The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 117 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 2 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Batchu: Hiring from portfolio companies is not a conflict for angels
“I, I'm pretty ruthless about that. I think that there's absolutely no conflict. I think it's extremely anti-competitive from a labor market perspective for you to think that I won't hire the best people from your company. And so you, it's your job to retain yo…”
Rabois: Ramp is the best-run private company on the planet
“I think we just finished a board meeting where it's pretty clear that this is the best run private company on the planet.”
Rabois: Ramp will beat Brex and become 10x more valuable
“Ramp is absolutely going to be the winner. Probably will be two, three, four, five, 10 times more valuable.”
Founders Do Not Need to Remain Head of Product
“I listened to that and I love that. I don't agree. And again, this is the Shopify, you know, obviously, you know, Toby's like very involved in the product surface area at ramp. I think we have Slightly different approach. I think that the, our founder Eric is …”
Ramp does not actually have a product-led growth motion, argues Cabane
“Even the people I love and care about, you think of, like, something like a ramp, I love them to death. Amazing company. Do you think there's PRG? Do you think CFOs randomly invite other CFOs to use Ramp? Hell no. It doesn't happen like that. It doesn't work l…”
O'Driscoll: At a $32B valuation, Ramp must succeed via IPO
“You ain't going to get the M&A outcome anymore. You've just got to be the big company and trade in the public markets at a significantly higher multiple than the other financial services companies.”
O'Driscoll: Ramp and Brex will be valued like Amex once growth slows
“Once the growth rate slows, they will be valued. Just like if they're growing the same as Amex, they will be valued the same as Amex. The growth is what's saving them.”
O'Driscoll: Ramp is generating $700M to $800M in revenue
“Like, I've heard they're doing roughly seven, eight hundred million dollars.”
Lemkin: Private markets irrationally ignore gross margins when applying ARR multiples
“I still feel like for startups, we're giving Revenue valuations that don't have an adjustment for different ways their comps trade in the private markets. And if ramp is in a space that's two to four X revenue at when it's public or whatever that you could loo…”
Bonaci: Growth Teams Aren't Doing Their Job Properly If They Aren't Failing
“I think that they should acknowledge that the vast majority of what they work on is going to fail. And that if they're not failing, like, honestly, they're probably not doing their job well.”
Asparouhov: Ramp founders selected Founders Fund for its anti-woke culture
“There's also a set of founders that have self-selected into proactively wanting to, you know, sort of work with me, you know, Eric and Ramp, sorry, Eric and Kareem of Ramp, you know, maybe being a perfect example of this, of, you know, really wanting to, you k…”
Glyman: Ramp prioritized becoming a company's final card over its first
“And so what we said was we actually care a lot less about being someone's first card. We're much more interested in how do you be there last?”
Rabois: Ramp possesses unique AI capabilities in finance that competitors lack
“They understood immediately why RAMP had a lot of the secret sauce to be successful in using AI in finance and that nobody else on the planet does. And so they were really excited to meet with actually Eric and Kareem, almost independent of investing. It was m…”
Rabois: Invested in Ramp's seed round at over $30M post-money
“It probably, it might have been 40 posts, but it was more than 30.”
Facebook and Stripe Have Struggled to Expand Beyond Core Markets
“Whether it's like Facebook trying to enter the B to B space, whether it's Stripe trying to actually go from like developers and SME to finance teams in, in, in the enterprise. It's hard. And we actually haven't seen that much success.”
No SaaS firm Cabane advised reached $50M ARR on a single channel
“And I have never seen a companies I've worked with, neither at Segment or at Drift, Gorgias, or Ram, and not in one of the companies I engage with, where we were able to get to fifty million on one channel. Not one.”
Batchu: Founders unable to get warm intros lack basic hustle
“My theory is if you can't even succeed in getting a warm intro, how are you going to hustle and building a company? I only take conversations that are very high reputation, warm intros, where the person is, like, typically, like, already spoken to the person, …”
Dubugras: Expense software must prioritize execution speed over saving money
“And then that's when we said, actually, no, what they're doing doesn't make any sense for a lot of our customers, maybe for their customers, the direction that makes sense in the product and expense. It's helping companies move faster. That's what matters for …”
Glyman: Ramp shares full board meeting decks with all 100 employees
“We actually go Back to the company. All a hundred people at ramp can see what was in the board meeting and his chance to actually distill down the strategy itself.”
Glyman: Ramp spent $50K on marketing while processing $1B annually
“I think we spent Like 50,000 dollars on marketing last month, but are doing like a billion dollars in transactions a year.”
O'Driscoll: Ramp's 40x revenue multiple sharply contrasts Brex's 6x valuation
“Fortyx runway revenues when the comp traded at six in terms of breaks, even albeit on a lower growth rate is a pretty healthy valuation.”
O'Driscoll: Ramp data shows Anthropic grabbed 73% of new AI spend
“Just to start with the facts, they actually said 73% of new spending. Right. And what it is, and the same graph shows OpenAI is still actually ahead of Anthropic in terms of total spend. But the marginal buyer in the last six weeks, eight, 10 weeks has massive…”
O'Driscoll: Ramp hit $1B run rate faster than Brex at $700M
“From an operational perspective, this is further validation that quote unquote, I've won. I started later and I'm doing a billion. They started earlier, they're doing seven hundred million.”
