- Ramp, a company that developed a corporate card built to save businesses money, announced it raised $25 million in funding
Ramp is a company that developed a corporate card that was built to save businesses money. The corporate product launched publicly this week. And Ramp also revealed that it raised $25 million in funding. Keith Rabois of Founders Fund led the company’s funding and he joined the board. Coatue, BoxGroup, Conversion Capital, Soma Capital, Backend Capital, and over 50 leading startup founders also joined the funding round.
Founded by the team behind Paribus (a financial startup acquired by Capital One in 2016), Ramp is known for offering enterprise-grade corporate cards that help companies grow more and waste less. And at launch, every Ramp customer is going to be eligible for over $150,000 in partner credits ― which is the highest sign-up offer available of any card program on the market and is the most valuable cashback program available to startups.
In developing a corporate card that helps companies spend less, Ramp is delivering a differentiated approach to a market that represents $700 billion in spending every year in the U.S. Traditional cards typically incentivize companies to spend more by tying benefits and rewards to spending. But Ramp is cutting up the card industry and forming the pieces into a product that’s aligned with what’s best for customers. For example, Ramp shows businesses where their money is going and how to stop overspending based on card usage data. The Ramp card benefits include no personal guarantees, 1.5% unlimited cashback, and high limits balanced with complete spend control.
“For businesses, a dollar saved is 100x better than a reward point earned. So Ramp focuses on reducing burn instead of rewarding wasteful spend. We believe this is much more aligned with the long-term success of our customers,” said Ramp CEO and co-founder Eric Glyman. “We’re not trying to rebuild your bank. We’re working to make your business more efficient.”
When Glyman and Karim Atiyeh sold Paribus to Capital One, it spearheaded Capital One’s push into saving technologies. And this group at Capital One had enabled automated savings on online purchases, which puts over $100 million back in consumers’ pockets every year.
And as Glyman and Atiyeh came to understand more about how corporate cards worked, they realized that rewards represented a fraction of the value that could be created in helping companies identify and act on waste. Plus they wanted to have the same impact on the corporate world that Paribus had on consumers.
In order to build Ramp, the company founders had spent time with hundreds of founders and executives along with finance teams at fast-growing companies to understand the problems that modern founders and finance teams experience.
“Ramp did an audit for us at no cost and found over $250,000 in savings right out of the gate,” added Nick Greenfield, CEO at Candid. “That, plus Ramp’s 1.5% cashback on top, is far more valuable than any rewards program, and has been a gamechanger for our 400 person company.”
Some of the companies that are using Ramp’s card include Candid, Better, Truebill, and Ro. And 50 startup founders at leading companies, representing over $100 billion in market capitalization have invested in Ramp.
The Ramp team includes experienced operators with deep expertise in finance and technology, including Affirm’s former VP of Engineering, the first business hires from Plaid and Atrium, and engineers from Facebook AI Research, Google Research, Capital One, Goldman Sachs, Apple, and Lyft.
“Most companies in Silicon Valley are quite wasteful with their spending, however, without access to the corporate card, it is difficult to enact change,” explained Rabois. “This team has the perfect DNA to create the card that smart CFOs use, as opposed to creating a card that relies on gimmicks like rewards to attract customers. We at Founders Fund are thrilled to support this company.”
