Sri Batchu on How Ramp Built the Fastest-Growing SaaS Business in History

Cap Table as Distribution Strategy

Most founders think about their cap table as a financing tool. Ramp's co-founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh treated it as their first growth channel.

Before launch, they loaded up early-stage founders and influential operators as investors. Not VCs who would make intros—founders who would actually use the product. Companies like Eight Sleep and Pop became early customers because their founders were literally on the cap table.

One of the things that they did is what I call kind of cap table as a growth strategy, where they did a great job of getting a large number of early stage founders and other influential operators and advisors onto the cap table at the company. And many of our initial customers were these companies.

— Sri Batchu

The result? Word of mouth that actually converted. Ramp hit $100 million in annual run rate in just 2 years—the fastest in SaaS and fintech history. They grew 4x last year while most companies stagnated. The tech founder community still loves Ramp, even though the vast majority of revenue now comes from mid-market and enterprise, not startups.

Growth Engineers Who Own Sales Quotas

Sri runs growth like a portfolio manager, not a marketer. His team structure reflects that: channel-based squads (paid, lifecycle, field), product engineers supporting activation, and a skunkworks team testing TikTok and Reddit.

The most unusual piece? A growth engineering team dedicated entirely to sales automation. They've been using AI to optimize sales workflows for almost 2 years—long before the current hype cycle.

We have the same shared goal, which is the pipeline driven and the payback period of the channel. It's kind of unique to Ramp where the engineers feel ownership of the quota. They're not like owning product metrics or what have you.

— Sri Batchu

These engineers ingest third-party data, automate prospect identification, draft messaging, and prioritize responses for reps. The result is one of Ramp's most efficient channels by any metric. This approach—bringing technology to every growth lever—is what Sri calls Ramp's "secret sauce," not some novel channel most companies miss.

The Diversified Portfolio Approach

Sri's background is in investor analytics, not traditional marketing. That shapes how he thinks about growth: a diversified portfolio of bets at reasonable ROI, designed around experimentation and data.

Ramp's distribution doesn't look radically different from industry benchmarks. They invest in outbound sales, paid marketing, field, and other standard channels. The difference is execution intensity and measurement rigor on each bet.

Velocity as Operating System

Keith Rabois called Ramp's product velocity "absolutely unprecedented in my 21 years working with technology businesses." Sri, who came from Opendoor and Instacart—both known for speed—still noticed the difference.

The core mechanism? Smaller units of time for decision-making. CEO Eric Glyman reinforces this at every board meeting and all-hands with days.ramp.com, which shows exactly how many days have passed since founding. Right now it reads 1529.43453142—decimal points included.

He has that number of days at every board meeting, every all hands. It's just to remind people that we don't work in years, quarters, weeks, we work in days. Each day matters. And so never put off something tomorrow that you can get done today.

— Sri Batchu

The growth team operates on 2-week sprints with cross-functional prioritization. Marketing folks work like product teams. Calendar blocking is mandatory. The people team provides templates on how to audit your calendar against priorities, because you ship your calendar.

One surprising metric: Ramp tracks engagement during all-hands via Zoom chat participation. It's typically close to 100%. Not because participation is required, but because people are genuinely excited about what colleagues are shipping.

PR and Fundraising as Top-of-Funnel

Most growth leaders dismiss PR as vanity. Sri has seen it drive non-trivial pipeline—when you have something genuinely interesting to say.

Ramp uses fundraising announcements as market moments, bundling them with unique data about the business. The press coverage creates awareness that converts, especially combined with newsletter coverage from writers like Packy McCormack.

But Sri is clear-eyed about audience fit. Newsletters and podcasts work well for recruiting and reaching tech founders. Traditional PR still matters because most of Ramp's customers aren't in the tech ecosystem anymore. Different channels reach different audiences; you need both.

The B2B Growth Sequence

Sri has a strong point of view on channel sequencing for B2B companies. Start with founder-led sales so the early team learns to sell. Hire your first few reps. Then launch low-cost targeted efforts: content, community, small events, PR.

Only after all of that do you start paid marketing and brand efforts. SEO launches around the same time as paid.

The logic is simple: channels get more expensive as you move down the list, and more effective as you understand your customers. Ramp followed this playbook. They still rely primarily on new customer acquisition, not expansion, even though customers grow significantly over time. The engine just adds customers that efficiently.

Sri's advice on building a growth engine? Stop obsessing over team structure. Focus on culture, rituals, and cadences instead. Set one or two North Star metrics max. Build a team that generates hypotheses, evaluates them with data, and ships fast. At Instacart, that metric was monthly active orders. At Ramp, it's pipeline and payback period—metrics engineers can actually move.