#676 Building A Fintech Unicorn with Eric Glyman

Eric Glyman is the Founder and CEO of Ramp, the only corporate card and spend management platform designed to help you spend less. He has raised approximately $700M for the company in debt and equity, which helped the business become valued at more than $3 billion. Previously, Eric founded Paribus, the price-tracking app that was acquired by Capital One in 2016. In this conversation, we discuss selecting an idea, testing your assumptions, fundraising, scaling your business, hiring great people, disrupting incumbents, putting stablecoins on the balance sheet, and listening to customers. ======================= Compass Mining is the world's first online marketplace for bitcoin mining hardware and hosting. Compass was founded with the goal of making it easy for everyone to mine bitcoin. Visit compassmining.io to start mining bitcoin today! ======================= My friends at Coin Cloud will give you $50 in FREE Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any of their 4,000+ machines. Use promo code POMP to get your free Bitcoin. For details or to find your nearest Coin Cloud machine, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp Coin Cloud has been serving customers since 2014 and has established itself as the world's leading digital currency machine (DCM) operator. More than just a Bitcoin ATM, Coin Cloud machines make it easy to buy and sell Bitcoin and 30+ other digital assets with cash. To get your $50 in free Bitcoin, visit www. Coin. Cloud/Pomp ======================= MiamiCoin is the first token to be released by CityCoins, a community-driven project built on Bitcoin. CityCoins aims to give people around the world a new way to support their favourite cities. The protocol has already generated over $7 million dollars in donations to the city of Miami and continues to grow every day. If you want to get involved Follow @minecitycoins on Twitter to stay up to date with the project. Visit chat. CityCoins.co to join the community discord and contribute to the movement.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Eric Glyman is the founder and CEO of Ramp, the only corporate card and spend management platform designed to help you spend less. He has raised approximately $700 million for the company in debt and equity, which helped the business become valued at more than $3 billion. Previously, Eric founded Paribus, the price-tracking app that was acquired by Capital One in 2016. In this conversation, we discuss selecting an idea, testing your assumptions, fundraising, scaling your business, hiring great people, disrupting incumbents, putting stable coins on your balance sheet, and listening to customers. I really, really

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  enjoyed this conversation with Eric, and I hope that you do as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is Compass Mining. Compass Mining is the world's largest marketplace for mining hardware and hosting. With Compass, everyone can mine Bitcoin. That's right. Their team makes it easy to start mining wherever you want, at home or in one of their 23 hosting facilities around the world. Through the Compass Marketplace, retail miners can have access to mining hardware with similar prices and purchase plans as the world's largest mining companies. Compass miners own their machines, choose whatever mining pool they want, and mine directly to their own wallet. Miners who don't want to host their machines can order ASICs directly

• 1:30Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:12Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:52Anthony Pompliano?

  You can get $50 in free Bitcoin when you buy $200 or more at any CoinCloud machine and you use the promo code POMP. For details or to find the local ATM, go to coin.clored/pomp. That's coin.clored/pomp and use promo code POMP. I promise you will enjoy the experience. Last but not least are my friends over at CityCoins. As you may have heard, we just had Miami Mayor Francis Suarez on the show to talk all things Miami, including his excitement around a project that has caught my attention, MiamiCoin. MiamiCoin is the first token to be released by CityCoins, a community-driven initiative built on Bitcoin.

• 3:35Anthony Pompliano?

  CityCoins aims to give people around the world a new way to support their favorite cities. In short, the city of Miami was given $7 million and counting by private citizens to improve the city with no strings attached. A city government embracing crypto instead of fighting it was a historic event. Do you want to get involved? Follow @MineCityCoins on Twitter to stay up to date with the project and chat. CityCoins.co to join the community or the Discord and contribute to the movement. So follow them at @MineCityCoins or go to CityCoins.co today. All right, let's get into this episode with Eric. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are made from the Are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 4:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's start with just the story behind Ramp in terms of like, where did this idea come from? And then how did you guys actually get it off the ground?

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. So Ramp today, when we came out was known as the corporate card that wants to help you spend less. And I'll go back into that, what we mean by that and all that, but a lot of it just came from, you know, I grew up in a stucco house in Las Vegas, was very obsessed with this idea of how do we save money constantly? And years ago, we had started this company called Paribus. It helped consumers save money online. Basically, if you shopped at Amazon, the price what you bought dropped in price, whatever it was, we helped you get the difference. We launched this years ago, within a year, we had a million customers and got a life changing offer from Capital One to buy the company. And so pretty quickly, we started to see, one, you can turn data into savings for people. If you actually are a company and work on people's behalf, you can do a lot. Next, we were a part of the credit card division.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  And so while we were saving a hundred million dollars a year for customers, we were seeing this business that was massively profitable. And really smart people there were thinking a lot about how do you get customers to spend a lot more money? And maybe they could earn more points, more cash back, whatever. Meanwhile, my job was savings. I would talk to customers and ask them, were you looking for more points, for more cash back, what it was? And people would really say, I'm actually looking for more in my bank account. What was crazy is both sides were trying to outsmart each other. People at the bank were trying to keep costs down, customers were trying to make more. It was a little bit off, like honestly, I think the incentives were pretty misaligned. And last, I've been involved in startup world for probably about six, seven years now.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  And it started to see time and time again, the bigger companies got, as businesses grew, the less efficient they became, the more wasteful they came with money and time. And so it kind of just hit us of, look, like saving money is great. A lot of people want to do that. They want to be more profitable. They want to have better businesses. The credit card business is fantastic, and yet it's so misaligned. What if there was a credit card and frankly, software that could help businesses run better? Better, spend less money, spend less time.

• 6:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, real quick, just so that people understand who this is for, right? Like, I'm obsessed with this idea of two things. One, you can give people products that they already know that they need. They're already used to using. You don't have to change consumer behavior. And then, kind of in the background, what you can do is you can basically use a bunch of data, a bunch of kind of best practices, etc. You can codify it in software and then implement it into a business. Is this just for like, large corporations like Microsofts, Amazons, IBMs? Or could small businesses use this as well? Or like, how do you think about like, who is this for?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Great question. So, we do have public companies. One of the companies in there you mentioned is using it. We can, we can scale all the way up to that. We also, you know, it can be two people, a couple laptops, people just getting started. And I would say that the average business on Ramp today could be a small, mid-sized business, anywhere from 25 to 200 employees is straight, straight and narrow. And I think that it's really two use cases. It's one for business owners who want their business to be more profitable, who want to replace what today is a lot of broken sets of software, a credit card, expense management software, accounting, often someone in finance who's doing a lot of work at the end of the month to chase people down, get stuff done. Or it could actually be finance teams. And so, really, as companies or scale, it's that. And the last stakeholder too, I think for most people work at any kind of company,

• 7:47Speaker 02

  most people hate their, their expense reporting process. And so, it's just a much better user experience too. But it's really for business owners and finance teams.

• 7:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and then, once somebody says, okay, cool, I think I need this product. Like, what does the product suite look like today in terms of, this is really just helping business owners save money? And then, we'll talk a little bit about the lessons you guys have learned, how individuals can actually implement some of this in their life. But what is the product suite today?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, so we, we call it on the face of it. Now, there's multiple products. We call it finance automation. And if you want to get a sense of it, you can go to ramp.com/pump. We have a special offer for everyone.

