Ramp, a revenue forecasting startup, has raised $5 million in a seed round led by AlbionVC and Eurazeo. Other investors included Triple Point Ventures and several angel investors. These included Barnaby Hussey-Yeo, CEO at Cleo, and Stephane Kurgan, Ex COO at King.com.
Ramp was founded by Daniel Marcus, CEO, Jan Pickard, COO, and Angus Lovitt, Chief Strategy Officer. The idea for the company came from Lovitt. He realised in his role as VP, King Digital Entertainment, that the company was not missing its quarterly targets because of performance but because the forecasts that helped predict them were flawed. With hindsight, the spreadsheets the company used for forecasting did not use all the data points available and were subject to gut-feel adjustments.
Ramp was founded with the intention of removing the guesswork by using cohort-based forecasting. This is where historical data points are grouped from similar customers to help predict future revenue rather than use an aggregated approach. It delivers a more nuanced and accurate forecast. For example, if certain customers only purchase products in spring, that data is accurately portrayed in the forecasts rather than aggregated.
The intent is to create a forecasting tool that is more accurate and enables teams to invest more wisely and avoid advertising spend that may be wasted.
Stephane Kurgan, ex-COO at King, Partner at Index Ventures and now investor, commented, “Angus is the person that led top line forecasting at King and helped turn Candy Crush into a $2bn a year business. Today I turn to Ramp to help with forecasting target company’s top-line revenue.”
Seed funding, but scaling up
With links in the gaming industry, Ramp has already onboarded several customers, including Space Ape Games, Netspeak Games, FRVR, PlayQ and Niantic. It is adding at least one new enterprise client every month, and the funding will help accelerate the onboarding process and enable the company to scale.
Dan Marcus, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Ramp said: “Our long-term goal is to position Ramp as a single source of truth for the future of businesses, from which prescriptive and proactive analytics services can stem. We’re at the forefront of this new product category, and it’s great to have such renowned investors believe in this vision and join us on this journey.”
The investors are impressed and see a bright future for the company. Paul Lehair, Investment Director at AlbionVC, said, “We are very excited to support Ramp in this next phase of growth by co-leading their seed round. As an ex-CFO of a B2C startup, I was blown away by Ramp’s unique approach to solving the business-critical problem that is forecasting. We are thrilled to back the team and their ambition to create a new category leader in this space.”
Tara Reeves, Managing Director – Venture at Eurazeo, said, “As a former product manager, I was impressed by Ramp’s innovative solution for forecasting, which is a crucial aspect for any business. I believe its product will be of great value for teams in product, finance, and marketing, and we are excited to support the team in its mission to become a leader in this field.”
How does Ramp work
Ramp uses data science and ML technologies to generate cohort-based forecasts. It uses multiple dynamically selected statistical models for different cohorts in any forecast. It also uses an opinionated view of modelling the interactions between the different levers of a business, with additional models to optimise inputs such as seasonality and live ops.
Customers can consider what factors and data sets they will use for the forecast tool to analyse. Once created, organisations can review the forecasts against the actual results to understand how to iterate the inputs and improve future forecasting. Ramp claims this is a new way of forecasting that other solutions do not.
Chief Strategy Officer and co-founder Angus Lovitt commented, “Our platform dramatically increases the accuracy of revenue forecasting in a fraction of time it would take in spreadsheets. What took us all a day in terms of number crunching we can now do in minutes.
“Yet what really excites me about the platform are the strategic decisions we empower businesses to make. Our platform has given some businesses the confidence to invest in growth through marketing, while others the evidence to cutting costs or shuddering services. The insight we deliver can be game-changing.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Ramp gives the feeling of a startup that is going places. It has a small but well-put-together website, funding and innovative product. It will be interesting to see if it can attract interest from organisations outside the gaming sector. That sector is one that it understands well, and it is well designed for. There are parallel industries, and if it can branch out into these, Ramp could grow quickly and attract interest from larger organisations.
Chris Benjaminsen, Co-Founder and Director of Channels at FRVR, added: “Insights from Ramp gave us the confidence to significantly scale our UA budgets.”
These insights and proof points could see Ramp attract many more customers. Forecasting is often seen as an art. If Ramp can deliver on the promise of accuracy and make it more of a precise science, then it will have CFOs knocking down its doors.
