I built a billion dollar company in 18 months

25:04They said, we'll take over that Macy's. You don't need to underwrite each customer. We as the bank can do that for you. and that was the start of it. What would they do if you didn't pay? It was a loan, and so it was whatever banks normally do. Maybe they could go and take the good, but it just was a loan. Did credit bureaus exist then? This was before credit bureaus. So what do you do if someone didn't pay? I think that was why they had the local bankers. They would go and work. I think they would try to collect for a lot of years, but this is like early 1900s banking. The part where you're getting to was by the time I think Bank of America was the biggest, certainly the biggest bank in the US, it might've been the biggest bank in the world.

25:44It was just enormous, enormous scale. And I think the town, I want to say it was Fremont. And so this was in the fifties. And I think that it was something like 60 % or 70 % of everybody who lived in this town were customers of Bank of America. And, you know, if you were going to a department store, they had this branch that you could go and go to. But, you know, if you were going to like, you know, any random, you know, hard goods store, you couldn't get a loan for it. And so they took this bet and they said, let's just get the rest of the town. Let's get everybody and we're going to send you cards.

26:19I think they mailed everybody in the town. It was like a four or five digit card. And you could go use this and you could say, put it on my card. And you would go and pay the bank back later. and it just exploded. Suddenly, almost everyone in the town became customers and people were using it all the time. People, once they got access to credit, started being able to afford more things. And it was good for merchants too. Merchants who couldn't access and couldn't get a branch to come in could start to compete with the large department stores that could. And it gave rise to the Bank of Merit card.

26:55And so the initial credit card was Bank of Merit card, once they showed as successful went to their competitor banks or regional banks and saying, I will run this program for you. We can issue Bank of America cards for the Commerce Bank of Seattle. You can issue it to your customers and we will deal with the operations, collecting from the stores, doing the underwriting, all that kind of stuff. So it was a franchise model. It wasn't the model that it was today. Is credit a uniquely American thing? I think there's a good argument to say yes. And some of it comes back to that early 1900s kind of lineage, where as this was going on, you saw the birth of the American consumer, where you have department stores, cars, automobiles, and you saw financing for the emerging middle class.

27:44I would say in Europe, even to this day, you see this very different behavior. Yeah, like for example, they put way more down when they buy a home. And this is exactly it. But Americans are very accepting of borrowing and debt. You know, and I think that's the perverse way to say it. I think the non-polite way to say it is like, you know, in Europe, if you're rich, you can borrow. And if you're not paying cash, that's all you can do. And I think it's actually much harder for people who aren't in the middle class who are poor, you know, to borrow. In the U.S., people, you know, it's this view of you can kind of pick yourself up by your own bootstrings.

28:22things um you know you can go and you know borrow for that car or for that farm equipment or that laundry machine so you can go and build your business and go into it and so i think there's a lot of good that comes with it obviously sometimes there's there's some bad people can get into credit issues but i think on net you know most businesses it takes it's the startup costs are real but once you get going you can build an extraordinary business i listen to founders all the time and like i was listening to the lizatica episode and i'm really fascinated with building a company that can last for 50 100 200 years like something where god willing i hope this is true but my children want to get involved in some capacity uh and it could last beyond me typically those i think those businesses that do that are not the fastest growing companies I actually agree with the basic physics of what I think David and the Founders Podcast studies and what you're getting at too.

29:21I think to get down to the core of what makes great businesses, it's not like who grew 100 % or 200 % or whatever this year. It's that which businesses can grow 30 % for 30 years. And if you do that, you will be a giant business. That's not what you did. Our view is that we can. And the crazy part is we have grown extraordinarily quickly. We're still just about doubling each year at enormous scale. I think we are 1.5 %-ish of the corporate and small business card market in the US. And so if you just look at the physics of it, even if we were to massively decelerate and start growing 30 % for decades, it's physically possible.

30:06The market is so big. You're sort of like hanging out with like the Illuminati a little bit, where it's like these old money families, because that's what a lot of the banking industry is made up of. Yeah. Because they've been around for 200 years, they've been dealing with money forever. Have you noticed or found anything that you are shocked by, where you're like, if the consumer knew that this is how this setup is, they would be infuriated. There's a lot there in what you're asking. So one, these families, I think that they're focused on doing simple things well and doing it for a very, very, very long time and consistently.