Stebbings: Ramp reaches $1B revenue as Brex hits $700M near breakeven
“Ramp is at a billion in revenue. Brax is at 700. They're both around the breakeven to moving profitable phase.”
Lemkin: $23B to $30B valuation bump is not a real up-round
“Going from twenty three billion to thirty billion, I don't even consider it an up round. It's not enough. It's not enough.”
Bonaci: Growth Teams Should Prioritize Experimentation Velocity Over Perfection
“You should assume if you're doing things right, you should assume the majority of your bets are going to fail, which is why I always believe that velocity is probably more Important than getting things perfect.”
Bonaci: Influencer Marketing Is the Most Underappreciated B2B Growth Channel
“I don't think most people think of it as a growth channel, but Influencers absolutely is, at least on the B to B side.”
Pedro Franceschi Argues That No Great Company Was Built on Cost Savings
“I just don't think any great company was built on savings.”
Glyman: Purchase volume was the single variable driving Ramp's growth equation
“And it turned out that there was only one variable that moved everything. And it was just purchase volume.”
Glyman: Business spending increases up to 50x when scaling to 20 employees
“And when you went from like 10 employees to 20 employees. Businesses didn't spend twice as much. They would spend like five, 10, 50 times as much in some cases.”
Glyman: 99% of great businesses solve problems rather than applying new tech
“Great businesses, 99 out of a hundred times start with being really curious about people's problems and how can you solve them in a better and deeper and more true way? Not with what are the new breakthrough capabilities of technology and how do I apply that?”
Rabois: Ramp launched card issuing in 50 days versus typical 6-12 months
“So there's a lot of complexity in setting up issuing cards, just the very basic fundamentals usually take an infinite amount of time. Usually six to 12 months is pretty good as someone who's been involved in companies like this for like 20 years. I think Eric …”
Glyman: Compound platform startups risk losing focus on individual product quality
“As it goes from singular value propositions to you can run all of your finances through RAMP as thousands of businesses do you could, the risk is to lose focus and to not make your singular products that are best in class and to lose that edge.”
Effective Product Team Metrics Must Be Moveable Within a Two-Week Sprint
“The question really is around metric setting is like, can I As a team, in a two-week sprint, move this metric. And if I can, it's a great metric. If I can't, It shouldn't be part of really our goals.”
OKRs Encourage Political Gaming by Focusing on Metrics Over Strategy
“The reason why I don't like The framework is that it doesn't actually talk about strategy. It just gives a goal and then it just tells the team like, go hit this goal, but there's no thinking on the exec level about like how we can actually achieve that goal a…”
GTM Teams Must Stay Single-Product Focused Until Securing Strong Market Share
“So I think that for the majority of the company, You need to be like single product oriented for a very long time until you get to the really good market share. But as a tech team, you actually need to have an R and D department that is constantly shipping new…”
Ramp Limits Recurring Product Development Meetings to Two One-Hour Sessions
“There are no other meetings that are recurring. In the entire product development process. Those are the only two one hour meetings that happen.”
Ramp Invests in and Acqui-Hires Startups as Product Testing Beds
“We invest in new players. We acquire you know, aqua hire great talent. And we actually use that as a testing bed to figure out, like, what's working, and we include that in our product strategy.”
Ramp's growth team ships roughly 200 experiments every quarter
“And if you look at a team like Reamp, these days, with like, 10, 15 people on the growth team, they ship about 200 experiments per quarter.”
Ramp's hyper-personalized CFO email campaign hit 12-15% response rates
“The response rate here is 12 to 15%.”
Batchu: Tech employees should be allowed side projects if job performance stays high
“As I mentioned before, I think as long as you're not, you know, distracted during work hours and getting your day job done, I think what you do outside of work is, is your prerogative.”
Batchu: Ramp is pivoting growth strategy to customer segment-oriented teams
“The big short-term pain that we're taking is We're moving towards a larger company segment-oriented strategy, where we have cross-functional teams that are going after a customer segment and, you know, budgeting, goaling, everything based on this segment, whic…”
Batchu: Context switching through angel investing sharpens operator intuition
“I tend to find that the context switching and learning about different spaces actually builds more intuition and creativity for ideas. So I think in, in moderation, I actually think it's a good idea to do that.”
Optimists make poor enterprise sales reps; skepticism is required
“People are great fun at parties, but they make for shit sellers. You need someone who is a lot more skeptical, who questions everything.”
Glyman: Ramp's burn rate is nearly unchanged, giving a 10-year runway
“So right now, our burn rate is not far from what it was, like even, like a year ago. And so there's an element of, we now just have a lot more time before the expiration, call it like a decade, you know, versus like, we can run out of stuff in two years.”
Glyman: Ramp aims to build Waze for business expenses and Shopify for CFOs
“I think that a lot of really the North star of where we're headed as a business is, can you actually go understand what things cost and build, let's say like a ways for all sorts of business expenses, a Shopify suite for the CFO.”
Glyman: Lower fundraising valuations make employee equity more affordable and valuable
“By raising at a lower price, you actually make your stock more a Affordable for your employees, and they can enjoy more upside”
Glyman: CFO software and spend management will yield multiple $100B+ companies
“And look, I think that there are many hundred billion dollar plus companies in this space. I know Amex It's had since 1850 to work on it, and there are a number of others, but I think that if you can truly do that, and if you can create differentiated value in…”