How Ramp still grows like a startup at a $44B valuation? George Bonaci [Ramp]

Today on BILLIONS, I’m sitting down with George Bonaci, VP of Growth & Demand Gen at Ramp. Before Ramp, George led growth at Gong and helped scale Samsara from under $100M ARR to more than $650M ARR through its IPO. Today, he’s helping build the growth engine behind Ramp — the finance platform valued at $44 billion and used by more than 70,000 companies. And his approach to growth is pretty unconventional. Ramp intentionally sets aside budget with zero expectations of return. Why? Because if every experiment works, you’re probably not taking big enough swings. One of those swings involved spending six figures advertising Ramp inside fortune cookies. George thought it sounded insane. It worked. In this conversation, we break down: → How Ramp keeps operating like a startup at a $44B valuation → Why George believes most growth teams don’t fail enough → The six-figure fortune cookie experiment that actually worked → Why learning in one week can be worth spending 5x more → How Ramp structures small autonomous “pods” to move faster → How George allocates talent and budget across growth bets → What Ramp’s spending data reveals about the AI model wars → Why companies investing heavily in AI are actually hiring MORE people → Why AI could make great operators 10x — or even 100x — better → Why George refuses to automate away the jobs that train future experts → Why the “SaaS apocalypse” narrative may be completely wrong → Why Ramp prefers using AI to create new tools instead of replacing existing SaaS → What happens when AI agents start buying from other AI agents → Why AEO could become much bigger than “SEO for ChatGPT” → How products will need to become discoverable, understandable and usable by agents → The one bet Ramp absolutely cannot afford to get wrong We also discuss why AI-generated 40-page documents are usually a sign of poor thinking, why the best candidates simply say “let me show you,” how work becomes invisible inside AI-native products, and why speed may still be the greatest competitive advantage a startup has. If you want to understand how one of the fastest-growing fintech companies in the world thinks about growth, AI and experimentation, this is the episode. 00:00 – George Bonaci: Samsara, Gong and $44B Ramp 00:46 – Why your growth bets should fail 01:58 – Ramp’s six-figure fortune cookie experiment 03:38 – How much should you spend on an experiment? 07:11 – How Ramp still operates like a startup at $44B 08:46 – Building autonomous growth pods 11:38 – Taking a new Ramp product from zero to growth 14:00 – How to allocate your best people across bets 15:45 – What Ramp’s data reveals about the AI model wars 17:13 – Why AI adopters may actually hire MORE people 18:23 – Is AI making us work harder instead of less? 21:12 – Hiring great people in the age of AI slop 22:16 – Why great thinking should fit on one page 25:01 – What happens to jobs when AI does the execution? 28:06 – Will AI kill entry-level jobs? 30:38 – Is the “SaaS apocalypse” actually happening? 32:28 – Using AI to build vs. replacing existing software 34:03 – When AI agents start buying from AI agents 35:28 – How to make your product discoverable by AI 37:24 – Giving AI agents the ability to spend money 41:03 – Ramp vs. incumbents like American Express 42:24 – Ramp’s long-term vision 43:15 – What George would do differently 44:08 – The one bet Ramp cannot get wrong