May 21, 2026

How Ramp Is Rebuilding Marketing Around AI Agents

48 minutes

#357 | Dave sits down with George Bonaci, VP of Growth at Ramp, to talk about what growth actually looks like at one of the most talked-about brands in B2B. George breaks down why Ramp has no CMO and why he thinks that's a feature, not a bug. He makes the case for attention as the new moat when execution gets commoditized, and shares how he went from hardcore attribution obsessive to betting on stunts with no direct attribution. They also get into Project Glass, Ramp's internal AI tool that reads every Slack channel, preps his meetings, and diagnosed a reporting issue in 15 minutes that would have taken two weeks to investigate. And George shares why he thinks marketers now have two jobs: marketing to humans and marketing to machines.

Timestamps

(00:00) - - George's background: from biochemist to accidental marketer

(07:34) - - How marketing is structured at Ramp (no CMO)

(09:49) - - Why brand is the growth lever

(14:04) - - AI and the death of functional marketing roles

(15:19) - - Ramp's hub and spoke model for AI

(16:39) - - Building autonomous go-to-market workflows

(17:49) - - How the team responded to going agent-first

(21:29) - - The J curve of productivity

(22:49) - - Are marketing jobs safe?

(24:34) - - Marketing to machines: Ramp's two jobs

(25:49) - - Offering $3,000 bonuses to AI agents

(29:23) - - Project Glass: Ramp's internal AI tool

(35:03) - - Attention as the new moat

(36:53) - - How to measure attention without direct attribution

(42:03) - - Why taste matters more than ever in direct mail and events

(43:03) - - How George went from "measure everything" to betting on stunts

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