• 8:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Nice, let's go!

• 8:22Speaker 02

  $500 on the first statement. All the software is free, we'll get into it. But, so first and foremost, I think what made us famous was we now offer the fastest-growing corporate card in America. And so, we can offer limits all the way up to millions of dollars per month for companies, 30-day cycles. You get cash back on the card, lots of Controls everything there. So sophisticated corporate card behind that too. There's integrated expense management. And so one of the rules for small businesses and large is the IRS says you need to keep all receipts above $75. We built that right into the software so we can collect receipts automatically from cardholders, from businesses, all that. We do reimbursements. So let's say that an employee makes an expense on their personal charge. You want to hit them back. We do that.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  Bill payments, which I'll get into, and then accounting automation. And so effectively you hit it exactly. What we're trying to do is make running a business, setting the rules, the systems orchestrations, one system to cover all of that. And what it ladders up to is that the average business on ramp, we've been studying and measuring this a lot. Spends about 3.3% less than the business that doesn't.

• 9:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting.

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Get to how we do that. And, you know, a lot leaner and high performing finance teams are able to close their books in an average of five days sooner. And it's easy. It takes about 15 minutes to sign up.

• 9:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So to give people a sense of like how quickly this is caught on, when did you start the company? How much money have you guys raised? And then what is the company valued at the last round?

• 9:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, and genuinely, I hope this is all useful too. So today is day 927.

• 9:55Anthony Pompliano?

  This morning before. If you want to know how obsessed they are, they literally are counting the days.

• 9:58Speaker 02

  We do count that. We don't count the minutes, but we look at every day.

• 10:01Anthony Pompliano?

  927, day 927.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. So we just turned two and a half. It's all, it's all very, very new. We're now processing into the billions of dollars per year of transactions on behalf of cardholders. We've raised between equity and debt about $620 million. And the company is valued most recently at $3.9 billion.

• 10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So in two and a half years, you raised almost $700 million and you got a company that's valued just under $4 billion. This is not the first time you've done this in terms of build a company and find success or kind of product market fit. What are probably the one or two lessons that you've learned the last two and a half years for founders to understand in terms of how the hell do you do it? Right. I think people hear that and they're just like, oh my God, you raised $700 million. Like it's a $4 billion business. Like that, that's incredible. Incredible. Like, what is the magic trick? There are no tricks, but like, what is the thing that you've learned the most that you can kind of point back to?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, like the 927 day thing is fun, but I hope it drives home 928 days ago. Like, there was literally no business. Like, things can happen very, very quickly with the right, um, a couple ingredients. And I think first, it's just like, very, like clarity of purpose and focus. What does your company exist to do? And very discreetly, how are you going to get that done? Next, I think is really about listening to customers. I think what shocked us was we had this entire industry. Every competitor was focused on this program that was, um, get customers to spend more money, earn more points. We talked with about 150 founders, finance teams before we shipped a single card. And often, the most common thing we heard was, cards are fine, but I actually want a better business.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  I want to spend less. And so actually listening to people and trying to back into what are they saying? It sounds really simple, but people don't do it often. Next, I think when we were going before we raised any money, we, um, there's this old adage. If you ask for money, you get advice. Ask for advice, you get money. I'll come back to that, but I think it's very related to the second point. And then last, um, I've worked at companies where they set these long-term annual goals. Like, I want to 5X this year. I want to do, uh, $10 million in sales or volume. And like, I don't, um, I don't buy that. Like, a lot of how we do this and part of why we know like what day it is, is we, we just set simple goals of this week. We want to grow a certain amount. That's it.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  It's a little bit of incremental process of progress. And if you can compound over time, things can really take off. But it's little progress by little adds up.

• 12:30Anthony Pompliano?

  This last point is really important because I think this applies not only to building a technology company, but also we talk a lot about personal finance and investing, et cetera, is helping people understand that you can do this as an individual as well. So compare the two ideas, like, we could say today, we're going to start a business. One year from now, we want X, Y, and Z metrics to be hit versus, hey, by the end of the week, we want X, Y, and Z metrics to be hit. Why is it that focusing on the short-term kind of, uh, um, goals is more important to you than those longer-term, what end up being kind of loftier ideas?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll start with, I think even, so maybe about seven years ago when I started the last business, our business plan was, you know, it was me and my co-founder Kareem, we had six, six months of savings. We've been working for a couple of years and we moved to an apartment in Brooklyn and we had to make this thing work. And I remember just feeling completely overwhelmed. We knew we wanted to build this huge business one day that could help people save a lot of money, would do all this cool stuff, but there was a million options between like here and the end vision of it. And, you know, if we wanted a 10x, we could do anything. We could go buy a bunch of ads, we could go try to do press, we could go try to fundraise so we can go on a four different stuff. We could work on the product.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  It was almost so overwhelming, the complexity of like all the different choices you could make. It made it almost hard to operate. But if we constrain things and we said, actually, all we want to do is add, you know, find 20 new users for our product this week, it's a lot more straightforward. And you can start to trade off and say, what's the highest likelihood of with my time? I can either pick this, pick this thing that will take half of my week, but will certainly get there. Maybe this other thing that's a 10% shot of working, but if it works, I can actually blow past this goal and start to really trade things off in a practical way. And without doing that, it gets really, really easy to one, let excuses kind of run into how you're operating every day.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  Like, of course I'm doing it, it'll pay off, but it's, you know, I think what, being able to measure it and show progress is important. And then two, just to drive focus each and every week, it adds up.

• 14:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then when you actually start to look at the goals, how do you pick what that goal is? Is it something that you back into? Are you guessing like, like one week from now, two weeks from now, like, how do you pick?

• 14:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's a, so, so I, let's back up. Like, I think it's first of like, how do you even set goals in the first place and what's it about? And I think that for us, we had this, this This version of the industry where people were approaching this, we felt in the wrong way. They were building businesses that worked for the business, but not for the customer. And we said, we wanted to help. If we can help our customers spend less money, spend less time, we can align ourselves to that. So let's first figure out and start to, I think even before you start and before you put yourself on that treadmill, to try to understand from first principles, what's going to be important. And so we said, let's save people money and time. We talked to enough people and did that. We started to ask, okay, we know where we want to go. We've got kind of the vision.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Now we need the plan of like, how are we actually going to go and save companies money? Save them time? What does it mean? What are they spending money on? Where are they wasting time? All that. Once we started to have the product iterating and going, what made it easy and part of how we grow as a business and monetize is when people actually use the card, when they actually use the software, they've, you know, are able to operate. We earn a percentage through interchange. And so the optimization was much simpler for Ramp. The goal was if we can make things that are useful, would save people money and time, we think, we hope they would use it more. And so our goal very early on was actually around, we can counter to it, like just purchase volume, actual usage. And so we said, like, how can each and every week, can we grow the amount of people who are using it, grow depth with it?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  We had a lot of different degrees of freedom. We could try to get new customers. We could try to work more closely with existing customers. We could try to make things more useful. And we would try to trade off and try to debate, what can we do this week that would help us do one of these things? And what has the highest leverage? Let's say, what can I do with 20% of my time that will have 80% of the result? We're not always right. We're in fact often, very often wrong, but we try to do it that way.

