🔎 Spotlight #20: Inside Ramp
The finance automation platform rewriting how companies spend, save, and operate.
The founding story: rebuilding corporate finance from first principles
Ramp was founded in 2019 by Eric Glyman, Karim Atiyeh, and Gene Lee in New York City. Before Ramp, Glyman and Atiyeh built Paribus, a price-tracking tool that was acquired by Capital One. At Capital One, they saw a recurring problem across companies of all sizes. Businesses were drowning in bloated spend, messy expense reports, outdated cards, and little visibility into where their money was going.
The insight was simple. If you can help a business track spending more efficiently, you can help it run more efficiently. That became Ramp. A corporate card and finance automation platform built to help companies spend less, automate more, and run smarter.
Ramp grew fast by positioning itself as the opposite of traditional corporate cards. Instead of encouraging spend, it set out to eliminate waste. For finance teams, Ramp became both a cost-saving engine and an operational toolset, not just another card in a wallet.
What Ramp actually does
Ramp is a modern finance automation platform built to help companies control spending, close their books faster, and run finance with far less manual work. Think of it as a unified command center for everything related to spending.
Here’s what Ramp helps companies with:
Corporate cards
Custom spend limits, auto categorization, real-time alerts, and built-in compliance.
Bill pay automation
OCR for invoices, automated approvals, faster payment workflows.
Expense management
Receipt matching, policy enforcement, and automated coding.
Procurement and vendor management
Automated intake forms, workflows, and vendor renewals.
Accounting automation
Integrations with QuickBooks, Netsuite, Xero, and others, plus automated reconciliation.
Savings insights
AI-generated suggestions that help companies reduce spend across software, travel, and vendors.
Ramp’s whole philosophy is centered around giving finance teams leverage. Instead of juggling ten different tools, everything sits in one place, with automation doing the heavy lifting.
Funding and team at a glance
💰 Raised more than $2.2B USD to date from Founders Fund, Coatue, Thrive, Redpoint, and Stripe
🦄 Valued at over $32B USD
👥 3000+ employees across engineering, go-to-market, and operations
🌎 HQ in New York City with a growing remote workforce
🖥️ Website: ramp.com
The competition and how Ramp compares
Ramp operates in one of the most competitive categories in tech. Key players include:
Brex
Strong in startups and scale-ups. Focus on spend management and travel.
Airbase
More of an accounting and bill-pay heavy platform that appeals to mid-market finance teams.
Navan (formerly TripActions)
Travel first, spend second, but still a major player.
Float
A Canadian player, one that I’ve actually done a spotlight on. Focused on SMBs in the Canadian market.
Where Ramp stands apart:
Cost savings focus
Ramp markets itself as a savings tool first, card second. Their insights engine is a real differentiator.
Automation depth
They automate more of the close process than anyone else in the category.
Procurement workflows
A major edge as companies try to unify spend, intake, approvals, and vendor management.
Breadth of product
Ramp is trying to become the all-in-one financial operating system for companies, not just a spend tool.
Most importantly, Ramp’s UX is extremely clean. Finance teams love tools that get out of the way and just work, and Ramp has built a product that feels like it belongs in 2025, not 2010.
What Ramp is doing with investing and treasury: new partnership with Apex
Ramp recently announced a major step into the world of corporate investing through a partnership with Apex, and this move tells you exactly where the company is heading. Together, they unveiled a digital investing solution that helps businesses earn stronger returns on idle cash, all while staying inside the Ramp ecosystem.
The idea is simple. Most companies sit on cash that earns very little in traditional accounts. Ramp and Apex want to change that by giving finance teams easy access to automated investing options that align with their risk profile. Instead of manually moving money across accounts or juggling separate tools, businesses can now manage working capital, payments, spend, and returns in one place.
What stands out most is how seamless Ramp is trying to make this. The product handles liquidity needs, surfaces insights on optimal cash allocation, and helps companies make better decisions without extra operational overhead.
The launch of Ramp Agents
Another big update from Ramp is the introduction of Ramp Agents, a new automation layer designed to take on repetitive finance tasks that normally slow teams down. This is not a simple workflow builder. Ramp Agents act more like smart assistants that watch for patterns, surface recommendations, and trigger actions on behalf of finance teams.
Ramp describes Agents as a way to give finance teams leverage. Instead of spending hours chasing receipts, categorizing transactions, or fixing errors in accounting systems, Agents handle these tasks in the background. They look for inconsistencies, route items to the right people, and help maintain clean books without manual work.
The interesting part is how proactive these Agents are. They do not just respond to tasks. They help flag risks, catch issues before they become real problems, and keep everything running smoothly. Think of it like having a junior analyst who works 24 hours a day, never gets tired, and keeps improving.
This is another sign that Ramp is moving deeper into automation and intelligence. With spend controls, procurement, accounting automation, treasury, and now Agents, Ramp is slowly shaping itself into a platform that handles the heavy lifting for modern finance teams.
My take
Ramp is one of the most impressive operational platforms in modern SaaS. They have a clear vision, fast execution, and a product that solves painful problems for finance teams. What I like most is that Ramp isn’t trying to be flashy. They’re practical, precise, and deeply focused on saving time and money for businesses.
Funny enough, I’ve interviewed with them a few years ago for a Growth role in their NYC office. Super competitive process, and although I didn’t get the role, I could tell that the team moved at a rapid pace and was packed with a ton of smart individuals.
If you care about automation, enterprise-grade UX, or the future of cost control in tech, Ramp is one of the best case studies out there. They’ve already reshaped how companies think about finance workflows, and they’re not slowing down. Would also be a sick place to work!
🧭 Ramp Roles
These are some pretty cool roles at Ramp in the moment. Although not much, I encourage you to keep in tune with future LaunchPad job posts to see any new exciting roles that pop up at Ramp and many other cool firms!
That’s a wrap on Spotlight #20
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! I hope these spotlights help you discover companies worth your time, and make the job hunt feel just a little bit less overwhelming. Keep an eye out for next Tuesday’s LaunchPad job drop, and if you know someone looking to break into tech or level up, feel free to share this with them too.
Here’s to building something cool, or better yet, joining something cool. 🚀
