Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, Alex speaks with Patti Kangwankij, Head of Payments Finance and Strategy at Stripe, about her move from investment banking to the fast-paced world of a SaaS startup, why she's focused on hiring leaders, and her day-to-day responsibilities.
Welcome to Recession-Proof - a podcast by Ramp. Join us for in-depth, thought-provoking conversations with finance leaders, executives, and investors on the current state of the market and what this means for your business through 2022 and beyond. Hosted by Alex Song, VP of Finance & Capital Markets and Kimia Hamidi, Head of Savings at Ramp.
Speaker 1:
You are listening to FinOps Today, a podcast room Ramp, where the world's most innovative finance leaders share what's on their agenda. Here's your host, Ramp's own Head of Finance and Capital Markets, Alex Song.
Alex Song:
Hi, welcome to FinOps Today. On this week's episode, we're speaking with Patti K of Stripe. Hi Patti?
Patti K:
Hi, Alex.
Alex Song:
Would you mind telling our listeners a little bit about what it is that you do at Stripe?
Patti K:
Yeah, so I lead the payments, finance and strategy team at Stripe. So that's one of our obviously largest products at Stripe, so I manage the finance for that.
Alex Song:
How did you come to Stripe in the first place? Tell us a little bit about your background.
Patti K:
Yeah, so I've been at Stripe for three and a half years now. And for the last six months have led the payments, finance and strategy team, but actually at Stripe, I've had three different roles with kind of 10 underlying movements underneath all of that. So prior to the payments team, I led the corporate finance teams. So that included investor relations and all the fundraising, everything Stripe consolidated, financials, board materials, et cetera, as well as the global finance teams. And before that, I ran corporate development and strategy for a little bit. I did go to market, pricing and some others all within the finance world. And so it's been an eventful three and a half years here at Stripe.
Patti K:
And prior to that, I was 14 years at JPMorgan. 10 of which was in the investment banking area, worked across different technology companies, and actually moved over to the mergers and acquisitions team, specialized and got to do everything from buying oil well in Texas to sell a bank in Canada.
Patti K:
And after kind of 10 years of investment banking, after having met a lot of great operators decided I wanted to actually operate, and so started doing a lot of coffee chats and a lot of job board searching at JPMorgan/careers and actually moved into and was the CFO of the partner credit card business. So think like the Disney, Amazon, United credit card business, which is a significant business at JPMorgan. And then after two years of that, moved into the payments group and then had a discussion with Will Gaybrick who was the former CFO and now the chief product officer and the rest is history. And now at Stripe.
Alex Song:
That's fascinating. So it sounds like corporate finance, M&A, you did that for a number of years, then you actually took an operating role inside JPMorgan and then subsequently you transitioned over to Stripe.
Patti K:
Yes. Yeah. And it's been a journey and I joined Stripe around 1300 employees three and a half years ago. And we're currently over 7,000, so have really seen a lot of growth in the last couple years.
Alex Song:
Absolutely. What was that like? Compared to a company like Ramp, right? Even 1700 seems huge in comparison, and then before that you were at JPMorgan, what was the transition like, from corporate finance into that first operating role. And then maybe you can also talk about that second transition of a monolith organization like JPMorgan transitioning to Stripe. So two pretty significant transitions.
Patti K:
Well, it was terrifying. I think having literally Googled what does a credit card P&L look like when I was interviewing for that job, but I think moving into an operating role and actually having a team and to be responsible for kind of the financial management. Part of the reason I think they took me on into that role was because of my M&A experience. The partner credit card business also has a lot of contracts with these large users. So Amazon, United, Southwest, and we were in an 18 month period where we renegotiated, I think over 80% of the entire partner credit card book. So my ideal experience was actually helpful in that, and then managing the P&L and being able to understand business cases and analyzing kind of P&Ls and telling the story as I had been doing in investment banking, I think was key, and so it was a big transition.
Patti K:
And I learned a lot from the people around me, I had very strong mentors who would support me as well as a strong team. And so it was a really interesting transition and actually easier than I think, I would've thought, just given kind of my experience with a lot of different businesses before.
Patti K:
And then moved into the payments role two years later, which was JPMorgan's payments group, which was one of the fastest growing and top priorities for Jamie at the time. And so really grew that business. And they are one of the largest legacy payments providers in North America and in Europe. And so getting a seat there and just understanding how they thought about their business and how they would move with a lot of their large users from small businesses to their kind of large users and investment banking and treasury products and how they thought about payments in that kind of spectrum was very interesting.