• 16:37Anthony Pompliano?

  The founders of a business like this, obviously you've had success in past iterations and then this one as well. Maybe the executive team as well, they usually are highly successful. They've done it a bunch of times. You go out, you recruit them. When you hire an entry level employee, kind of somebody right out of school or this their first job or whatever, they may not have the experience or kind of the track record of success. And having worked at a place that's seen how this works, how do you transfer that knowledge or kind of that framework or that mentality and kind of culture to those new folks that you hire as well? Cause I always think about it like Jeff Bezos at Amazon is kind of the ultimate, you know, higher end of the hierarchy. And he's using the employees and the corporation as leverage to build what he thinks is into the future and he hires great people, et cetera.

• 17:23Anthony Pompliano?

  But when you talk to somebody, he's got to get from Jeff Bezos all the way down to, you know, one of his 1.5 million employees and try to reiterate, hey, here's how we do things at Amazon. How do you guys think about that?

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you have a lot of great questions all in one. So first is even in like in hiring and who we try to look for. There's a lot of different philosophies. I think in most parts of businesses, they're trying to operate to certain margins, keep things going to a certain way and look for like very well-rounded people. We tend to look, we're trying to do things in extremely compressed periods of time. And so often what we're looking for is people with, they might actually have real deficiencies in certain areas. I do in many others, completely disorganized. A lot of things you wouldn't want me touching, but certain really strong spikes. And so often when we're interviewing and trying to meet people, even people just

• 18:14Speaker 02

  at a college, or even hire a lot of interns all the time, too. We're trying to figure out, was there some kind of extreme accomplishments made it on that was unbelievable? And they'll vary. Like one was, I think someone when they were 15, had made a private Minecraft server and as a 15-year-old paid for college. Like, that's crazy that they were able to do stuff like that. Other people like learn foreign languages extremely quickly, others built a following online. Certain things that might be indicative of they have some extreme talent, try to find that and push towards it. Next, based on the goals that we're trying to do, like, don't have somebody who's, you know, you don't want to, you don't want to have, ask Michael Jordan to play baseball. Like, let him play basketball, put people on the right stuff, whatever are the areas that like they actually specialize in. Try

• 18:59Speaker 02

  to map out based on your goal, what can they do? And help them be successful. I think that's-

• 19:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Who gets disrupted by this? Like, it's very obvious people like this, right? And I think your insight is to everyone else wanted people to spend more money, earn more points. It was almost kind of like, I can trick you to get on the rat race, right? Or get on the rat wheel. And then, by the way, I'm going to make more money because you're spending more money. You all are going the opposite way. And you're saying, look, we actually want you to spend less money, which means that you'll like us more. And then we'll figure out how to kind of help you with all of your other financial activities as well. Who gets screwed? Is it just like the regular credit card company? Or who ends up being on the other side of this?

• 19:35Speaker 02

  So there's a, there's a couple that are direct and there's some that we think will be more interesting over time. So I think that the obvious ones are the big incumbent credit card companies. And so most of our competitors have founders who, you know, passed away a hundred years ago. So I've been around since 1850 and these things have enormous market share and like, it's crazy. Like when you look at your, your credit card, it hasn't changed for like 30, 40 years. It's the same piece of plastic, maybe it's metal, um, you know, uh, if it's extra deluxe and, uh, does the same things. You swipe it, you have very little controls. It hasn't really evolved. And so the obvious ones, um, probably about a third, um, of our customers come from American Express. People who are using that are looking for something to upgrade from their business. It can be folks like Chase, Citi, um, you get on the list.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  The next class is actually expense management software. So if you're people who filed an expense report before, turn something in, it's pretty painful. Either you have to go at the end of the month, scan your receipts, put it on some platform. Usually it takes days for your receipt to actually get in the software with Ramp. It's immediate and so folks like Concur and Expensify, um, about 90% of our customers have fully replaced those.

• 20:43Speaker 02

  And I think last are some of the categories like bill payment software.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  So I think bill.com is one where we see a lot of customers are coming over from today. I think the more interesting part of it, um, for us over time beyond the, let's set the rails in place. Let's have the software be really easy and intuitive for customers to use.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  A lot of the goal and the reason for why we started Ramp in the first place was we felt that in, um, business to business payments, there was a lot of price discrimination. I think the really common experience for people when they buy software online is you can try this thing. Then if you're a growing company, contact sales, if it's enterprise, contact sales. And what does contact sales means? It means they're going to try to figure out how much you can pay and charge you that. And, um, it's insane. I'd be, I don't know, like a bunch of crazy stories around that, but I'll put it this way.

• 21:32Anthony Pompliano?

  That is exactly, by the way, that is exactly what they do. Contact sales definitely means we are going to mark this up as much as we possibly can and still have you purchase it.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're, they're very good at it. And every time you think you're getting a good deal, you think you've Smart of them. You get a win. They're making a lot of money and they're able to get people at their willingness to pay. In theory, that's fine. What's been wild in seeing this business, when you have credit cards, you have bill payments, expense management, you're collecting receipts and invoices. You can see very, very vividly that people are getting ripped off. Some people are paying a lot less, others getting a charge more. Frankly, every company on some vendor is paying more than some other company. And we think that there's a lot of opportunity to actually disrupt price discrimination. And I think that for me, one of the businesses I love as a consumer is Waze. And before Waze was, there were some huge businesses. One was MapQuest, if people remember it.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  And the map was great. It was good to know where you were going, but it was a lot better to know there was a traffic jam and you should take another route. And I think there's going to be a similar opportunity to actually flip the tables on vendors who are trying to rip off businesses. Small business owners, big business owners, whatever it is, to actually do this, take funds back to businesses so they can put it into hiring more people, paying people more, going home earlier, spending less time, building more profitable businesses. And so I think a lot of the ethos is actually, how can we be on the side of people who are building, business owners, people who are creating, so they can go after their purposes and missions and not have all the waste?

• 23:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You have some interesting news, maybe we'll call it, around your guys' balance sheet. This, well, you told me this. I was like, wait, I need to understand this. So explain the composition of your balance sheet in terms of what assets you put the balance sheet in, that we can talk about why you're doing some of this.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  Totally. No, this was a, this was a recent conversation, both we've been having internally and also even, even at the board level. Look, there's a lot more cash and assets than we've, we've ever had. And I think a lot of our ethos is about helping companies be more efficient. And, you know, to have hundreds of millions of dollars just sitting purely in cash felt not optimal. I'll, I'll put it that way.

• 23:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Flex.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Couple hundred million dollars.

• 23:48Speaker 02

  It's just, it's like,

• 23:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Listen, we do not condemn success. Around here, we celebrate success.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  I couldn't imagine or fathom what like hundreds of million dollars actually look like. And it's crazy when it's sitting there like, wow, I have it in a checking account. This is nuts.

