A new financing has doubled the valuation of the company to $8.1 billion.
The Information reported on the raise and new valuation in February.
The approaching decacorn valuation is quite remarkable given that less than a year ago, Ramp had just reached unicorn status with a $115 million round. It raised $300 million in August of last year.
The firm has led a round for Ramp four times. It is not uncommon for a firm to participate in multiple rounds for a startup, but it is rare to see one firm lead four equity financings for a company in such a short amount of time. New York-based Ramp came out of the shadows in February 2020 with a corporate card offering.
The founder of the fund told the website that he was in the business of funding exceptional founders as early as possible.
He said that Ramp was an example where we invested early then continued to double down as we saw the rapid speed of execution and unprecedented customer adoption.
The new raise follows a year of impressive growth. Eric Glyman, the CEO and co-founder, did not reveal hard revenue figures, but he did say that Ramp saw a 10x increase in revenue in 2021.
The latest equity financing brought in all of the major existing backers.
Major existing investors really drove the raise and just saw the progress and wanted to double down to make sure we are well set up to be leaning in and pushing.
General Catalyst, Avenir Growth Capital, 137 Ventures, and Declaration Partners joined those firms in backing the startup. The company received $300 million in debt from Citibank and another $150 million from Goldman Sachs.
The February 2020 launch of Ramp has changed a lot. While the company started out focused on small- to medium-sized businesses, it now works with businesses of all sizes. More than 5,000 businesses use Ramp to make payments. Its customer base is up 7x and its growth is up 15x. Glyman said that his larger customers spend in excess of $10 million a month with Ramp.
It took us over two years to reach 10,000 cumulative cardholders, and now we are adding many in a month.
The goal of the startup is to help companies automate their finances. Last year, Ramp made its first acquisition when it picked up negotiation-as-a-service startup Buyer with the goal of helping its customers save money on their contracts. In October of last year, it began offering integrated automated bill payments for all of its customers, and earlier this year it expanded into the travel segment.
Ramp expands into travel as the corporate spend category goes horizontal
The partnership with Amazon for Business was announced earlier this month and it allows customers to connect their Amazon Business account to Ramp and then whenever an employee uses one of its cards to make a purchase, Ramp automatically pulls the receipt.
If a customer wants to attach or move certain line items to different parts of their general ledger, they can do it with full itemized level detail. It is free for the customer. Several thousand of its customers use it.
The company has tripled its workforce in the past year and is currently in the process of opening a new office in Miami.
After the sale of online price tracker Paribus to Capital One in 2016, college friends Glyman and Atiyeh founded Ramp, their second venture in the spend management industry.
Ramp plans to use its new capital to scope out more M&A opportunities. It also plans to invest in its software and go into new industries.
We are leaning heavily into full automation of receipts, expenses, and all processes related to running a business, according to Glyman.
interchange fees from card-based payments are Ramp's biggest source of revenue. The volume of bill payments doubled every month in the year 2021, according to Glyman.
We aren't generating revenue through that today, but it speaks to Ramp growing into a full-fledged financing platform.
Over the past two years, Ramp claims to have delivered more than $135 million in savings for its customers and that its software automated over 3.5 million hours of work for businesses.
We are here to help businesses run more lean and efficiently. Continue capture for Ramp as a business will follow if we do that first.
The number of startups doing different things is growing fast. In January, Brex announced a $300 million raise at a $12.3 billion valuation. Airbase, which recently received a strategic investment from American Express, is dependent on making money off its software rather than on interchange fees. The CEO told me that he sees software as a form of revenue. The first focus of TripActions was on travel. There are newer startups emerging. Many agree that Glean AI is not a winner-takes-all space, considering that the number of companies needing spend management offerings is also.
To Glyman, the advantage of Ramp for finance teams is that it has rules automations that are built for a variety of functions, from card reimbursements to bill payments.
He said it was a huge convenience factor for customers.
The image is called Ramp.
Several companies are tackling point solutions for finance organizations such as corporate card issuance.
Rak is unique in its vision to save teams time and money by building the future of the end-to-end CFO suite.
Ramp is still investing in other startups. The self-proclaimed mission of Pluto is to build a ramp for the Middle East. There are a few others that have not been publicly disclosed yet.
Glyman said that they only back companies where they see a strategic opportunity.
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