Can you build a billion dollar company in only 18 months? Today's guest, his name is Eric Lyman.

He's a buddy of mine who started a company called Ramp. And him and his co-founder, they asked

themselves this question before they started the company. They wanted to get to a billion dollar

valuation in only 18 months and they reverse engineered it. And I'd heard him tell this story

before, but he didn't really like give a lot of details on it. And I thought it was tell this story before, but he didn't really, like, give a lot of

details on it. And I thought it was amazing. The fact that they were this bold and then they

actually pulled it off. So the company is worth something like $20 billion now. And they're only,

I think, six years old. And so give this episode a listen. Let me know what you think. Again,

Eric Alignment of Ramp is on today's episode of My First

Million.

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel. Never look at you back. I said something that was like pretty crazy. It was I want to get, I want to build a billion dollar company in 18 months. 18 months.

Yeah.

And that was kind of shocking because that's like great.

I mean,

that's great. crazy. It was, I want to get, I want to build a billion dollar company in 18 months. In 18 months, yeah.

And that was kind of shocking because that's like great. I mean, that's crazy fast. Is that really what happened? You guys had that conversation? Yeah, that's a real conversation. That you guys didn't have you and cream, were you on the same page? We, we wanted to go fast for sure. You know, I think that the world was moving fast than ever. We had already sold the first company.

And we were definitely, like neither of us came for a whole lot.

We were comfortable. And, you know, I think even at the time, it had already proven a couple things out. And, you know, in some sense had left. Like, I was, I was a 26-year-old, you know, senior director of Capital one, I think it was like the youngest person at that age. Like we left very good setups.

And so we knew that if we wanted to leave, we wanted to go and make this company big and either make it huge quickly or fail really quickly.

And so, yeah, Kareem really did have that conversation. I think he had it with Calvin, who, you know, later he cracked me up.

I think when we finally did become a billion dollar company, and it did occur in, in 2021. And so it was less than two years from

incorporation of the company. No shit. Wait, two years after incorporation. Yeah.

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