• 24:04Speaker 02

  This is nuts. And so I, there's different ways to look at it. And so I think one of the philosophies that makes sense. I think there's defensive ways to use a balance sheet and there's offensive. And we'll, we'll look at, I think both. So from a defensive perspective, like I think, you know, there is the base reality of that's how we fund our company and operate. We need to make sure we're good stewards of it. We take care of it. And so part of it, and I think the vast majority of it, there's different people in portfolio management. I talked about this theory called a barbell portfolio composition where you're very heavily in highly safe. Parts of your balance sheet where the vast majority of your balance sheet is, but with part of your balance sheet, you seek yield.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  You take a bit, you take a little bit of risk for more return. Part of what's jumped out to us in this market has been, and I think it's probably very obvious to people who listen to your show. Is I think in, not just in the crypto, but even in the stablecoin world. The yields on stablecoins where it's effectively really interesting, well constructed products that are backed, that are securitized, that effectively are taking risk free trades effectively between the, you know, today's prices, the future, future prices of certain cryptocurrencies and taking the spread. So effectively, so long as the counterparty is solvent, it's backed.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  It is a risk free trade. You can earn yields, yields of like 6%, 7% on, you know, annualized on one month, three month tenors. And so with part of our balance sheet, we actually do keep it in stablecoin.

• 25:39Anthony Pompliano?

  To earn the yield.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 25:40Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about what percentage of the balance sheet, right? Cause I think when many people hear this, if you're in the crypto world, you're like, oh, I personally do some of that. So like, it makes sense. I wouldn't think about business doing it. If you're also in part of the crypto world, you may say, we're used to publicly traded companies. Recently they've got a bunch of press for putting it in Bitcoin. Because they're looking at it as a. Kind of an asymmetric bet, right? You're basically saying, look, we want to participate in the industry, but we're not trying to go get hundreds of percent of appreciation. We're going to just get that six, seven, eight percent yield on the stablecoin. Because that's part of a barbell. This is the kind of safer part of our strategy. So is that like a 1% allocation? Or is that like 90? Or how do you think about like from a balance sheet composition?

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we're still early in it. I mean, I think about it for today, especially in early parts, like, like, single-digit percentages. And when the yield is that high, it turns out it still leads to a lot of power. But, I mean, I think even to the, you know, when you look at the history of companies and corporates, people used to buy headquarters in real estate. People used to have corporate memorabilia, sometimes corporate art. We're not doing any of that. But, look, ultimately, when you have cash, like, it is an asset. And I think it becomes, you know, well, it's not the core of the business. And ultimately, I think to your question of how do we think about it? The vast majority really is operating capital. But for the parts that are non-operating for a little bit,

• 27:09Speaker 02

  how can we not take crazy risks? We do need to make sure we're doing right by shareholders. We do need to make sure that the business is fundamentally sound. But in building, you know, a business over time to be a fortress, to make sure that things are well-backed, I think it's a strategy that actually makes a lot of sense. And I think is becoming much more, it's early, but much more common.

• 27:35Anthony Pompliano?

  The conversation at the board level around this, I'm assuming there was, we can do nothing and stay in kind of a traditional treasury management type position. We could go do super extreme things like buy corporate art or whatever. Then there's maybe like, maybe should we put some in Bitcoin? Maybe we should do some in stablecoins. Where along that risk profile did people tap out? Like, were people like, okay, like, that's too much risk. We don't want to go do that. Is there like something that you remember in that conversation?

• 28:00Speaker 02

  You know, I think that for us, we've, you know, we're dipping our toes in, you know? And so we're not like, you know, we've got this amazing piece of art. You've got to see it.

• 28:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Didn't put 50% in Bitcoin.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and look, I think, you know, one of our board Members we love like, you know, Keith for boys here in Miami, amazing person. I think a lot of the core element, and this is still true, like Ramp will will never become a great business buyer balance sheet strategy alone. It is one small part of it. And so I think that a lot of the conversation was more of look, as being responsible for our own capital. We want to be thinking about this a little bit. Let's start here. We're not trying to go extreme back to business and focus on it. And so, you know, I wouldn't say that we really have thought about and trying to push the boundaries where we certainly don't want to have a, you know, anything too complex, but do a meeting, think about allocation, come back to it, look at it periodically.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  But I think back to the same principle of letting things compound, setting up systems in place that are designed to get you where you want to go long term was really what we were trying to do.

• 29:05Anthony Pompliano?

  What's so fascinating about this is we recently went and looked at the average interest in a savings account. Now, this is not corporate savings accounts, this is more for the individual. But if you were just to take, call it 10% for easy numbers and earn seven or eight percent yield on that 10% of your balance sheet. For the entire balance sheet, you would still be two X or more higher than the average interest rate in a savings account.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So it's like, I think it's like 0.03% or something is the is the actual amount. So it's pretty crazy when you start to kind of think through just how bad other options are compared to something like this.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 29:43Anthony Pompliano?

  JoJo, what questions do you guys have? So mine would be around like personal finance and you can answer kind of what you're comfortable with. But my question would be, right, like you had some personal success before starting Ramp with another company that you founded. And I assume building a $4 billion business takes up a considerable amount of your time.

• 30:04Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, how do you think about personal finance and your personal investments? Is it something that you actively spend a lot of time on? Or is it something where you just say, hey, look, Ramp is my highest upside kind of investment that I can make. I'm going to focus all my time on this and let that take care of itself.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  It's really the latter. Yeah. I mean, I think really, I mean, no one gets more more time for. As far as I know, and I think being able to focus on what are the areas that can really compound how to spend all the time to do like I spend, you know, I don't day trade. I very rarely touch stuff. And if I do make investment decisions, usually it's like, you know, it's, it's a half day, um, you know, a week, a month, something like that. Take a look at the portfolio, set it, leave it alone. I mean, I do think that trying to deal like there, there are great and proven principles where, um, certain thoughts around asset allocations, where to invest, not just leaving stuff, um, uh, purely in boring products or doing nothing and not reevaluating from time to time. I think that that's a mistake, but spending time actively

• 31:01Speaker 02

  managing, um, at least isn't my, um, you know, where, where I find most success in, in, in what I do. So I try to, for me, I like to operate, spend most of my time doing that. Um, and I spend a little bit of time on construction.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So be prudent, be, uh, kind of knowledgeable about it and attentive, but not spend too much of your time.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Definitely. And I think for, for most people too. I mean, I think a lot of people listening and creating or building businesses are pretty young. Um, and they have what, what for a lot of people is rare, which is time and ability to focus and energy to, to work. And I think really thinking about what can I do today, this week, this year, who can I work with to build, I think, is an incredible way, um, for, for most people to, to spend their time. And so I try to spend most time thinking about that. But, um, yeah, I, I think you're right. You can't totally ignore it. That's for sure.

• 31:47Anthony Pompliano?

  John, what questions you got?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Thank you for doing this. I appreciate you are dropping bombs on the audience right now.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  So I'm curious, a lot of people are young. I watch the show. A lot of people have ideas, are trying to start businesses. What is, what are some mistakes that you see people do, uh, starting business and yourself? And then how do you avoid those mistakes going forward?

