Eric Glyman on why Ramp chose New York, hiring for slope over intercept, and teaching money to think

like well theoretically here's this without further ado we have Eric Lyman from the RAM businessor to see you [music]

I can't believe you made a a sweater just for a ramp investor

incredible tree letting out the holidays are here should we open this up Barkley X ramp collab sweater.

I'm It's It's been a strong season and I have a feeling it's going to get a lot stronger.

And you got the yellow socks on, too.

Fantastic.

Fantastic to see you.

How many of these exist in the world?

Not Not enough. You know, I think probably Wow, look at this too. Yellow matches on fire. I don't I don't know if we can uh I don't know if we can actually light this candle. We won't we won't do it, but we won't put this out here because I mean they were even saying that we we might not be able to have a very loud speaker for our soundboard because of rules on the stock exchange. Like there are a whole bunch of rules about what you can and cannot do because like there's serious business happening.

Well, you guys have like a deep partnership. Can we ask Lynn if we can be the first show to enjoy a live like a scented candle?

A scented candle. Yes, but I would I would definitely ask for permission with this one. I would not be caught dead begging for forgiveness. No chance. No chance.

It's a How are you doing?

By the book here. I'm doing great.

I'm I'm doing great. And congratulations.

We're in We're in New York City. Remind me how ramp wound up in New York City. You're not from New York City.

It's uh Well, this is the capital of capitals.

So, you had to be here.

You know, this is uh we're Exactly. I love that that eagle [laughter]

but but uh you know, steel man this for me. of your investors might say that this is mimemetic desire to wind up in the capital of capital. Why not be the contrarian and and build a fintech company somewhere else?

Look for I remember we we our last company we had gone out west. It was YC demo day yesterday.

We went we went through there and I remember towards the end of Y Cominator we told the partners that we were going to be moving back to New York and several of them looked at us like we had a hole in our head

but we did it and

were you roommates during YC? Uh yeah, of course, you know, and those were tough times. I remember we we lived on Sand Hill Circle.

Sand Hill Circle.

All at the time, we don't cook all that well. Um we knew about Seamless and the sad part was there was only two restaurants on Seamless and so like

what are we going to do today?

What are we going to do?

It was terrible. We lost a lot of weight that that summer. It was times were tough and then at the very end we discovered Door Dash and we realized there were in fact ways. But I I remember I I had kind of liked the West Coast and Kareem said, "You can stay out here, but I'm going." I said, "Okay, we're going." Anyway, I've resolved it. You understand? The the New York is uh I feel like celebrates the entrepreneur, the person that's just trying to make make something in the world. And it's slightly I San Francisco celebrates uh uh the earnest uh hacker. We talked about this with Paul Paul Graham yesterday. And that's kind of the the YC ethos and it's like probably one of the most important archetypes in the world, right? That so much of the things and the products in our lives uh in our world is uh due to the earnest hacker. But there's another archetype that I feel like finds their way to New York, which is the earnest the earnest builder.

I So I think that glosses over a lot of what happened in the valley over the past 10 years. Um what I observed from a lot of my um peers who had gone through um that accelerator funded companies during that era was the average person they hired stayed there for about 12 months. Um it was an incredible mercenary culture. The the San Francisco and West Coast of 2015 through 2020 something we can debate kind of the year was not this like you know earnest hacker two people in a garage. It had become very very corporatized and everyone who was out there I I felt the small startups unless you were the hottest company at all points in time your engineers were getting picked off by Google by Facebook was going to the next hot company when

people were I feel like in some ways taking a portfolio approach they're like well if startups are risky why don't I work at four startups over four years that that if you just graduate like you know on regularly on time from a good college by the time you're 32 and maybe trying to buy a house. You can have done four three fouryear vests. That's a crazy thing to be like, yeah, I got some options over here vested a series A company I joined, then I jumped over to the growth stage company and I have this portfolio. It's like that's not the goal here. The goal is to go on a generational run.

