Totally fair point! All of the thinking is out there in the open, along with the fact that I'm getting paid, so up to you to decide whether to ignore or read.
Good deep dive on the company itself. The focus on a product/engineering driven org plus their all-star hiring is super impressive. But not as much of a fan of the hard pitch. Ramp's software isn't all that groundbreaking & all the flagship features are behind a paid subscription with no transparency on pricing from what I can find... I like seeing Ramp go against the grain on rewards, but we'll see if those priorities don't change as they grow. Also make sure the graphics they give you don't have the same customers listed multiple times.
Ok so I know you're getting paid for writing this but the whole essay reads like you're getting paid, it doesn't feel authentic. The moment you wrote you're getting paid it stopped to be interesting for me. I know it is totally fair to be paid for writing posts (like any journalist is) and I truly admire your work!! But it feels like I'm reading an ad from a magazine... Happy Holidays!
I hear you! I put it right up top so you can skip the paid ones if you want, and I’m genuinely this bullish on Ramp, but feedback taken :) happy holidays!
Hey Packy, you say "Thanks to counter-positioning, it can be public about its ambitions and competitors can’t do anything about it." - which seems true, UNLESS a competitor (or new start-up) decided to pivot & take the same counter-position, correct?
Position is taken. Unless you can copy and do it for significantly cheaper than Ramp can, the best thing you could do is try to go to a market Ramp isn't in and try to do it there and hope to find another moat before Ramp arrives...or hope to get bought out.
I've been wondering how long it would take for someone to finally address the fact that millions of professionals spend hours or days every month filling out tedious expense reports in places like F500 companies. It's absurd. I bet if you could account for the wasted time the ROI from a Ramp-based platform will be gigantic.
Quite a few companies promise the use of ML and OCR to identify hard to read receipts. Quite a few of them got into trouble for exposing the receipts to strangers via Amazon Turk. Does Ramp provide any assurance that they truly use only ML/OCR and don't outsource it to contractors?
So if you're getting paid by ramp and paid to get people to sign up with ramp, then how does your article have any credibility?
Totally fair point! All of the thinking is out there in the open, along with the fact that I'm getting paid, so up to you to decide whether to ignore or read.
Good deep dive on the company itself. The focus on a product/engineering driven org plus their all-star hiring is super impressive. But not as much of a fan of the hard pitch. Ramp's software isn't all that groundbreaking & all the flagship features are behind a paid subscription with no transparency on pricing from what I can find... I like seeing Ramp go against the grain on rewards, but we'll see if those priorities don't change as they grow. Also make sure the graphics they give you don't have the same customers listed multiple times.
Ok so I know you're getting paid for writing this but the whole essay reads like you're getting paid, it doesn't feel authentic. The moment you wrote you're getting paid it stopped to be interesting for me. I know it is totally fair to be paid for writing posts (like any journalist is) and I truly admire your work!! But it feels like I'm reading an ad from a magazine... Happy Holidays!
I hear you! I put it right up top so you can skip the paid ones if you want, and I’m genuinely this bullish on Ramp, but feedback taken :) happy holidays!
Hey Packy, you say "Thanks to counter-positioning, it can be public about its ambitions and competitors can’t do anything about it." - which seems true, UNLESS a competitor (or new start-up) decided to pivot & take the same counter-position, correct?
Position is taken. Unless you can copy and do it for significantly cheaper than Ramp can, the best thing you could do is try to go to a market Ramp isn't in and try to do it there and hope to find another moat before Ramp arrives...or hope to get bought out.
Relevant article on differentiation vs cost-leader. https://rogermartin.medium.com/can-you-be-both-cost-leader-differentiator-1774d5c7ff86
I've been wondering how long it would take for someone to finally address the fact that millions of professionals spend hours or days every month filling out tedious expense reports in places like F500 companies. It's absurd. I bet if you could account for the wasted time the ROI from a Ramp-based platform will be gigantic.
Quite a few companies promise the use of ML and OCR to identify hard to read receipts. Quite a few of them got into trouble for exposing the receipts to strangers via Amazon Turk. Does Ramp provide any assurance that they truly use only ML/OCR and don't outsource it to contractors?