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I, I think it's an awesome question. And like I am, so before we started the, the last company, and even before starting Ramp, there's a lot of temptation for a lot of people are really excited. I think it's never been easier, um, to start a business. Capital has never been more available. And I think a lot of people are suddenly really excited to be an entrepreneur. And like a decade ago, it was fine, but it wasn't like that celebrated. And I think that one of the Worst mistakes that a lot of people make when they're starting out and working out of careers. They try to come up with ideas in the abstract and they go and say, what's the biggest industry in the world? Or like, where is there waste or some big opportunity, something like that? I want to go and solve that. And I think that just trying to come up with ideas is really, really hard and dangerous

• 32:51Speaker 02

  because you can convince people of the market size, of the TAM, of the size of the opportunity alone. And you'll want to go and build against that. And you'll spend a lot of cycles never really finding product market fit. I think that one of the most important things that an entrepreneur can do, go from, instead of trying to come up with ideas, is to start paying attention and noticing things. And so when we came up with the idea, the first company we did, it actually happened from like a personal frustration where I was with a group of friends. We were over at work, we wanted to like take our first vacation in like a year. Booked this flight, the next day it dropped in price by, you know, a hundred dollars. And I was like, this is really weird. This friend had asked me, could you send me the flight deals, details? I want to book it myself and join you guys in the trip. And I like couldn't believe it.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  And so most people, when they encounter a problem or some kind of issue in industry, just kind of be like, ah, whatever, that's frustrating, I'm going to move on. I had a little bit of extra time that day. And also like I'd been, I'd wanted to come up with a company for many, many months. And I said, let me, let me roll with this. And so I spent, you know, a couple of hours researching, going into it. It turned out at the time, most retailers, airlines, everything had a policy that if you bought something, the price dropped later, you could get the difference back. And I was like, whoa, this is crazy and frustrating, I want to go do it. So I spent like an hour on the phone with customer service. Before you knew it, we had, you know, a hundred dollars times eight, a thousand dollars almost back for everybody. And I just sat there and I'm like, wow, like, I wish I knew about this. I wish I had some way to kind of take this.

• 34:19Speaker 02

  And I just started pulling at the thread and there was lots of twists and turns and ways to go. But I think what's super important in any kind of business is trying to, you know, one, pay attention to real problems, to notice things. To next, make something that is useful to one person before you make it for a thousand people. To build a great business, you don't need thousands, millions, whatever, customers. You can do that one day and it'll come. But I think just starting small and in a focus area, focusing on real problems.

• 34:48Speaker 02

  It helps and hope you get a lot further.

• 34:50Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about that exact thing of finding an idea and then starting, talk about like the propensity for action for actually doing it, like, like, how did you know where to go start looking? Or was that kind of blind luck?

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we, this one was definitely luck with the last business. And I, you know, worked at a desk job and I was like, okay, this is crazy. Maybe we found the savings on flights, but we had all these questions that we wanted to figure out. We're like, well, how common is it that people would have price drops, the thing that they were buying? Great. If you could get price drops, you know, how long is the period? How much is actually there? Then could you automate it? Maybe you could find all this, but it would be an incredible amount of work. And so we sort of ran these series of experiments. And I actually think a lot of great startups and venture capital is really running these series of experience, experiments. And what we were trying to figure out is if we could

• 35:40Speaker 02

  actually, like, three out of our eight core, like, questions or hypotheses we could answer yes, then we could know we're closer to getting to this final answer. So actually, with the first business, I, it was, it was something on the side. We were experimenting, I think, for probably six months. And we bought a bunch of stuff online on Amazon and it turned out like, I think, like, half of items dropped in price within three days of us buying it. I think now Amazon changes something like, like, 70 million prices a day. It's really absurd. This was 2014, when we were doing this. We, you know, wanted to figure out, where do we get the credit card data? Or the card data? The credit card didn't have enough information. We needed to get it from email. And once we figured out you could do this, you could link with email accounts, you could, you could track

• 36:25Speaker 02

  prices. And then last, if you wanted to get a refund, this was the last business, you, all you had to do was send an email. We're like, okay, we can do this. Like, we can build a simple email app that'll collect the receipts. We could generate text to send it into the store. They refund the difference and they send a proof of a refund. And then our business, that, that last business was recharge to cut. And there were similar things too, with, with Ramp. We had this idea of business owners want to run their business with less capital, have more time. And so a lot of the core early questions were, first, Could we build a credit card in the first place? If so, how? And so we started researching what was happening from an infrastructure perspective.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  If we wanted to get live, what were the balance sheet requirements? What were the security requirements? If we wanted to integrate, what were the different methods? Next, okay, we could have a credit card, but could it actually be useful? And so one of the first set of experiments before we launched, we actually started the company and operated for almost a year before we actually launched publicly. And during that year run up, a lot of what we were trying to prove was we could issue cards. We could make closing books easier. So we wanted to design a simple system to text people, to collect receipts back and all that, and then maybe link up to accounting. And now there's all these sets of software. We're going deeper into finance automation. We're seeing price discrimination.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  We're helping people save, you know, more than even is possible through interchange, cash back and points. But all we were trying to do was little experiments where if we could prove things along the way, would help unlock that next part of the business. Maybe it unlocks the next round of investment where people say, okay, they built a lot in a short period of time. I want to invest more money behind this. It unlocks a really happy customer who says like, actually, this thing was really useful. I used it because they kept coming into my office and I was like, fine, I'll try this credit card out. But they're like, holy shit, this actually saved me.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  You know, I'll tell you a story in a second about like, customers saved $20,000 on it and told like, told other people about it. And I think that once you have little experiments, you start to earn trust. People start to believe more and more. And I think a lot of building a business is over time, trying to create this, you know, not to show value, but once you started to do this, create this sense of inevitability. You have the clarity of purpose. People believe and see you're driving results for people. And so it starts to create this virtuous cycle. It's a lot of what you're trying to do in an early stage business.

• 38:56Anthony Pompliano?

  You've raised about $700 million for this business. Walk us through like, what are the best practices from a fundraising standpoint? You had an advantage because you'd already built a successful business. But as you've gone through this last two and a half years, you raised $700 million. Pretty impressive feat. What are some of like the tips that you have for other folks as they, as they kind of set out on that journey?

• 39:15Speaker 02

  Definitely. So I think, I think a lot of people, when they, when they think first order about fundraising is I want to go, if I can get this capital, I can go out and build. I can go hire these good people. I can run the marketing, get great customers and just go from it. And I think that a lot, if you talk with venture capitalists or investors, I don't want to say they're lazy, but I'll put it this way, like their favorite businesses to invest in are businesses that don't need their help. Like Elon Musk doesn't need anybody's help. He's fine. The business can operate, things are going to go well. And that is one of the most sought after investment. And I think if you observe that for people just starting out, the question is, how can I build something of a little bit of use

• 39:59Speaker 02

  with some potential and show each and every week, you start connecting the dots and things are happening. There's a product that's out. I call up, there's maybe five customers and people actually like it. You get real feedback and people say, if you build this, I will use it. They use it. And so I actually think one of the best ways, if you can do this, is figure out what are some things that I can prove that there's real demand here, that there is real use. And so we didn't raise any money, I think, for the first half a year, just about of the company. We tried to get things going. We had had some success before. And so we took, you know, funds from the last company that we made into this. But even then, like when I'd started my, the previous company, I think I had saved, I'd

• 40:44Speaker 02

  been working for two and a half years. It was enough, I think, for, I think about five months, you know, to go and do this. Wasn't very long and I really downsized to do this. And the whole thing was, was show traction first. And if you have traction, you can start to bring in others. Next, I think, you know, if you can bring some traction, I think the next important, the next kind of key parts are if you can match capital to people who can be really useful to the business, that's really great. And so whenever we had fundraising conversations with venture capitalists, other founders who later invested, all that. We never went into a pitch saying, hey, we're a business, we're gonna go fundraise. I'd love, I'd love to show you why this is a great investment opportunity.