Patti K:
And then moved over to Stripe. It was a really rude awakening, I think. I think I learned all the different technology applications. I think I learned how to use a Mac for the first time, I used Zoom for the first time in an interview with Stripe, Slack, Google Docs was completely new for me and I had been a PCXL person, my entire life. So my efficiency was nowhere to be found in the first six months. I remember Patrick getting on my computer when I was a little slow on Google Sheets, inputting headcount numbers.
Patti K:
But I think there's quite a lot of natural feel differences that I think I expected, but until I saw, I didn't really understand. But when you are working for a 100 year old company versus kind of the 10 year old company, there's a lot of these processes, systems that you kind of take for granted. Jamie Dimon had a business review every six weeks for his business lines and that, you had the calendar through the whole year. And so you had the rhythms of public earnings and when Marianne needed her kind of earning scripts and all that.
Patti K:
And then coming to Stripe at the time that I did, a lot of that stuff, from the simplest things as expense approvals and T&E, how do you go manage that to what is the right cadence, the operating cadence of the business. So is quarterly right? We had a period where we were doing something called high tempo reviews, so reviews that should happen more often because decisions needed to make faster and we shouldn't wait for kind of a quarter. And as you're growing so quickly, even the attendee list of who should be on these meetings, took a lot more time and thought. And the secret sauce of Stripe is really at its core, its technology, and you don't want to overburden any of that with a lot of process. So operating cadences was just a big shock to me.
Patti K:
And then I think the other one, the true kind of technology culture, I came from a really big payments company within JPMorgan to Stripe as a payments company. And because JPMorgan, in it payments was a mature product for them. They had mature teams surrounding it, go to market. There was a whole finance team. There were systems, there was processes all in place. And when I joined at kind of 1300 employees, a majority of the team was product and engineers. And majority of my meetings had product and an engineer and we were getting into code and language and things that I was totally overwhelmed to see. And that is the secret sauce that has always been and continues to be. I still am in most of my meetings with product and engineer.
Patti K:
And I think with that, I actually think for a finance executive that actually gives you more of an opportunity because you're surrounded by all this, to make an impact. Right? But you have to figure out, it's like it's a fine line of putting any process on top of kind of innovation, figuring out what process actually drives a better result versus just slows people down and bogs them down with processes. And so I think that to me has been the two kind of biggest changes for me in the different companies, but broadly, both companies try to make strategic long term bets, both companies I couldn't have asked for better mentors and teachers along the way. And for both, I think finance plays a crucial role in decision making and has a seat at the table. And so have really enjoyed both sides of my career from [crosstalk 00:09:57].
Alex Song:
Yeah, very cool. Very interesting. Yeah, tell us more about the early days, maybe the early days of Stripe, when you first joined. And feel free to be as granular as possible. Right? What did the finance team look like? Who did you report to, who reported to you? And I think there's just a lot under the hood that I think probably lot of our listeners just wondering, like, how centralized was it, how decentralized was it? What was your day-to-day? And then maybe later on, we'll also look at what it looks like today, but maybe for now, what did those early days look like?
Patti K:
When you think about a traditional finance organization, I was leading everything, but accounting, treasury and tax. So we had the first pricing person started the same day I had, the corporate development team was one person. And we had only a couple people focused on product finance. And I think the whole corporate team was two or three people. And so think about again, 1300 with a very, very small percentage of it being finance, strategic finance and a bigger kind of accounting and treasury and tax group, but still relatively small to what he had.
Patti K:
And so at that point, I was reporting into the CFO and managing kind of all these, and we were growing significantly, but one person going to two people is not... Or the corporate development team going from one to three and now is like a much bigger organization. But those days were really scrappy, but I'll say, and it wasn't a traditional finance team either, actually a lot of the background of the people were kind of consultants or investment thinkers or all that who had high horsepower, but actually didn't know what... Like I think when I said, "Hey I would like cleaned up cost centers for to look at expense reviews." That type of stuff was like, "Oh, well, that's not my job." I was like, "Well, of course it is." And they were like, "Well, I do more strategy." And I was like, "Well finance numbers are really dumb without strategy. And strategy is really dumb without finance. So you have to be a full stack CFO." Right? So for a lot of these businesses, you'd have like many full stack CFOs across the different areas, but really not super well staffed.
