2022 was a tumultuous year for many fintech startups. But for Ramp, it was a year of opportunity.
The company shared today that it saw its revenue grow by 4x last year, buoyed by what co-founder and CEO Eric Glyman describes as a desire on the part of companies of all sizes and stages seeking to save money by managing their spend better.
“During one of the most rapid raises of interest rates we’ve really seen in U.S. history and with the cost of capital gone up, companies realized they need to make the most of every dollar,” he said.
Last July, Ramp revealed that it had crossed $100 million in annualized revenue before its third birthday in March of that year. Glyman this week declined to share updated revenue figures, noting only that business continued to grow — led by its fastest-growing segment of bill pay.
Notably, the executive also claimed that the startup — which has secured $670 million in equity financing and $700 million in committed debt funding since its 2019 inception — still has “the vast majority of [equity] funds” it has “ever received” still on its balance sheet.
It has intentionally remained lean, currently operating with 464 staffers and has not conducted any layoffs.
Ramp is not yet profitable as it is focused on growth while aiming to be efficient, Glyman said.
“We’ve grown our contribution to profit and our bottom line even faster,” he told TechCrunch.
Over time, Ramp said it has helped its customers cut expenses by over $400 million. It counts over 15,000 businesses as customers with “well into hundreds of thousands of users” and is onboarding about 1,000 users per day.
Like some of its competitors in the space such as Brex and Navan (formerly TripActions), Ramp says it is working with increasingly larger companies. So while the majority of its customers are mid-market businesses, it is attracting more late-stage private companies, such as Attentive, as well as publicly traded ones like EventBrite. Other customers include Betterment, Waymo, Deel, Webflow, Barry’s Bootcamp, Caraway, TaskRabbit and Quora.
Glyman says Ramp supports a “wide variety” of businesses including tequila brand 818, airlines, farms, manufacturers and even steel mills. He also believes its boost in business was due in part to actions of its competitors. For example, Brex infamously announced last summer it would stop working with small businesses and nonfunded startups.
“We think that our customers evaluate companies and their character, and what they’ve done, not just at a moment in time, but what they’ve done over the years,” Glyman said. “I think when other players in the market don’t serve companies or change their behavior rapidly, companies will often ask their peers who they recommend.”
Ramp, he added, is not seeking to raise more capital currently.
Meanwhile, other companies in the space continue to expand their offerings. Brex announced last week that it expanded into travel. Besides seeking to snag market share from incumbents such as Concur, Brex is also taking on Navan (formerly called TripActions) — which actually started its business focused on travel expense management before broadening its offering — and Ramp, which itself expanded into travel last year with a tool that gives employees the ability to book with third parties. In February, Navan claimed to be the first travel company to integrate OpenAI and ChatGPT APIs across its infrastructure and product set.
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Fintech Roundup: The gloves are off in the spend management space
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