. I I I learn a lot.

But, uh look, I I have to say that that the governor actually exhibits, I think, everything you would hope for an investor. um you reach out to him. He's uh he's responsive. He helps close new business. Um great. He helps encourage more people to join. When you have great news, he shares it. Uh he's there.

I wish everyone, you know, approach investing the way the the governor did. Everybody can learn a little about being a helpful VC from Jebush Bush. We love it. So, it's amazing. Well, thank you so much for stopping by. I'm sure you got a busy Congratulations on on the milestone.

It is it's an honor to to watch you and the team work. Uh, and we uh, you know, couldn't couldn't be more excited to cover the next decade of ramp domination. So, hit it again. Hit it again, John. And then we'll let There we go. Congratulations. Thank you for coming on, Eric. Uh, enjoy the day.

Um, I know it is just day one. Cheers. We'll talk to you soon. Cheers. Bye. Later. Bye. Another air horn on an absolute tear. Another absolute tear.

Uh, this was an interesting post I saw from modem introducing the dream recorder, the magical bedside open open- source device that plays your dreams back as cinematic reels.

So, it will I I don't know how it does this if you wear a headband and it tries to read your brain waves or if it's just like listening to you talk in your sleep. I I don't know. We were discussing with the with some friends about like whether or not people dream. There's like a new It's like the new internal monologue.

Are you like a no