Patti K:
And so those early days, even planning and thinking about what things do you prioritize and how do you justify it and headcount management. And all that stuff was really raw, and creating even monthly finance reviews to go through the budget and they're like, "What is a budget? What number is mine? And how do you get accountability?" A lot of that was super, super early on. And they were finance numbers, not business numbers, and over time obviously that has had to change. But I think in three years, and now we're about a year and a half to when Dhivya joined as well. She's obviously brought a wealth of experience, a very mature organization. And so it's actually been warming to see after a year and a half without earlier stages.
Patti K:
And when she came on, my role changed and I led corporate finances, given my experience navigating kind of all aspects of finance from my earlier days. And I think people were like, "Oh, well that's maybe a bit of a smaller role." And I was like, "Well, yeah, good." JPMorgan has four business unit CFOs, one big corporate finance role. At all mature companies, a lot of this stuff moves around and breaks apart, and [inaudible 00:13:48]. And I had corporate development for two years, and then that moved into a strategy, a lot of this stuff, you do have to move and you need to have the depth of experience in a lot of your flight places and grow with the business. Right? And so we've evolved it ever since. And I was in that corporate finance role for a year and then moved over within the last six months and actually quite enjoying being very focused day-to-day on the details of the business, which in corporate finance you know a lot about everything.
Alex Song:
A lot of those comments definitely resonate with me because I think the building out the early team, it sounds like you obviously want a lot of financial acumen. You want a lot of horsepower, folks that are almost multidisciplinary or just they're well rounded folks.
Patti K:
[inaudible 00:14:41]. Yeah.
Alex Song:
But I think what I'm hearing is that potentially light on practitioner or practical experience with operational finance. Right? And just building that out, two follow up questions on that.
Patti K:
Sure.
Alex Song:
One is, did that change over time, or how, and if at all that's changed or have you hired more practitioners to fill out that sort of functional layer, that's kind of, I would say question number one. And two with the movements in the different groups, and obviously yourself switching roles a couple of times, who makes that decision and is that a very centralized or decentralized decision? And it sounds like you're pretty happy. But are there folks that maybe weren't as happy. So with the evolution of the finance function, those are kind of my two questions.
Patti K:
Yeah. It definitely changed, I think, at the core of it, and I've said this a bunch other people, is like at the end of the day, as much as you may be hiring experts in certain things, like we now have ahead of [inaudible 00:15:48], we have different specialties with people with a lot of experience. At the end of the day, we're still testing for people who can make any strategy and any business smarter because they're in the seat. And so even down to the expense person, if you're just taking in tying and just making sure the books kind of tie, that's not enough for us to hire, so I think you need both the expertise and the thing.
Patti K:
I've been here three and a half years, I think for the first year, it continued to be hiring a lot of athletes across, I think in the second and third year I've been here, we have added a lot of depth to the experiences that we have, people who have been and have done and have built out certain areas.
Patti K:
And then I think it's always about a diversity of different people, right? So my team right now, I have a gentleman who was an investor for the last 15 years and that he brings a very different experience. And then someone who has more mature kind of FP&A experience, and then someone who was at one of the networks and actually had a big stint in product. And so having a diversity of bench I think is really important.
Patti K:
The one other thing I would say is, I think hiring leaders early is important. I think I probably was a little late to that as well, but you're always looking for the person who's comfortable in three years with much more complexity, much more scale and all that. And for each one of your functions and areas, you kind of have to think about which ones are the most important and where should you be hiring ahead?
Patti K:
And obviously I love the person who knows how to build it from the ground up and the person who knows what it's like in three years, but it's actually, for me more important that person knows what it should be in a few years and has the right north star, to the extent you hire a lot of people who just do a lot of work and then you lose track of that kind of three year outlook, I think that could be painful and it may take a lot more resources and people with that. But I think, again, it's a balance all the time, I think, figuring out who has expertise and who can grow into it. And I think it's about diversity of team, I think over time.
Patti K:
And then who makes the decision? I think that's a good question. I think there's quite a lot of people who make that decision. I think, at least personally for me, it was lots of career discussions over the years, and not even career discussions, just when the move is going to happen, but career discussions over a longer period of time, that is a two way discussion with your manager, with other people that you trust around for both roles, had long discussions that started when Dhivya came. And she was like, "Hey there's a lot under you. Let's get a couple more pillars on it." Yeah. That's the natural evolution.
Patti K:
We were, I think at that time on the verge of doing the fundraise in 95 billion, of course at that. And so probably to others, they were like, "Oh, well you used to do this and you did this?" And I was like, "We're at a different state age of company than I joined." And so it was a two-way discussion. And I think for the product role, very similar, it was kind of like, "Hey you've done that. Your ability to work with the product teams and just how to navigate Stripe would be very useful in a role like this." There's also gets you culture of the business, which I really had wanted and allowed me to build out another team. And so that was a discussion.