• 41:29Speaker 02

  You know, Sid who said, we're building this, I'm trying to do something specifically useful for you, or I'm trying to do something specifically useful for this audience. I'd love to get your advice on it. I'd love to talk with you about it. Or I'd love to, if it's a business center, I'd love to build something great for you. Can we meet? Over the course of the conversation, it's a give and a take. You, you start to learn, you hear about their problems. You can see if your roadmap actually aligns, you can get feedback. Sometimes you're, you're right on, other times you're off. Either way, it's useful and it could be actually part of the sales process. If you're a business to business product, people start to build conviction in you as a person. They see that you, that you listen, that you have good intent. They start to see some of their own ideas and what they're doing and they get personal attachment to it.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  And I think back to the adage, you ask for advice and you get money. It's much likelier sometimes people ask like, this is really interesting. How, what's next for the business? You, you talk with them about your building, you know, you mentioned, you know, you, you may go raise some capital. And they say, that's really interesting. Like, I want, I want you to tell me about it. And so it's almost, it's probably elements like, like this in, in dating and things like this too, where if you, you come in and you, it's too clear, you're too into it, like it's not gonna work. But, you know, play it cool, have a good conversation, much more likely. And, and I, those would be the, I think the two big ones. And yeah.

• 42:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys have obviously had a lot of success, uh, building this business and everything like that. So I'm sure there's been a lot of demand from the investment side. Is there any like crazy story that sticks out of what someone has done to be able to, to, to give you guys money? Or, or get your attention?

• 43:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Don't say who, don't say who it is unless you're comfortable with it. But what's the story?

• 43:08Speaker 02

  Oh my God, there's, there's a lot of, um. It's a lot of funny.

• 43:12Anthony Pompliano?

  We should do a whole segment where we just have founders come on and tell all the wild stuff investors do. What's the best one?

• 43:18Speaker 02

  I.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  You can choose whether to tell who it is or not.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Um, so there was one that, um, this was, this was the last company, um, which was crazy. So if you look back years ago, I think it was 2015, it absolutely blew our minds. Um, such a like I, Shaquille O'Neal, um, tweeted about like, this was like the very first company. We didn't raise like any money. I think we'd say like, I think personal funding and Shaquille, and you know, Shaq tweeted about how he saved a thousand dollars on like a hot tub, right? Which like was like.

• 43:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Using your product.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  Using the product, right? And how did that happen? Like basically there was an investor who's like, look like this is amazing. Like we were growing like 20% a week. Things were going crazy on this last savings product. And he's like, like, I'm going to get Shaq to tweet about it. Like, I don't believe you. Like, and he was like, trust me, I'm going to, I'm going to do it. And he text, he text, he texts us back. Um, and he's like, Shaq's going to tweet about you guys in an hour. What do you want this thing to say? And I looked around, it was, there was my friend Zach and Kareem. And we're like, I don't know. We're like, we're a bunch of nerds. Like all it's, I, all I knew was like Shaq was in Kazam. I like Kazam when I was like eight years old. How funny would it be if like Shaq like tweets like Kazam, like I'm going to grant you some wish, save on everything you buy, whatever. And then like, I was like, this can't be real. This guy is talking like, he's, sorry, I don't know if I can say that, but like, yeah,

• 44:31Speaker 02

  this guy is, uh, is messing with me, whatever. And so it texts him this thing back, sent him the photo. And like an hour later, this thing posted and be like, totally lose our minds. Like.

• 44:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And he literally says like Kazam, like the whole.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's still on the map. Like, it's super goofy.

• 44:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Can you imagine Shaq being like, hey, man, who the hell is this guy trying to get me to tweet this right now?

• 44:48Speaker 02

  Like, whatever.

• 44:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you see that Shaq recently retired from being a celebrity?

• 44:52Speaker 02

  I did.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  You got him before he retired.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no. But it's a, people do get, like, I think most people like want to, want to be helpful. Like that was extreme. That was interesting. And I, there is a, there's been a lot of goofy things with Ramp too. I won't go too deep into it, but yeah, look, I think a lot of people, if they're genuine and sincere and they're excited about it, yeah, don't be afraid to ask. You never know.

• 45:13Anthony Pompliano?

  That's great.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  You can get people to tweet Kazam.

• 45:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How's it working with Keith and Delian at Founder's Fund?

• 45:18Speaker 02

  They're great.

• 45:22Anthony Pompliano?

  They sat in that chair.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  Checking the mail.

• 45:28Anthony Pompliano?

  You can say good or bad things. You can make fun of them. You can do whatever. We promise to protect you. Keith, Delian, we love you guys, but what is it like working with them?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  So I, I love working with the founders on the team. Like we, so I think that they, they found us, it's a crazy story. So Delian actually met my co-founder Kareem, uh, playing on Fortnite.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  The company. Um, and so I don't know, maybe Delian can't help it. Like even if he's playing Fortnite, the guy wants to do deals or something like that. But yeah, they, they met like in a group. They hit it off and whatever. And later figured out Kareem was working on something. He's like, come into the office, please, or whatever. So we were going out to SF and we were working on this thing. It's like credit card that wanted to save people money. And we walked into the office and, um, it, I, I like, I think it was on like the 60s, something as, as day of the company. Um, um, actually it was, it was earlier. I think it was like the 50s, whatever. Go back to it. Anyway, so we had clarity concept. There were some people were sent up to use it. We'd hired some people. Uh, we were going to launch the card next week. That night they called us back and they said,

• 46:34Speaker 02

  we're in, we're going to do this. And so I think like very clear, very decisive. And I think, um, Keith is a particular way about him, but I think that what I think makes him exceptional. And I think part of why so many companies he's worked with have grown incredibly quickly is he's a very fast decision maker. Um, he has clear principles that he operates against in that when he works with people too. And we were a huge beneficiary of that. He is very, very focused and he helps really hammer into companies early on of look, you cannot do a thousand things well. You can do one or two, maybe things very, very well. What are these things going to be? How do you make sure you have strong clarity of purpose? Next, when you're hiring and, and operating, I mean, he was one of the first 50 people at PayPal, um, co-founder of Open Door, Affirm,

• 47:18Speaker 02

  Square, um, was their COO, has seen incredible payments companies, knows the ins and outs of it. Um, and I, I, I think that he, he has an amazing talk, by the way, if you haven't seen it, it's called how to operate. Um, if you, you know, uh, check it out on YouTube. It's 45 minutes. For someone who's operating a business early stage, I think it's a life-changing talk. And a lot of what he talks about is really about what are the core, how do you think about setting a vision for the company? How do you operate Boardex? How do you operate company evaluate managers, evaluate yourself? And really, it's simple rules and almost formulas that you can go through and evaluate with your own business. How are you performing? How are people performing? And that's it.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  And so I don't think it's about outsmarting the world or freaking something out. It's about true rigor behind building businesses. And I think he's great at it. I think they're great at it. And I think that for people who are really just getting started in businesses, I think there's a few people in the world who can go toe-to-toe with them.

