Ramp Co-founder: Build AI Products for the Model's Slope, Not Its Current State

damianplayer · x · 2026-08-08

Ramp co-founder Karim Atiyeh shared his philosophy on building AI products, arguing that AI models should be judged by their trajectory (the "slope") rather than their current capabilities.

He draws a parallel to Ramp's early days: just as users once rebelled against clunky enterprise software after experiencing better consumer tools, today's users are accustomed to AI's speed and intelligence. Any workflow that forces them to repeat themselves or wait now feels broken. Consequently, Ramp engineer Rahul builds for where models will be in 3–6 months—studying traces, improving the harness, cutting CI time, and giving agents real work within solid guardrails. The post also teases an in-depth conversation with Anthropic's Head of Claude Code.

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