So, build something that matters. And like when we came back to New York, look, I I think it was uh maybe like Bob Ross would say, a happy accident. Like when when you when you started hiring these people, we could punch way above our weight. um if you wanted to work at a very fast growing venturebacked startup seed series A there was like three um and so we were able to find extraordinary people there was there was I think this wasn't well understood but all of the large engineering companies were opening incredibly large offices in New York had done it AWS Stripe was opening their office

MongoDB

MongoDB then you had these [clears throat] these companies that were authentically built here in New York MongoDB B, data dog, all the direct to consumer companies, and you had classically people who were, you know, in touch with culture, designers, um, marketers, people in in finance. It was all kind of here. And so what happened was, as I think the West Coast was becoming a very hard place to build a genuine war,

lots of talent in New York, you had the talent, you had people who were moving to be out here, and then all that was missing was

people also wanted to live in New York. people. [laughter] It's like the it's the greatest city in the world.

It's still a meme among AI researchers like should I move to New York? Should I like get out of the hustle and bustle all of San Francisco?

Not AI researchers but engineers feels like it feels like going to Hawaii.

I'm ready for something different. Maybe I can go over there. That's awesome. I think that this was part of the secret of ramp like we set out to go into be that definitive company where if you it was a goal that in in a few years time people would say like you know you ask a friend what is like the best fintech company uh in New York or a little people would think it's you got to go to ramp that's where they like take engineering seriously they move fast in their products and we turn that into reality I think that there's lots of other great companies in New York um here uh and coming up and accelerating but uh it's great it's great we're uh something I've been realizing recently of like TBPN we've probably added like one person a month in the year or so that we've been in business and I was thinking like what a incredible luxury that is because when you're hiring at a relatively slow pace uh you have so much time to like really get to know people there's not like this pressure how like I'd be curious cuz I I don't think you've ever shared it on the show your philosophy on hiring when you're trying to deliver ramp speed, but also find and find and hire people that are going to be with the company for 5, 6, 7 years and beyond.

Yeah. I I think a lot of people who walk around the ramp office, you guys know this, the company is incredibly young. Um, you know, I think the average age is is is in the 20s and a lot of it relates to to this idea of finding people who are on a steep slope um uh versus inter like intercept. Obviously, of course, we have people who have had incredible experience and pedigree, but the question is if you play out one or two years time, um there's some people with a lot of experience who've said, "I've seen this movie before. I've learned all that I'm going to learn." Uh and you know, get a little bit better over the course of the next year. And then you have these people who graduated top of their class. Uh maybe they're 19, maybe they're 20, maybe they're in their mid20s, but they want to work, they want to learn, and they're on the steep trajectory. And we find these people who have incredible drive, have incredibly high IQs. We give them more responsibility than you'd expect. And you're patient. You wait a year and suddenly you are you are fil you're filled with people at your company who are far more talented uh than maybe you could afford to hire otherwise. uh and

if they already had the ramp logo on their resume and you were you know another another company

and you're managing teams and they're little and they've like grown incredible equity in the company which has grown even more since they've been here um and it's it's just this incredible virtuous cycle and I think that a lot of people um especially early stage companies get pushed by like their investor to say oh you should find someone who's seen this movie before I want to find someone who's been this VP whatever and like nothing wrong with that I think that can be great but it really underestimates the importance of finding people have that raw talent and looking at again slope over intercept.

Yeah, John, I interrupted you.

Oh yeah, I I just wanted to hear about uh sort of switching gears, but uh positioning around the product in the age of AI. Uh there's a campaign going on right now. Uh what what is it? Teaching money to think.

Yeah.

Right. Uh and I just thinking money and and it it makes sense. It's intelligent finance, but it it feels like it's the result of grappling with this question of like how do you bring AI to bear in the product in a way that's not uh like commoditized like every other company, but still showing some of the value. AI is this weird thing where it's becoming like overhyped and then maybe potentially like even controversial in some like is it using all the water? where people are grappling with that [laughter] and and so uh I I wanted to know how how you landed on that campaign like how you're actually like like how you're thinking about walking a perspective customer through the AI piece of the value prop from from a from a catchphrase or or a tagline down to like okay you're actually sitting down with a CFO like like what promises are you making them because you're probably not saying like yeah you're never going to touch anything ever again, right? And you have to like be somewhat realistic about that. So, how how are you working?

Get ready to enjoy PTO, buddy. [laughter]

Look, I uh I I I love this question and I think you need to start at the root of where this comes from.

Sure.

At the when the company first launched, we had this idea of time is money. You should save both.