• 48:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And part of what I think is so fascinating about this is not only the decisiveness, but also there's like a recipe for it, right? And some of the things change in between. Some of the details are different depending on what industry, what the businesses, who the founders are. But there's absolutely a playbook that can be applied to almost every business that will drastically increase the probability of success. Doesn't guarantee it, but it increases the probability. Is that what you found working with them?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  For sure. I mean, and it's very funny. And I think that one of the other popular early stage investors, Y Combinator, we'd gone through that years ago, separate company. And I think that what would always surprise people, they would do these things in batches where you would get, at the time, it was 90 companies in a batch. Now it's like 450. It's kind of wild. But the task was grow, say, 10% every week, build your business, whatever. But the businesses that we learned a lot from, one was a company selling beauty products online. Another was an Israeli cybersecurity company. And we were selling, we had a savings app to help people save money. Like, these are completely different businesses. But it turns out in early phases of companies, there's a lot more similarities than there

• 49:24Speaker 02

  are differences, which is, one, you're trying to build a product that people want. You're trying to reach people out in the world. You could market, you could do press, you could just have things that people get so excited about, they just talk about it. You're trying to make sure your company is set up right. You know, what bank account do I use? Use what credit card ramp, you know, should you use, you know, to help make sure your, your business operates really well and efficiently, whatever. And so I actually think that there is a playbook where there are certain things where if you focus on first core principles, make something people want. You know, try to hire really great people, but give people clarity in their focus.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Spend a lot of time just measuring, evaluating results and trying to make a little bit of consistent progress. I think that's really a lot of it. And of course you can get into like, how do you do great marketing? How do you think about great finance? How do you, whatever, and lots of little products. But I, I think that the, the core principles of how to build a great business have, have really started to get very well understood. I think over the past 30 years.

• 50:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's absolutely incredible. When you talk to a potential customer, what's like the pitch for ramp? Like if you just, if I cut this and it's like, here's the 30 second pitch, like what is the pitch to a customer?

• 50:37Speaker 02

  So I, I'll, I'll give you two versions, right? So one, let's say if you're a smaller, a mid-sized business and they're very different and it can get more interesting. So I think that if you're a smaller, like someone just getting started, it's like you're required by law to have expense management for, you know, taxable reporting. You can't audit it, even just good hygiene. You want to make sure that if you have rigor with what you spend, that will compound into what else you do as, as a company. And I think somebody asked, it's like, look, what would you pay for the, you know, the highest rated and best expense management software in the world? The software you have to use.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Great. How's, how's free? How does that sound for you? It's the highest rated, it's free. Oh, and by the way, what if it paid you money? What if it got you cash back? What if it helped you actually spend less? Great. What if it actually helped automate your accounting? What if it helped make sure you can, you can get rid of three sets of softwares that don't really work very well? Replace, replace your credit card, replace expense management software, replace your bill payment software. Get really space age stuff like all, you know, ramp is the only credit card in the world where you can just block a merchant if you want to do that. Your credit card works everywhere. You can turn a merchant off. No other credit card can do that. You get amazing capabilities. Why wouldn't you want it? And so for a lot of people, it's, it's look, we, we grow as a business and make money when you do too. This is software that every business needs.

• 51:59Speaker 02

  We'd love to go to work for you. And so I think that that's the, the core one. And for anyone who's thinking about it, ramp.com/pump.

• 52:06Anthony Pompliano?

  They've been putting it in the chat here.

• 52:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Telling people to go and they can get some.

• 52:11Speaker 02

  What do they get when they go here? Yeah, so one first, you know, we it's a corporate card and so you know, once you're approved, it is a card where you have limits, you know, all small is 10,000, you know, as high as $10 million per month that you can use to go go buy things, cash back, all that kind of stuff. If you use this link, it's a $500 signup offer, so you get $500 off your first statement.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  And all the other software, you know, that that comes with ramp. So it's if you use Slack, there's Slack integrations, there's integrations with HR software, with accounting software. We do a lot in terms of just helping make making running a business easier. When you start getting to larger businesses, really, it's it shifts from specific products. If you want a world-class credit card, you want great expense management software to we are really focused on helping automate finance and we are trying to drive an increase to your bottom line is really what it's about. For them, they're past the point, they have credit cards, they have expense management software, they have accounting, but it's really broken. I think for a lot of people, once you've worked at a big company, it's like, I hate

• 53:22Speaker 02

  the software and cards we're using, but it's sort of it's duct taped together. I know the system, it's all that. And so for a lot of larger businesses, it's finally, it's the change management, it's actually upgrading and helping free people up. So instead of having really smart, you know, accounting finance people, instead of just going a few days per month, going and collecting receipts, chasing people down, they can do strategic finance work to actually help grow the business. And I think on the extreme tier, I think it's all about the just world-class capabilities. On the credit card side, it's the ability to block merchants, the ability to issue one-time cards that can literally only work on specific merchants. It's the collections of receipts automatically.

• 54:02Speaker 02

  We're coming out, you know, we're in beta now with bill payment software that, you know, our customers have been using it, describe it as just insanely great. I mean, all you do is you would upload an invoice or you can forward it from your email.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Ramp automatically through computer vision will pull out all of the info. We create a vendor in your accounting software and on Ramp, we pull the bank account details, the routing information, we pull all the line items and costs and we make it easy to auto schedule a payment and send things out. And so instead of what most companies are doing today, which is you get an invoice, you go type in every individual part of it, you know, it's minutes here, minutes there, times hundreds of invoices. If you can let the computer do that work for you automatically, it's really about giving companies time back and better processes later.

• 54:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. We've never done what I'm about to do, but I just got this idea and we're gonna do it and hopefully people like it. So we have two pairs of these Bitcoin shoes left to give away. We've given away three pairs already. I told everyone that we would, if we kept getting the likes up, we would go ahead and give out the other ones. So the two pairs, here's how we're gonna pick the winner for this, is I'm gonna put in chat an exact thing that you have to tweet, and it says, "I love Ramp." You gotta tag @tryramp and use hashtag #BBSRamp. And then what we'll do is we'll go in and we're gonna pick two people, John's in charge of picking the two people to

• 55:33Anthony Pompliano?

  give the shoes to. And tomorrow at the beginning of the show, we'll tell you who got the two pairs of free Bitcoin shoes. But in order to get entered to win the last two pairs, that's what you gotta do. Real simple. And I feel like the Ramp Twitter account may respond. Sure. Twitter accounts about to be like, dude, what the hell is this nonsense? But if you go there and you tweet that, then we will go ahead and pick, John will pick two people, we'll make sure that we get the shoes. Sound good, John?

• 56:07Speaker 01

  I guess.

• 56:09Speaker 01

  Randomly nominated me.

• 56:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you want Joe to do it?

• 56:11Speaker 01

  Nah, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start giving away stuff and nominating you to pick winners.

• 56:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, that's fine. You, how about you pick one, I pick one?

