Celebrating 8 Years of Ramp Network: Reflections from Long-Serving Team Members

As Ramp Network celebrates eight years of innovation, resilience and growth, we’re taking a moment to look back through the eyes of the people who helped shape the company from its earliest days. Few perspectives are more meaningful than those of our long-tenured team members.

Today, we’re excited to introduce two of our OGs:

Artur Kozak, Staff Backend Engineer, and Andrzej Wódkiewicz, Staff Backend Engineer.

Both have played a pivotal role in building the foundations of Ramp Network’s technology, culture and vision.

We asked them:

“How have you seen Ramp Network develop and grow during your tenure? What major milestones or changes have you witnessed?”

Artur Kozak, Staff Backend Engineer, 7+ years at Ramp Network

"In the first two years, Ramp Network remained a small, tight-knit team of around 15–20 people. We were focused on building our MVP, and because the team was so small, everyone knew exactly what everyone else was working on. That closeness created incredible momentum—we didn’t need heavy processes, because we were all in the same room every day, collaborating, problem-solving, and genuinely building friendships along the way.

As we launched our product and began acquiring users, everything started to change. One of the biggest moments for me was when we first attended conferences and realized that people already knew who we were. Instead of explaining what Ramp Network does, people recognized the logo on our T-shirts. That shift—from unknown startup to a brand people recognized—felt like a major milestone.

Then came the hyper-growth phase. We scaled from about 50 to 150 people within just a few months. It was an exciting but challenging time; onboarding so many new hires meant transferring knowledge, explaining our ways of working, and building structure where previously we didn’t need it. Despite the pace and the pressure, we navigated that growth successfully and continued scaling our operations. Looking back, it’s amazing to see how far we’ve come."

Andrzej Wódkiewicz, Staff Backend Engineer, 6+ years at Ramp Network

"Working at a startup for so long has always felt to me, like being in a TV series with many seasons. Some of the seasons become your favorites, others you’d probably skip on a rewatch. In the early episodes you focus on the essentials. You try to make the product work at all. You help by logging into the database and changing some values to mimic a call from a 3rd party that decided to stop responding exactly today, so that the demo the Founders are currently presenting in some other timezone finishes without issues. Only after you get some initial traction you get some leeway to look around and try to organize the chaos you’ve made in the last months.

I remember the time we decided to finally build a supporting back-office application, because until this moment we’ve been using terminals to do any admin work and that started to become unfeasible. We wrapped the most necessary API endpoints with some basic UI in a day or two, and taught the rest of the team how to use it. And of course our backlog grew by dozens of tickets in a week, because there were so many functionalities we wanted to have in this new tool we built for ourselves. We spent many hours looking at the “transactions” page to make sure that any issue affecting our users is fixed.

One of the pivotal plot points was implementing a feature just to help us get some more traction... and it soon turned out to be the main driver for the product, which helped us get more funding and start scaling the company. And scaling was not an easy task for any of us. Suddenly, whatever you had been doing a week ago was different from what needed to be done that week, and I mean entirely different. We worked hard on acquiring the talent, hosted many interview calls, reviewed lots of assignments. There was some material we needed to prepare for the newcomers, there was a managerial structure we had to create from scratch — a flat structure could work for 5 devs, but not for 50. At the same time we were getting more and more users, we expanded our coverage with more payment rails, we supported more blockchains and assets as the crypto space began to adopt new Layer-2 solutions. That’s what has always made working with a startup so interesting: you start as a programmer, but to understand the product and to make sure your team works efficiently, you become a team leader, a customer support representative, a recruiter, a technical writer and sometimes even a technical product manager. One of my favorite company achievements, because of the personal context, was the launch of the off-ramp product, where I had the chance to test my leadership skills as the technical leader. Managing the requirements across various domains and coordinating the work within the team was utterly stressful, the pressure to launch the product was immense, but the satisfaction of crossing the finish line was something I remember to this day.

I won’t be recapping all of the episodes, as the story continues for many more seasons and naturally the list of memorable failures and success stories is quite long. That could very easily become a way-too-long soap opera. But a good story is not only about the main plot, but also the silly episodes and running jokes. For many years I’ll remember that our pizzeria downstairs served “Red goat” on Wednesdays and “Hawaiian” on Thursdays. And that ‘Du Hast’ by Rammstein turned out to be a much better karaoke song that I’d initially thought. And I believe that our "About us" page must at some point recognize Mr. Jerzy, our catering man. Which brings me to the last point — you want to follow the story because of the people. For such a long time you get to know all kinds of people, some of which appear for just one season, where others become the “main cast”. But regardless of how much screen time they get, everybody has always got the chance to push the story in some new direction. I’ll always remember such people without whom the next seasons of Ramp Network simply wouldn’t make sense and I hope to meet even more of you in the next episodes."

Looking Ahead: The Next Chapters of Ramp Network

Ramp Network’s story has always been about more than products, it’s about the people who make them happen. From scrappy early days to scaling, every challenge has been met with creativity, collaboration, and grit.

"Eight years ago, Ramp Network was just the two of us in a small room fueled by coffee and the belief that blockchain could make finance fairer. We had no idea how far that conviction would take us. Looking back, the real highlight isn’t the milestones or the growth. It’s the people we met along the way. To everyone who’s been part of this story: thank you. You’re the reason Ramp Network exists. And we’re just getting started." — Przemek Kowalczyk, Co-Founder & CEO

As we celebrate eight years, we’re excited for what’s next: new products, new milestones, and new team members joining the journey. To everyone who’s been part of the story so far, thank you.