Fintech has experienced a meteoric rise in the past five years. According to CB Insights, startups in the category have secured over $350 million in VC funding between 2019 and 2023. However, despite this impressive growth, Eric Glyman, co-founder and CEO of Ramp, believes that the industry and companies like his are only scratching the surface.
As quickly as we’ve grown, in our largest market of cards, we still have 99% plus of the market to go. So some of this is actually just, we want to bring the magic to more companies [so that] expenses can be effortless accounting, you know, can be radically simpler. – Eric Glyman
During a recent appearance on the TechCrunch Found podcast, Glyman explained that even with Ramp’s success as a unicorn corporate card and expense startup, they have only tapped into a mere 1% of their potential market share.
Glyman and his co-founder, Karim Atiyeh, have been building fintech startups since before the recent hype cycle. In 2014, they launched their first fintech startup, Paribus, which used AI to generate emails for users to send to stores in order to request a price adjustment if an item they bought went on sale. The company was acquired by Capital One after raising just $2 million.
As the market for fintechs has shifted over the past decade, Glyman has experienced first-hand the changes in building and fundraising for such a company.
Glyman also discussed AI technology and its evolution since the early days of Paribus. He stated that while the AI technology used to generate emails for Paribus was relatively rudimentary, the AI tech stack for Ramp looks drastically different.
It’s really profound, I would say, I think a decade ago, you would use it in hyper-targeted use cases to today, I don’t think there’s a part of Ramp that isn’t affected in some way, by AI, and I think it’s gonna keep accelerating. – Eric Glyman
When it comes to scaling, Glyman shared how Ramp strategizes and approaches expansion into new categories. The company aims to fill in the gaps and cracks that still exist in their customers’ expense processes, as well as address emerging needs. However, they acknowledge that there is still a long road ahead.
If we do it right, we think and hope that work will feel purposeful, never tedious, monotonous, but strategic, insightful and actionable to focus on the high leverage and creative stuff. So that’s what we’re trying to work on. And it’s been a lot of fun getting there. – Eric Glyman
Ramp, founded in 2019 and based in New York, has already secured over $1.7 billion in venture capital funding and was valued at $5.8 billion in August 2023.