30:43And a lot of these families just don't sell. That's the biggest takeaway from the Founders Podcast is don't sell. Don't fight or interrupt the power of compounding. You want to find a business where you can just compound for a long time. And so I would say when you're just starting out or if you're building, like you're terrified of like losing money or things going sideways, you have real costs, families, friends, things to take care of. And so you don't interrupt the debt. You want to, when things get risky, you sell. But I think a lot of these families just stayed in for a long time. When there was huge, I mean, classically, you'd see a significant recession in the U.S.

31:25every seven to 11 years consistently, a lot of people will sell out at the bottom because they can't take any more pain or they can't take the risk of it going even further. And I think the difference to a lot of these families is they would figure out how could you avoid it? How could you go and stay in? You know, obviously I've never, none of my family had anything like this. And so I also too, I think as a kid was very skeptical of people who grew up It's a lot of money. Running my company, Hampton, it gives me the chance to meet with hundreds of different businesses. And I'm always surprised by how many of them still use spreadsheets, emails, and clunky tools that do not talk to each other.

32:04It's like watching someone build a house with duct tape. So here's my take. Custom software that actually fits your needs isn't just convenient. It's a competitive advantage to transform the way you do business. And that's why you need to know about a no-code platform called Bubble. With Bubble, you can build powerful web and mobile apps by literally dragging and dropping different elements on a screen. No coding required. By the way, I use Bubble on a ton of different apps, including Hampton. And if you want help building something complex on Bubble, you have to bring in ZeroCode. They're the top Bubble agency out there and literally the biggest plugin creator for the platform.

32:41They can build anything, custom portals, SaaS products, and they do it about 10 times faster and cheaper than traditional development. ZeroCode is also all about AI business automation, transforming manual and slow processes into efficient automated ones. So stop cobbling together different tools and solutions and head to ZeroCode.com. That's ZeroCode as in the word zero and then code Q-O-D-E. Again, code is with a Q. And tell them that Sam sent you. One of my favorite biographies is about John Rockefeller. And David Chernow, who's the author, he wrote one on JP Morgan, which I'm going to get to.

33:18and it's fun reading about these old banking families because they're full stories and they're typically nutty you are going to be an old banking family that's kind of like crazy to think about does that mess with you? I think that a lot of the families of the past have done a great job of being involved civically I think that a lot of them have been more upstanding I wouldn't say all of them have been but I do think that But, you know, like I'm in my mid-30s. I don't know that I've thought so far ahead on like a legacy perspective. But yes, Ramp as a company is getting very valuable. But like all my stock is in Ramp.

33:59It's just a certificate. And it's only become valuable because we've built something that makes a lot of people a lot better off. My whole obsession is like, how do we keep doing that for a very long time? And, you know, maybe the money comes with it. But like, that's not why I do it. What was the reason why you did it? So the first company we started was definitely around like, you know, I remember when we were down to like one month of or like a few weeks of savings and like that's it. Fucking the worst, dude. It's the worst. Like a lot of it is. You probably felt that way the whole time. Yeah.

34:32Like that burden. I remember I felt that burden for four years. And you're just working your ass off. The worst. Every weekend. And like it's hard to relate to really like people because you're terrified. It's like, I remember in college I had this girlfriend who cheated on me. And I remember like here. Sorry. Yeah, I remember like, and then she's like, go to the, it was horrible. And like, she would go out and I'm like, I had this like anxiety all the time. Like, fuck, it bothers me. And then when I like started a business, I would remember like checking the bank account all the time. And I'm like, I had that same anxiety.

