Disclosure certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Rabois preempted Ramp's Series A because they prepared cards in three months

Keith Rabois · Hard truths about building in the AI era | Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures) · Apr 12, 2026 · at 1:08:30

Keith Rabois, managing director at Khosla Ventures, discusses how startup execution speed signals future success and led him to quickly double down on Ramp.

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“I led the seed in like May-ish of 2019 and gave a term sheet to preempt the A in September, so pretty quick. One of the two signals was how fast Ramp was able to be on the precipice of shipping the cards. I'd been working in financial services for a long time at that point, you know, 19 years or so, and there's just a lot of moving pieces to ship a card. You need these program managers, you need the sponsoring bank, and you need this and this and this. Usually takes nine to 12 months, best case nine. Ramp was on the precipice in like three months”

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