Ramp raises $300M

https://ramp.com/blog/ramp-finance-automation-platform

by zuhayeer • 5 years ago

63 47 5 years ago

In January 2021, they would not let me create virtual cards for my consulting business because I did not have a $250K cash balance in my business bank account. The Ramp support guy said he didn’t know of any similar service that did not have such a requirement. After that I discovered Stripe easily provided that service for my business with no threshold at all and wrote back to let him know and he was very surprised I could get that without even having a Stripe merchant account.

ejstronge• 5 years ago

Did they let you open an account before imposing this limit?

When I was looking into using them, I noted the $250,000 limit for new accounts but I'm not sure if they were always structured this way.

stephenhuey2• 5 years ago

No, I completed the application process but they rejected me.

sebmellen• 5 years ago

https://Privacy.com also has a great “Team” account.

arthurcolle3• 5 years ago

That is a crazy high requirement. I am planning on moving to Miami and they need evidence that I've had >3 months rent in the account for 3 months. Who keeps that much money in a checking account?

Terretta3• 5 years ago

Everyone should work towards being able to keep minimum 6 mos of burn in their checking account. Ideally more.

iancarroll• 5 years ago

I use https://mercury.com for this and it is great; I have a card for each SaaS app with their own limits. Just a standard debit card so no credit complexity.

sandstrom• 5 years ago

Out of curiosity, anyone who knows how they're making money?

Their pricing pages says that everything is $0 (free).

https://ramp.com/pricing

randtrain34• 5 years ago

Guessing it's from interchange, similar to most credit card providers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchange_fee

rognjen• 5 years ago

3. Sharing Data

(TL;DR: they also probably earn money from your data)

We share Personal Data with Third-Party Service Providers or as requested by a Company or its Employees. We also share Personal Data with regulators, law enforcement, financial services providers, or other authorized third parties as required by law.
We may reasonably transform Personal Data into De-identified Data by anonymizing it or by aggregating or combining it with other data to mask its relation to particular individuals. De-Identified Data is no longer Personal Data and we may use De-Identified Data and share it publicly or with third parties without your permission.
We may add or change how or when we use affiliates or third parties to process Personal Data without notifying you, except that any use of Personal Data will be consistent with this Privacy Policy.

https://ramp.com/privacy-policy

ninjastar992• 5 years ago

Really big fan of this company. Saved our team a huge amount of accounting time in the first week alone, and on-boarding was super easy (less than 48 hours and we were running).

cdolan• 5 years ago

I'll bite - how did they save you a bunch of time in the first week? And how much time are we talking?

ninjastar992• 5 years ago

We converted from Amex Platinum Business and Chase Ink to Ramp. Before Ramp, each of our team members had one corporate card, and had to submit documentation for each charge on their card monthly - what it was for, which project it was in relation to, etc.

With Ramp, we can instantly create multiple cards per staff member, so they have one card per project we're working on. Our accounting group then immediately knows how to categorize that expense (because that card is ONLY used for that project), and Ramp reminds our staff to forward along the receipt (which it automatically links to the transaction). Our accounting group doesn't have to lift a finger.

It makes the whole process completely mindless, whereas before it was filled with lots of busy work to keep our accounting clean and organized.

The fact that it's free is icing on the cake. Big fan.

ErikVandeWater• 5 years ago

Went to their website. Their demo video starts by saying

Ramp is the only spend management platform that helps you spend less.

Am I the only one extremely put off by this? You can have your puffery about how you're the best, but don't insult my intelligence.

I'm also instinctively cautious about "AI" powered accounting. The way the AI powered receipt recognition is presented makes the AI seem much more powerful than it probably is. I highly doubt you could get it to recognize a crumpled receipt. If users believe the AI is actually that good they are likely to post transactions without checking them, creating headache down the line.

kyleee3• 5 years ago

You are not supposed to think twice about the Marketing Department lies; the wager is that more people are attracted by the Trump style bravado than those who are turned off by it.

Would be nice if that calculus changed, though

tjs8rj• 5 years ago

It might be a marketing failure, or you’re just not the target customer. If they’re targeting startups with runaway spending problems, “...the only X that helps you spend less” sounds super appealing.

At the end of the day, all that matters is the solution, how it works, and how it applies to and benefits you getting conveyed is all that matters

lupire4• 5 years ago

Businesses don't like smart customers.

etaioinshrdlu• 5 years ago

Well, what really matters in finance are the financials. What is the cash back % on this card, and do they have effectively a revolving loan, like my Amex and Chase cards?

corkill• 5 years ago

1.5% cash back.

The difference with Ramp is they are connected to your business bank account and can automatically increase your limit as you grow vs traditional companies like AMEX that require you to manually submit your financials and go through review etc. Also just in general better UI/UX and support etc.

We moved to Ramp as AMEX was unable to scale our limit fast enough.

burlesona• 5 years ago

FWIW we use Ramp at CoSell and really like it. As an admin it makes life easy, and I’ve found that issuing every employee a company card is super nice. The expense reporting is especially nice, no need for expensify etc. Happy to answer questions if anyone has any.

itin• 5 years ago

Can someone please explain to me the strategy behind raising 4 rounds within 12 months? Doesn't really make sense to me besides chasing the hype

paxys• 5 years ago

VC money (and money in general) is cheap and plentiful right now. The "strategy" is to take all you can while this environment lasts.

aetherspawn• 5 years ago

The full width marquee on the home page is a neat design trick, once or twice, but there's 5 of them or more! Madness madness madness

agrocrag• 5 years ago

Has anyone switched from Brex to Ramp? Or vice versa? I’m having trouble understanding any significant differences between them other than competing on cash back.

purplepatrick• 5 years ago

Remarkable — all that without explaining anywhere what a “corporate card” is. Is it a debit card (debits immediately)? Or a delayed debit card (debits at month end)? Or a credit card (credit balance up to a specified limit)?

And why do they brag about “no credit checks”? Brex already tried that in the beginning. That’s really only a thing for businesses so small that they definitely do not need a corporate credit card (and who are bad at picking banks). I scaled a startup to 100 people and had 0 need for issuing cards to employees…

But all of these companies seems to do really well, so there must be plenty of demand…

randoma2• 5 years ago

People at Ramp are not pleasant from my experience, go with Brex. High ego from social media, bad execution. And no im not from Brex, I wanted to use Ramp and never got a response from their high brow new grad PM who wouldn't care to explain what makes them different from Brex. Avoid douchebag companies, have had a great experience with Brex.

Ramp raises $300M

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