• 56:17Speaker 01

  No, I'll pick them both.

• 56:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you're selfish.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Tweets are coming in.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Well, that, that makes me in control as well, so.

• 56:22Anthony Pompliano?

  That does, that does, that does put you in control. That's fine. Alright, we're gonna close Eric's ears for a second. What do you guys think about Ramp? By the way, I'm not an investor in the company, I'm not anything. I just think this shit's cool. Right? I wish I invested in the company.

• 56:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Sounds like I gotta get, it sounds like I gotta get Shaq on my side to.

• 56:43Anthony Pompliano?

  The company's so great, you literally gotta know Shaq.

• 56:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that the part to me like after kind of talking to you about it, right? Is it is that insight of like every other credit card company wants to incentivize you to spend more money. You all have figured out how to incentivize people to spend less money. And to me, that is like the the fundamental shift. And when you do that correctly, then you can build a really big business.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I think I think just going back to like mission and focus. Over time, it just becomes a collection of people. It's your customer basic ecosystem. It's very hard to change course. And I think like big companies are almost like a cruise ship where they're very hard to turn. You can't really change what it's about. And I think the mission really matters. And most not most, I think, I think in financial services, a heavy percentage, maybe the majority, are not aligned with their customers. And I think that customers often know it and they're trying to outsmart or get a better deal.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  You know, these businesses and these businesses too, sorry, are trying to outsmart their their customers and trying to be more profitable. And it is crazy that when you you actually say, forget it, like, I want to be aligned. I actually want to do what is in the best interest of customers and actually line up my my bottom line to that, the different things that people build. I mean, we are so much younger than than most of our other competitors, but we built a lot more features that actually save people days in their work, that actually save people money. And it's shocking that that companies that are hundreds of years old have never done this. All they've done is said like, look, like, here's some points and, you know, you can go to these fancy hotels and don't look at the fact that I'm, you know, everything is huge inflation in points

• 58:33Speaker 02

  and it's worth less and less each year.

• 58:37Speaker 02

  That's the innovation. You get more points and things like that instead of, you know, look, like, it's great to get 1% back, but it's a whole lot better to not spend $100 in the first place. It's 100 times better. And you can do a lot more if you set the right mission and aligned focus out.

• 58:52Anthony Pompliano?

  I I forget who said this to me, but they said it just like the light bulb went off. They said, uh, everyone spends all this time trying to trick the credit card companies. Like they literally have a hundred thousand engineers across all the companies sitting there trying to trick you. Right? Like, like, like, do you really think you're smarter than all the machine learning and data scientists? Like, they're gonna get you, right? And so rather align yourself with somebody who's obviously trying to get you. Align yourself with somebody who says, look, our whole goal is to save you money.

• 59:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, and I think that's it's, uh, I don't know. I I saw, I saw the Twitter thread you had a couple of days ago. I almost, I almost want to ask how many points you have that are, you know, just sitting and yeah, I'm happy to go.

• 59:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I got, I think I'm gonna get rid of them.

• 59:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you shouldn't use them.

• 59:32Anthony Pompliano?

  I was convinced to get rid of it because of the inflation. I don't think I, and look, I, you know, I tend to pretend to at least be somewhat sophisticated. Uh, and I started looking at the inflation levels of the credit card points. And I was like, actually, I think that we should start an entire movement for everyone to spend their credit card points immediately.

• 59:49Speaker 02

  Right away.

• 59:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, the only thing worse than US dollar inflation is credit card point inflation, right? We should break down, one day, uh, next week, we should break down the actual credit card point inflation. It was scary.

• 59:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, all right, the points thing, like, let's, uh, let's maybe try something else.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:00:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So, uh, any last thoughts from you guys?

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  No, thanks for doing this, Eric.

• 1:00:08Anthony Pompliano?

  This was ramp.com/pomp. Go, uh, go check it out. And then, um, anything that people can do to help you guys right now? Are you guys hiring or anything?

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  We are, I think, I think today we have actually, um, we're hiring for 50 roles right now across every, like, everything, which is great. We're, we're trying our best to do everything we can, but across really every role and skill set. Engineering, product design, marketing, sales, um, you name it. I mean, if you're, um, I think the other, you ask about advice for people, if you want to start companies. I think the other advice is like, if there's a company that's really working well, um, go join it. If a company is, is doubling every three, six months, you name it, it's an incredible place to learn, a good place to get opportunities. And so we'd love to, um, if you're interested, um, ramp.com/careers, um, or shoot me a note on Twitter. I'll make sure my DMs are open.

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  If you know any business owners. If you are a business owner, if you know of someone in a finance team is a little bit overworked, it'd mean a lot. You know, all we, you know, we really try to work incredibly hard to actually save our customers money and time. And so we'd love to go to work for you or anyone you care about. And look, if you have creative ideas, want to reach out, I'm here. I really enjoy this.

• 1:01:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I gotta ask, because they're going nuts in the chat. We ask everybody, what's your Bitcoin price prediction by the end of the year?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I, you know, I try to stay out of the prediction because look, I've been, I've been holding and I've been, been hodling since 2013. So one of the, I think, with the last company, we ended up doing this giveaway with Coinbase where effectively we gave away 50 Bitcoin. I hope everyone, this was in 2015. I hope everybody kept it.

• 1:01:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You gave away 50 Bitcoin in 2014?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was 2015.

• 1:01:56Anthony Pompliano?

  2015, you gave away 50 Bitcoin for your company for what?

• 1:01:59Speaker 02

  So this was crazy. This was actually back in, this was in September of 2015. I can try to find this, but at the time Coinbase still a startup and they could just raise money and they, Bitcoin had crashed in price. I think it was around $200 per coin. And Coinbase was doing this giveaway where there was a referral program where if you referred somebody to sign up for Coinbase and they bought $101 of Bitcoin, they would give you, the referrer, $75. Our company at the time was all about saving people money. And so we reached out to Coinbase to say, we've got lots of people who love saving money. We think cryptocurrency is fascinating, is great. People should know about it.

• 1:02:44Speaker 02

  Would you be comfortable if we split, if we split the refunds or if we said, look, like, you know, you can instantly make 3750. If you buy, if you buy a Bitcoin, a few days later, we'll get 75, we'll, we'll send, send you over half and that's it. And a lot of people did, you know, it turned out, you know, a lot of people, they were like, sure, let's go for it and whatever. And so it ended up being, I think on the order of 50 Bitcoin that, that were given out. So look, I, I think Bitcoin is incredible. Beyond it to you, I think, you know, though, though Ramp doesn't, doesn't, you know, today operate in the cryptocurrency space, I think we watch it closely, we think it's fascinating. And look, if it becomes a great way to, whether it's to hold or, or even a mechanism to help

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  companies be more efficient, that's what we're about and focused on and we'll keep our eyes on it.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  I love it. Just to confirm, you've been holding Bitcoin since 2013?

• 1:03:40Anthony Pompliano?

  John is our resident like Wonder Man.

• 1:03:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Rewind tape there for a second. All right, well, listen, thank you so much for coming and doing this. This is absolutely fantastic. Everyone go to ramp.com/pomp, go check it out. We're, we're big fans here and I think you guys will enjoy it as well.