How AI can help build smarter systems for every team with Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh of Ramp
Aug 15, 2024
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Join Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh, co-founders of Ramp, a cutting-edge fintech company, as they share insights from their entrepreneurial journey. They discuss how AI is revolutionizing operations across teams, enhancing productivity from sales to marketing. The duo highlights innovative uses of AI, such as their creation of internal podcasts from customer interactions. They also dive into the challenge of balancing technology with creativity and the importance of adapting marketing strategies in this AI-driven landscape.
Ramp aims to simplify financial processes for businesses by analyzing spending habits and reducing unnecessary redundancies in expenses.
The company leverages AI technologies to automate financial operations, improving efficiency and allowing finance teams to focus on strategic tasks.
By applying generative AI to understand customer feedback, Ramp enhances product offerings and transforms internal marketing communications effectively.
Deep dives
Origins and Evolution of RAM
RAM co-founders Eric and Kareem discuss the company's origins, starting from their previous venture, Paribus, which utilized AI to help consumers claim price drop refunds. They transitioned to RAM to focus on the business market, identifying that organizations sorely needed better oversight of their spending habits. Instead of leveraging traditional credit card incentives like points and cash back, RAM emphasizes cost reduction and efficiency by urging users to spend less outright. Today, RAM serves around 25,000 businesses by providing innovative solutions to simplify financial processes, aiming to create 'self-driving money' that automates necessary tasks without manual intervention.
Addressing Business Spending Waste
Eric and Kareem highlight how successful companies often become increasingly wasteful as they grow, leading to unnecessary redundancies in spending. They noticed many growing businesses paid for multiple overlapping software tools without realizing the duplication of payments. RAM seeks to tackle this issue by analyzing clients' credit card statements to expose duplicative expenses and optimize spending, thus saving organizations significant amounts every year. Their solutions strive to empower businesses by automating processes, reducing time spent on expense management, and increasing overall efficiency.
The Role of AI in Financial Services
RAM actively adopts AI technologies to enhance its operational capabilities, such as automating receipt organization and ensuring transaction categorization. By focusing on understanding user context, RAM utilizes AI to streamline workflows, assist in making optimal financial decisions, and minimize tedious tasks that traditionally burden finance professionals. Their approach encompasses providing tools that analyze various financial aspects, allowing for greater clarity and peace of mind in decision-making. This results in faster transaction processing and reduces stress for financial operators concerned about anomalies like fraud.
Redefining Productivity in Financial Operations
The discussion centers around how RAM positions itself as a productivity company rather than merely a fintech firm, focusing primarily on saving time and enhancing efficiency for finance departments. As organizations grow, finance teams are often required to do more with fewer resources, which is where RAM’s tools come into play, enabling them to function effectively with limited staff. By automating various financial operations, such as expense reporting and procurement processes, RAM allows finance professionals to focus more on strategic tasks rather than repetitive chores. This orientation toward productivity aligns with the evolving landscape of finance jobs, with a clear need for higher-value contributions.
Embracing Innovation and Future Directions
The conversation emphasizes RAM's commitment to innovation as they leverage generative AI not only in product development but also in understanding customer sentiment and experiences. By applying AI to analyze customer feedback and experiences, they can better understand their clients’ needs and enhance their offerings. This forward-thinking approach includes the potential to transform internal marketing communications, enabling quick iterations of content that are still aligned with brand objectives. As RAM continues to adapt and refine its offerings, the ambition is to create a framework that allows for seamless and intuitive interactions across all financial services it delivers.
In this episode of No Priors, hosts Sarah and Elad are joined by Ramp co-founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh of Ramp. The pair has been working to build one of the fastest growing fintechs since they were teenagers. This conversation focuses on how Ramp engineers have been building new systems to help every team from sales and marketing to product. They’re building best-in-class SaaS solutions just for internal use to make sure their company remains competitive. They also get into how AI will augment marketing and creative fields, the challenges of selling productivity, and how they’re using LLMs to create internal podcasts using sales calls to share what customers are saying with the whole team.