35:02I'm like, I don't want to look. I don't want to know. I just want to bury my head. I don't want to know. I don't want to be part of this. Yeah. I felt that way for four years. I'm curious if it changed for you too, but like after the sale, like suddenly you have security, right? like your bank account looks a little more more flush you move it out of the student checking account to something more secure you know you're good and then at some point you know it's a hedonic adaptation you get used to it it's just like a number in account and then you have like your same anxieties your same you have the same shit the same stuff all that kind of stuff it's better though it's better it's better but you have similar anxieties but it's not existential you are it is sort of existential but it's not like the baseline happiness of knowing that you're not going to be on the street is makes like you increase the baseline that goes up i agree with all this half the time i listen to founders and i'm like well every time i listen to founders i think i'm gonna i'm gonna own this for 50 or 100 years yeah and then during the day when i'm having a pain in the ass like issue come up i'm like we're gonna set this up so we could flip this thing like it always changes right like your mood yeah your emotions are powerful and do you think you'll run this or have equity in it 50 years from now or would you sell in five or ten years if it was like a no-brainer deal i hope this is the last company i'd ever work on you know i really yeah really you know i uh your partners feel that way yes yeah you know and it's it's one of these things too were like you know i i remember even in the early days of of going through like there was deep pain right if you're if you're growing this quickly you know what certainly got you here won't get you there and i i think that some of what kareem is saying is like look if i'm gonna go through all this pain like he has it doesn't seem like he went through that much pain if i'm like looking at you guys from the outside of course it's always more challenging way more harder than it looks but like when i'm like i don't know 100 million in revenue in in 18 months like that.

37:08Like, yeah, like even though it's hard, you're still winning and that momentum, like that it's really all about dopamine. That makes you feel good. I agree with you. So some of it was like not planning for downside and not solving problems until they hit us in our first business. So in our first business, we had a day when, uh, we lost 75 % of our revenue overnight, vaporized. There were risks that we knew about that we didn't properly manage. Um, and one of the things that ramp that we resolved to do is like cream and I and others are just going to beat the shit out of each other all the time, worrying about problems that are three to six months to a year out in the future.

37:45And so it's true, if you look at kind of ramps trajectory, it has been kind of nonstop growth fairly consistently up and to the right in terms of like the revenue, the cash flow, profitability, all those kind of metrics has been consistently good. But it's because inside of it, there is so much like agony that we spend over like this metric that's going to affect how we perform, uh, in three months from now is not going the wrong way, is not going the right way. What are we doing about it? And so it's a lot of internally, um, beating each other up. Like I often, you know, when, when you look at like, like a, I think the analogy is like an athlete, um, you know, you, you look at like, uh, it was just Wimbledon over the weekend.

38:26Um, and you know, Sinner and Alcaraz, like each of them look like they're playing effortlessly, can pull out these shots you don't imagine. because there's been years and years and years of when you're not looking, they're just obsessing, practicing, trying these shots. So when it counts, they're able to do it. And so I think there's a lot of similarities there. And what I would say is like, you know, for Kareem, it was amplified. He had, you know, he's three kids now. He got started earlier than I did. And he's like, look, these are some of the most valuable, you know, hours I'll ever have. And if we're going to go through this, like, it's going to be because we're going to, the ambition is going to be real.

39:00And if we have a problem, we're going to confront it right away. What do you like to read? I like to read. It's part of why I like the Founders Podcast so much, like biographies of other founders. I like reading about design. Are you a designer? I really like it. The first company, Parabas, I had design and product reported to me. I had to spend a lot of years thinking about the principles of it, what makes products great. And so I love it. I would probably get booted off of our design team. I don't think I have quite the level of talent and crafting, but I definitely spent a lot of time thinking about it.

39:35What biographies? In terms of favorites, or what am I reading now? I mean, you know, it's, I think I probably read, you know, 15 biographies of Steve Jobs. You know, it's, I think as great as people think he is, I think he's still underrated for what he was able to do and how consistently he was able to do it, and I also think that he changed a lot over the years. I think he gets kind of typecasted this, like, brilliant asshole, which like, I think he was at the start of his career, but I think he got much more interesting, um, uh, cared about people, um, in a much deeper way than I think comes across.

40:12Um, uh, and some of that is like, I think people like conflict and people like controversy, but kind of forget, um, to look at his career as he softened over the years. And I think ultimately, I think that's when he built Apple into the powerhouse that it is today. I've been struggling to find biographies where I admire their whole life. yeah have you read um i mean uh just on steve jobs have you read becoming steve jobs i don't remember i've read about two or three of them i forget the titles i did the walter isaacson one that one is good but i think that one is more kind of like pop culture steve jobs it was not when i remember reading that and i'm like i don't want to be this person i don't like him yeah he was very unlikable yeah and that book but what was becoming Steve Jobs?