I love it. I say it every day. Every day as soon as, you know, [laughter]

it's becoming my mantra. I say it every day.

Every day. Wake up in the morning, look in the mirror money. Save both bill paying a whole lot more all over the place. Here

it is. Uh, and by the way, you know, um, for any CFOs out there or financial professionals who haven't yet adopted RAMP, you know, give your CFO or the controller the, you know, uh, the wonderful gift of RAM, help them save 5%. [laughter]

But you still, you still push so hard on sales all the time. All the time you're like, uh, like, oh, this company is interested in RAM. They're like, "It introduce them to me and you'll jump on the phone like in the next 24 hours."

Well, there's nothing better than than actually feeling it your your yourself going through the sale, helping someone get through and and it helps you understand the experience and stay sharp. But the the the question is really good. So, if you if you think about the actual brand and the value props that we offer is fairly timeless in a sea of, you know, uh ecosystem of credit card companies trying to get you to spend more, we want you to spend less. And we think this is timeless. or the opposite would be like a new video model

and it also shows for the state of the art for 4 weeks and it's like it's just a very it's it's like selling a very different product.

It's selling things versus value and and and to be very specific about it like if you and Jeff Bezos has talked about this in in in another context. It's it's it's some people ask what's going to change over the next 10 years. It's more interesting to ask what will not, right? And in 10 years from now uh or a hundred years from now, it is very clear that people will always want to get more for less, for fewer dollars, for fewer hours. There's no way that's ever going to change. And if you think about kind of the central promise of ramp is going to help you spend less. Um you know, you think about you could sell thinking or you could sell thinking thinking money. We can help you spend that might change. But if you have intelligence introduced to some end goal which is the intelligence is going to help you uh prevent spend that is out of policy that you don't want to occur once it's spent to actually tag and account for it and then afterwards help you make sure that the next month you know more dollars go to productive uses as being really good and really timeless and so thinking money might be a way of saying it uh in the modern era we're going to apply thinking to drive an outcome your company but leaner but it's the same

money starts to go I don't know if I want to spend myself over there. [laughter] Yeah, maybe not. I'm not not I might just chill in this treasury account. It's this timeless idea there, guys.

We we we need you to ring the gong because I there is a milestone uh which is that when we started the show, I was laughing about the, you know, we want to go to war on the paper receipt on big paper. And I actually found a company that uh that and I was like I was like, is are paper receipt companies a thing? Are they still big? Turns out there was one that was worth like $22 billion. I believe when we started working with you, you were below that. Now you've now you've eclipsed it and I think it's a sign of good things to come. Good omens and the death of the paper receipt.

Death of the paper receipt.

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show, stopping by. Great to see you. Thank you. Have a great day.

And [snorts] uh we will what a what a moment too because I I think if if you guys hadn't bet on us last uh Q4 of last year, I don't think we'd be sitting here today with with the TVN logo all over the NY. So thank you to the whole team.

We're we feel like the lucky ones. Thank you and congratulations again.

Thank you. Thank you.

Love you dude.

We will talk to you soon. Uh we will also talk to you about Turbo Puffer Serverless vector and full text search built from first principles on object storage. fast, 10x cheaper, and extremely scalable. I'll also tell you about Privy. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rail, securely spin up white label wallets, sign transactions, and integrate onchain infrastructure all through one simple API. Cheers. We got our red. We're going a fun show.

Oh.

Next up, we have John Zto, co-president of Apollo. Apollo

a fledgling asset manager with 900 900 $900

$900 900 900 billion $9,000

900 million

900 million

900 million

or is it 900 billion

it is 900 billion is 900 [laughter] billion

900 billion he's going to answer some hard questions what is private equity what is private credit what is asset management what what are alternative assets the I like I like the traditional assets the alternative ones that scare

[laughter]

I like

Let's bring him in. Let's bring him in. Yeah, we're ready. He's put on He's put on a microphone.

He's getting miked up.

But, uh, in the meantime, we'll tell you about Figma. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. And I'll also tell you about graphite.dev code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. John Zto is getting miked up. He's coming in. Um, I should also mention that today I am wearing a watch that I purchased on getbzzle.com. You can shop over 26,000 luxury watches, fully authenticated inhouse by Bezel's team of experts.