Patti K:
It doesn't work for everyone, I think, and there's a lot of people who have left Stripe over the years that joined a company that was a thousand people where they could be CFO of five different things. And then now they are half of one thing and because that's what Stripe requires.
Patti K:
So I think having the north star of what the company requires and how do you best support the business? I think is an ongoing discussion. And I think about how much we've grown and a lot of it in the product and engineering teams and go to market teams. And I want to make sure that our partners, our business partners come to us as a first call and making sure that I am not the bottleneck, but that there is lots of people in the organization that can support kind of the growing company. So I don't know if that answered your question, but.
Alex Song:
Yeah, very cool. What does your day-to-day look like today? How many people report to you? What's the size of your team? How many of those people did you hire?
Patti K:
Yeah, so I have been in this role for six months now, and I've more than doubled the team. So the team, when I joined was probably six people, and now we're nearing kind of 15. And so at Stripe and the whole time I've been here, it is always me recruiting different people. And so I think that was, I spent probably 30% of my time over the first few months kind of trying to build out the team and functions. And I had this comparable team when I was at JPMorgan and that was 10 times the size that we have here. And so it is pretty scrappy.
Patti K:
But the way my team is structured right now is I have different flavors of the payments product. So there's our in person, so our Terminal product, we have Connect, which is our platform product. So the likes of platform and marketplaces, so the likes of DoorDash and Shopify are on the Connect platform. So those are two kind of flavors of it. And then obviously the everything happens in overall payment. So there's people specialized in each area.
Patti K:
And then I have someone actually who does kind of longer term projects. So thinking about kind of four year and what's business cases and ROI and competitive landscape and some others. So it's kind of things, a little bit farther removed from the day-to-day, but obviously if you're too far removed it's not helpful. So that's kind of the structure. I just put that in place like a week ago. So we'll see, but it'll continue. Like I think the business has continued to evolve and structure and I will continue to move. I think change is definitely a constant around here.
Alex Song:
And does this sound like, and I don't know if this is the right interpretation, but it sounds like there are folks on your team that are focused on product finance, for example, Connect, right? And there are folks who are maybe focused on, I don't know what to describe, maybe strategic finance and all of that, now, withstanding I think everyone's still roles up to payments. Is that sort of the right way to think about the function that some of these folks serve.
Patti K:
People ask me that all the time and I'll say, I still don't quite get the distinction. So I've only ever worked at Stripe and then JPMorgan, which definitely didn't have the distinction. Product finance to me, so let's take the Connect or Terminal products or features, when you're working with a product to the extent, you're not asking them the questions of what are the things that you're investing in? How do you think about what products are you building for what user segment and all that? Is that product, or is that strategic finance? We do not structure our team that way. I think lots more people are kind of full stack and which is daunting as well. Because that's a lot of questions to ask from their headcount, their expenses, to their budget, to what's their four year outlook, to how do they allocate their headcount and headcount's the most precious say to what product are they building?
Patti K:
And then how does Connect, like for our biggest marketplaces and platforms, we distribute embedded financial products. So our treasury products, which are our money management tools and lending. And so how does that go into Connect? And so we have made these roles kind of more full stack and there isn't a distinction between product and strategy for us, at least at this point in time. I have spoken to a lot of people who have over time separated those out to FP&A in strategic finance. We have not done that with our teams
Alex Song:
And now this is just my personal curiosity. Is there someone at Stripe with your job, but sitting in side Stripe Atlas, or maybe Stripe Capital, obviously you guys have a lot of other products as well that are maybe not necessarily payments focused. Right? Is there someone who does what you do for those functions?
Patti K:
Yeah, there is. So payments is one of the bigger products and there are more mature. And then we do have a counterpart doing kind of the banking products. So I think the lending products with capital, issuing, which issuing cards and then kind of money management with treasury, and then some of even the startup verticals are in that area. And then we have kind of our revenue management and our Radar, which is our fraud management and some others. So there are different product areas and we do organize kind of our finance team that way.
Alex Song:
I see. And I wonder if this is something that would be easy or hard for you to handicap, but among maybe yourself, your personal experience and the rest of your team, what percent of the time do you spend on... And maybe this goes back even to the last question, on sort of operational finance versus strategic finance, the day-to-day stuff, which is just to keep the engine going, make sure nothing blows up right. Versus let's tackle a multi-month or multi-year project. Is there an easy division that you can kind of make in your mind?