40:54So the central question of it was examining like who he was over the course of his life. And so effectively, these were journalists, people who covered him for like 40 years and knew him from when he was like the 20-year-old kind of wonderkin to, you know, kind of like end of his life. It came out around the time, I think a few months after the Isaacson. And I think that they felt similarly that so much of who he was portrayed out was like this brilliant trick. And instead, we're trying to focus on how did he change over the course of his life. And I think it's an amazing, amazing read because I think it focuses much more on him or the lessons or the things that shaped and changed his style.

41:33And I would say I really highly recommend that book. There's other great ones too on other aspects. I love Insanely Simple. I love Insanely Great, Steve Levy that's like a lesser read but wonderful book just about just like 15 of them yeah wow yeah so chat gbt has become my life coach yeah and there's like a prompt where it's like I forget exactly what it was but it's like everything you know about me boil it down to one word okay uh and I think I phrased it where I'm like tell me like my issue or my flaw so it's like it's gonna be negative and it I think I said two words and the first one was jealousy and the second one was fear yeah which are very similar um emotions actually i think but it was like rooted in like comparing yourself to other people yeah in new york city it's like so easy to do that and it's like dialed up to attend you're strange to me because you seem like such a you are so successful at such a young age and also you seem emotionally stable those things typically aren't the same you know what i mean a little a little out there yeah you know what i mean yeah and i find that unique and interesting about you?

42:43Look, I'll like compete very aggressively in things that I believe in, don't pretend to be wrong, but like you look back and you're having like a shit day and you're like, all right, I had a bad morning. What does this affect my afternoon at all? You know, I've got a half a day left. Do I want to make a count or not? And I just think the ability to just like stop, catch yourself and reset is really important and is increasingly hard as you kind of get older, but it's super important. And I think some of it was like early experiences, like, you know, my older brother growing up would have like these really strong mood swings and all kinds of things would go on.

43:19And he had different kind of like, you know, learning difficulties and stuff. And, you know, he would take medicine and it would like radically change his mood. And I was like, I remember as a kid, like that was so jarring and weird. Someone could be like, you know, feel a certain way and then suddenly, you know, feel differently. It was strange to see. And then, And, you know, I think as a kid, I don't think I'd fully process the thought, but I remember, you know, I'd get really mad too. Or I'd be going to sleep and I was angry about something. I was like, oh, why am I mad? Maybe I could not be mad.

43:51Does being mad help me or not? That's an interesting, very, very introspective philosophical question to ask. Like, well, why do I feel this way and do I have to? Yeah. Yeah. you know and i you know i i think um you know my brother and i would get in all sorts of fights you'd you know i remember when he like threw like a fork and went into my leg and stuff like that and you know we have three boys in in a house like they're they're probably not as fun as as little girls they do uh more interesting things and i think my our parents would uh my mom was really good it's like all right like uh i'm gonna sit both of you down you're gonna have to go and explain like um you're gonna listen to your brother as he says why he was mad and you get like pissed and you'd want to go whatever and you'd be like you know you have to go say and you say it back to him and then you're gonna say your side and then he's gonna say it back to you it's a super intentional thing to do it was really my parents never would they would have been like you guys just shut up yeah it drove me off the goddamn wall but after long enough is your mom like a was she like a hippie like that's strange like that no that stuff was like that stuff's popular now with that's probably how that's how i'm gonna parent my kid yeah but that's like some gentle parenting like hippy dippy shit which i buy into i mean it was what was her job teacher therapist or something no she sold like telecommunication like that's interesting telecom stuff very forward way to parent good parenting i guess but it teaches you to consider the other side a little bit um and to to calm down you see the complexity of things and then you know later on when you see something chemically change other people it's hard to do it but But, you know, it forces you to start wondering, like, is it me or is it the, you know, something going on in my head that's making me feel this way?

