Card startup Ramp poaches Stripe executive Colin Kennedy

As Stripe reaches a $95B valuation, its talent is being sought out by newer startups looking to scale. This week, Ramp, a two-year-old corporate card startup, hired Colin Kennedy, Stripe’s former global head of partnerships, as its chief business officer.

Why should we care?
Ramp is on a mission to take the pain out of corporate expense management and reporting, a space where startups like Brex and Divvy – and incumbent American Express – play in. Kennedy comes to the role with considerable experience growing financial technology companies. He worked for more than a decade at American Express, where he was responsible for its relationship with expense management tool Concur and its $251M in it. He was also chief commercial and operating officer at personal finance app Clarity Money, which was later acquired by Goldman Sachs in 2018 to enhance its consumer brand Marcus. At Goldman, Kennedy was managing director and chief revenue and operating officer for Marcus. In a statement explaining his move to Ramp, Kennedy said he looks forward to supporting the next generation of corporate expense tracking. “[Ramp] prioritizes saving over spending and gives companies the compliance and control they need while greatly streamlining – or eliminating – the normally cringeworthy experience of creating expense reports,” he said in a LinkedIn post. “With a simple platform integrated into its simple corporate card solution and into the customer’s expense policy, Ramp compliantly eliminates the need for employees to create expense reports.”