Patti K:
I'll tell you what my goal is this year. And actually a goal of mine is to spend 50% on both. And I don't even think operational finances, that can sound like it's, well, I'm just trying to reconcile or produce budget versus actuals or that type of stuff, but actually all of the questions that you're asking about execution today are meant to answer, are you focused on the right execution today to provide the biggest kind of long term levers? And are you positioned to be the biggest baking payments, like winner in kind of five years and 10 years? And all of those ramp, I didn't mean to say ramp, but all of those are meant to grow into bigger our businesses. And so I do try to spend 50/50, I think it's very easy as a day-to-day, what is everyone asking me day-to-day? It's like it is operational finance type stuff, but I think personal goal this year, as well as I think up the chain is like, make sure that we are spending just as much time operational finances as we are strategic or kind of longer term, is how I think about it.
Alex Song:
Yep. I think balancing that it's a non truly hard exercise [crosstalk 00:27:31] I'll say that. Yeah, even today my team, which encompasses all of finance for all of Ramp, right? It is pretty tough. Right? It's pretty tough because we 10X the business this last year, and I would say almost in under any circumstance, you're going to be just mired in fire drills and the day-to-day stuff. And it leaves very little room, I think for multi-quarter or multiyear planning. And it's absolutely a struggle that we deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Patti K:
Yeah. I think it is a struggle. Again, the fire drills come into this, but I truly believe in, like even last year we spent more time doing long term planning than we did short term planning. And I'm not sure that this is the right thing, but as we think about even, where does headcount allocation go? There's a way where teams ask for it and say, "I'm going to build X, Y and Z this year." The question is, are they building the things that will lead to the best kind of four year outcomes?
Patti K:
And we tried to take a step back and do that last year, we did kind of like long range planning, we actually had like an offsite that did like, what do we look like in 2030 you and what are the trends there? And spend actually like a fair bit of time there. And it was a hard exercise because who knows what's going to happen 2030, but it was very helpful for us to understand, hey, these are the big drivers, right? Like where is payment methods getting more complex, cross-border becoming more apparent, globalization, like that type of stuff and making sure that we're producing ahead of the trends, but it is no easy task.
Patti K:
And I'm even trying to figure out if, do we have a quarterly check-in on at least red, yellow, green, are we on track for kind of our four years? So you don't make it this, four year goals by initiative so that you don't make that a one time a year exercise and then just kind of roll along and be like, "Oh, well it's maybe a slightly off budget, but it's so small right now. And so it doesn't matter." But I think it is the secret to us to make sure that you have carved out time and people who think about that all the time, I think is important.
Alex Song:
Let me ask you this. And this is perhaps the crux of even this podcast or the crux of the secrets that we're trying to uncover here. Right? And as someone who's running a payments business, literally, right, Stripe, payments business, Ramp, another payments business, here's the question, operating leverage. How are you finding operating leverage? And I want to maybe focus on two areas. One is internally at Stripe, are there things that you're doing, structures you're putting in place, best practices, tips, right? For finding operating leverage. Because you could just hire people. You could just keep on hiring as tasks arise. You can just throw money at the problem. Right? Are there things you're doing organizationally to find better operating leverage, that's area one.
Alex Song:
Area two, maybe externally, vendors, partners, software tools, maybe the Google Docs right out there, but what are you also using to find time and finding operating leverage, maybe that's external to Stripes. So maybe let's focus on that a little bit. I would love to hear how you're managing a massively growing organization, that's both growing in size and complexity?
Patti K:
Yeah. So I think headcount and capital allocation and ROI is like my hero. My other second kind of equal hero this year of things is systems. And I think that's part of it. It's ensuring that everything that we make and touch scales. So you have to look at every process we have and ensure that if it does times five, you are still happy with this thing. And the at it is not 500% or five people that have to do it versus one, and that it scales over time, and there is like 30% increase when you increase it over kind of times five. And that is more products, more countries, more segments, more everything, every piece of the process is there. And so I would say that.
Patti K:
And then I think two is ensuring that we have all the data and things cut in the way that we want. And I think a lot of times we've been focusing overall kind of corporate clause and everything, but making sure that we have the right insights in the business and focused on the right metrics. I think again, you could cut payments data by user, by country, there's like so many things and the end of the day, you're going to have a database with a million different fields and cuts and focusing the business on the right metrics and ensuring that you have the reporting and underlying things has been kind of my most important thing. And so to get alignment on those top metrics, to make sure you're looking at the top metrics instead of having just a data pack and maybe you still need the data pack of a 100 pages with a 100 cuts, but you have to actually focus the business. And that's actually quite hard because everyone's going to be like, "Oh, well, how about this cut? And how about this cut?" But focusing business.