45:30And look, like, I think sometimes stress is good. Other times it's not. And I think, you know, Ramp is a big company. There's a lot of pressures and stuff that are natural. natural and you know i think if you step back and you're like all right um how i act uh and how i how you feel can really impact how you think about things um you know i i think i now it's it's much more trained but you spend a lot of time just meditate what is the headspace i don't regularly um how are you this well balanced you read different books too i mean it's now a little more more trite but like it's funny i like ryan holiday stuff when he wrote kind of trust me i'm lying but then he got very into stoic kind of philosophy to read like meditations and stuff like that and so i think you pick some of that up um i try to have a day where i just like hang out just i don't know go on a run do different things you do clear my head yeah uh usually saturday yeah usually then and then sunday i'll pick stuff back up but i also think too during your week like i think especially with other founders as life goes on, you were probably really good at something, um, and you did it a lot.

46:41And that's what allowed you to build this company. Then suddenly you're running the company and you don't have time to do the thing that you really liked anymore. Uh, and I think that a lot of people lose control over their own week and they don't actually audit. Like, am I spending the time on things that I'm good at, um, or not to be, or want to be spending the time on. And so, and I pretty regularly try to go and like blow up my calendar and be like, all right, I actually love doing this thing. Am I spending any time on it? No. And I promise if you spend too many weeks in a row doing something you hate, you're going to be miserable.

47:12You're going to be stressed out. And so I just redesign my weeks or months pretty regularly. It helps. The question I've been asking myself a lot is like, where's my weakness now? And like, what do I need to like really work on? It's actually, whenever I do reference checks with people, one of my little tricks is I'll be like, what's this person one out of ten and they're always gonna say like eight or nine yeah everyone says that and i'm like cool what makes them nine or whatever okay now to get that extra point what do they need to work on i like this question that's where you hear like weaknesses that's the only polite way i've been able to get someone to like talk shit on someone which is important and you're like yeah and then like a lot of those weaknesses that they have i'm like i could put up with that yeah whatever um like if someone's like well they're really not patient like okay that sounds good to me whatever uh what flaws or weaknesses do you have now that you think you have to overcome to get to where you want to be in a decade or two so i'll slightly critique the question um which is like if you're like a one-person company this is exactly the right question of like how can i change uh in order to get better but if you're like a 10 person or a thousand person, uh, company, um, or whatever, uh, you are in it and you're on a team, you can change or you can change how the team is constructed.

48:35Um, is I think the more interesting way to think about it. And what I'll tell you, like one of my big flaws, which is probably very surprising for, um, you know, ramp scale is like, I don't know if there's like a hundred things to do, uh, that are very important to get done. Um, the way my mind works is like, I'll start with a blank sheet of paper and I'll be like, what are the top five or 10 things? And I'll like write them down. And then I'll like forget about the rest and don't do them. And like, that's fine early on when things, there's like one or two things that matter, but like we'll blow up the company.

49:07Um, if you're just consistently not dealing with 90 % of issues. And one of the things that I do in order to cope with that and compensate for that is I surround myself with people who are operationally unbelievable. We're incredibly good at triaging, cascading, getting things done and making things move. Um, and, um, what I would say is like, it's actually totally fine to have huge flaws and you could decide to fix them. Or you can say, I'm actually going to design, you know, my life or the company or whatever to be performant in that context. Um, and so I think that's okay. Um, and, and, and I, I, I guess what I, what I would say is like a lot of the way that we built, um, ramp and, you know, I think about building companies is a lot of folks kind of look for you know what are things they're good at what are the things they're bad at and how do i you know identify all the problems um and it's good to know about them i agree well what i'm referring to is like um like for example um yeah i'm a very emotional person yeah and like i like a trick that i've been learning is like it don't make it it's like don't go to the grocery store when you're hungry yeah don't make a big decision when i'm feeling pissed off about something or you know or really happy about something like don't make decisions there so yeah i got i have to wait or when someone tells me something i don't like don't react yeah just say okay let me think about it and so my big thing is just like it's all about emotional regulation and impulse control that's like that's what i have to that's my big flaw and i think i have you i have to improve that to be a better person yeah and i'm not even referring to just um business yeah but that will impact it positively as well yeah i totally agree with you thanks dude that's the pod thanks a lot.

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