Ratio is a new kind of Enterprise FinTech company which combines financing and a deal closing platform for SaaS and technology companies. Ashish started Ratio alongside Mason Blake, a fellow repeat founder. Ratio’s founding team consists of veteran operators in SaaS, technology, risk and finance; they’ve led teams within public companies and early stage businesses.
Hoping to learn more about his experience as a founder and the advice he would give to the next generation of entrepreneurs, we sat down with Ashish for a conversation.
What inspired you to start your own company?
All of our founding team saw the same problem, albeit from different angles, and came together to solve it, which is - Most technology companies' capital structure is not optimized. VC capital is great but not always ideal for every situation.
Ratio has created a new category of non-dilutive financing without restrictive covenants which allows technology companies to access cash as fast as 48 hours using our ML based automated underwriting both for themselves and their customers. Put another way, we are bringing AI enabled finance as a strategic weapon to technology companies to grow faster and compete better. Best part is that it works very well with equity capital.
We have 2 products Trade and Boost -
Trade - this allows SaaS and technology companies to trade closed customer contracts which are paid over time for Instant Cash. Better yet you can extend your runway with no payments for up to 12 months. For example, if your SaaS company has a contract with Cisco or a small business and you are getting paid annually, quarterly or semi-annually (doesn’t matter) you can access cash instantly, within 48 hrs, if you qualify. Check out how Ratio compares to venture debt and traditional revenue based financing.
Boost - is a simple and embeddable closing platform via which companies can offer financing options to their customers via Ratio. In this environment where every company is cash flow constrained we find this speeds up the sales cycle and helps close more deals.