TK Kong, the 26-year-old CEO of Venue, has been close with his two cofounders, Young Kim and Kevin Chan, for years—same high school, same college—and in 2023 they clinched a major goal for any entrepreneur: selling their business.
In this case, it was to Ramp, a Thrive Capital–backed startup. But what sets this deal apart is that the three executives are in their mid-twenties; this was their first company; and they found a buyer for Venue after less than a year in business.
Venue’s founding members came up with the idea for the firm when they spent seven weeks in 2022 in the Sequoia Arc Program, which provides mentorship, support, and resources for pre-seed and seed-stage founders. After conducting extensive research, the trio realized that most employees at companies didn’t understand the procurement process, which is how companies buy goods and services from third parties.
When interest rates were low, employees would buy what they needed without much supervision. When rates soared, businesses sought to clamp down on vendors but didn’t know where to start, Kong said. So they built a solution to help employees submit requests but also provide transparency to finance teams “to manage all of their vendors spend in one place,” Kong told Fortune.
“I would tell any founder: Focus on solving real problems for customers, and, if you’re lucky, a lot of the rest will follow,” Kong added.
How it started
Venue, which ended up raising $1.2 million from Sequoia Capital, Exponent Founders Capital, and Basecase Capital, was founded in September 2022 and launched publicly the following February.
The product racked up customers, mostly in tech, and earned good reviews because the software was both useful and easy to use, a Ramp spokeswoman said. Eric Glyman, Ramp’s cofounder and CEO, took notice, telling Fortune that Venue “solved a customer pain point—and solved it to the degree that people would talk about it.”
Founded in 2019, Ramp provides tools, such as corporate cards and expense management software, to automate a business’s financial operations. More than 15,000 companies use its software, including Shopify, Poshmark, and Sierra Nevada. Ramp has raised about $1 billion in funding and secured an $8.1 billion valuation in March 2022.
Glyman already knew two of Ramp’s founders: Kong had spent three years at Ramp, where he led the spend-management team, and Kim worked there as a senior software engineer. Chan meanwhile spent two years at Meta as a senior software engineer.
In June 2023, Glyman called Kong and discussed a potential partnership. Toward the end of the call, Glyman asked the Venue CEO: “Have you ever considered working together? [We] would be interested, and I’d love to work with you again. If Ramp were to make an offer to buy the company, would you consider it?”
“Of course,” Kong said.
Two months later, Ramp completed its acquisition of Venue. It’s unclear how much Ramp paid; bankers were not involved, Kong and Glyman said. Kong declined to comment on whether he is a millionaire now, and the other cofounders referred questions to Ramp.
Josephine Chen, a partner at Sequoia, said the firm was impressed with the Venue cofounders from the start. “Every startup’s path looks different,” she said in a statement, “but it was clear that as part of Ramp, Venue could meaningfully scale their product, mission, and impact.”
How it’s going
Since the sale, Kong, Kim, and Chan have joined Ramp as part of its procurement team. Kong, who leads the unit, has spent the months since the acquisition building out Venue, which is part of Ramp Plus. Improvements to Ramp Plus include purchase order enhancements, collaboration tools, and an activity feed.
For Ramp, Venue was the company’s third acquisition and its fastest deal, a spokeswoman said. “This is one of our larger new bets, and we see it growing very materially over the next two years,” Glyman said. “Great companies are bought, not sold.”
In August, Ramp raised $300 million at a valuation of $5.8 billion, which is below the $8.1 billion Ramp scored in March 2022. Glyman said at that time the company was more interested in long-term returns rather than the shorter-term ups and downs of the broader market. The Ramp CEO also told Fortune that one day the company would be excited to go public, but that it’s not currently working on an IPO.
“We want to build a company that’s going to stand the test of time,” Glyman said.