Patti K:
So those are my places on operating leverage. On the, I think vendors and software, I have not probably personally done a lot of that, but I think utilizing, like we use Anaplan for our closed type stuff and making sure that we have the modules in there that and efficiency all around. We use Salesforce as to manage things. And so our pricing tool for instance, was in a separate spreadsheet and it wasn't attached and therefore, sometimes data was different. And so figuring out how to blend those in together, I think we use Workday and Greenhouse for kind of recruiting and people. And even just looking at who was accepted where, and what org and what is changing and the numbers don't tie. So I think trying to more, what my area has been, not actually looking for kind of new vendors, but actually making them work together and having a single source of truth through different vendors has been something that I think we've been focused on. I don't think we're great at yet, but actually have made a ton of progress over the last couple of years.
Alex Song:
That's fascinating. It's a little bit of a double edge sword. It's comforting because we literally face all of the same exact issues right now. Dashboarding, making sure we're looking at the same KPIs, right? Is the sales team, versus the engineering team, versus the finance team. Even looking at the same definition [crosstalk 00:34:47], for example, right. Or whatever.
Patti K:
Absolutely.
Alex Song:
Which is very top of mind. And making sure that we have good integration of software.
Patti K:
Truly.
Alex Song:
So that we have a single source. It's comforting because you're identifying exactly the pain points that we have. It's also not so comforting because I know that in the coming years, this doesn't stop, right? This project, it's an unsolvable problem and you can only hope to chip away at it.
Patti K:
Yeah, I think so. But the more you could do it early on, and again, future proof is the wrong word, but scale proof, you're as much as possible, those things and not kind of let things fester. I think it is one of those things that I think we'll still be facing in a few years and such, but we should [crosstalk 00:35:36] notes at the right time.
Alex Song:
Yeah, absolutely. I want to be sensitive too to your time. So maybe I'll leave you with a closing question, which is maybe one, what are you most looking forward to for yourself and your team over the course of this coming year? And then two, maybe what are you most looking forward to for Stripe, for the overall company, are we going to see an S1, are we going to see some movement there? I'm sure a lot of our listeners are very curious and maybe you can't comment on that, but yeah, maybe something exciting on the horizon for either the company and also for yourself and your team.
Patti K:
Yeah. For the team, I think we've grown significantly and I am most excited about serving the business. That sounds super cliche and it's all this... But our product and engineering team, they have so many decisions ahead of them. Like, how do we prior prioritize X, Y, Z, what should we be doing? How do we work with our global teams? What should we do? And bringing some sanity and bringing that all together and really helping them with their decisions, and better able to do that with kind of the team that we have grown this year. So I think for me continuing to do that and making sure we're positioned for four years out, four years, 10 years out.
Patti K:
On a Stripe basis obviously I can't comment about any public rumors out there, about that. They've been with me for the last three and a half years since I've been here. But I think for us, it is I think we have a lot of newer products, like with our banking products and our revenue management and we had a couple crypto announcements, and there's a lot, lot more to come. I think bringing that together for the user and more integrating it, like through our Connect platform and making sure that all of these things work together, I think is Stripes big ambition over the next few years. And I share that because I think that's kind of the power of, once you're in the Stripe ecosystem, checking the box on all these other value added services is exciting.
Alex Song:
Very cool. Well, Ramp is certainly, as you know we're the very, very happy about the partnership that we've been able to develop over the past year or so. I think our listeners are no strangers in the fact that you guys are one of our largest investors. Right? And so we hopefully are tapping into product partnerships and whatnot into the future. Just be a part of the broader you. Right? I guess I'll leave it there. I mean, Patti, this was-
Patti K:
Yeah, thank you.
Alex Song:
... absolutely phenomenal. We've been trying to land someone from Stripe for a while for the podcast. So really happy to have you on. And thank you so much for the comments.
Patti K:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for the invite. I was really happy to join and Stripe is equally excited about the partnership and are very happy investors. Thank you. And congrats on your fundraising as well.
Alex Song:
Absolutely. Thanks so much.
Patti K:
Thanks, bye.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed it, please rate and review us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. It really helps to spread the word. Until next time, this is FinOps Today from Ramp.