20VC: Ramp's Product Playbook: How To Hire Product Teams, How to Run Sprints, How to Increase Product Velocity, When and How to Go Multi-Product with Geoff Charles, VP Product @ Ramp
Dec 6, 2023
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Geoff Charles, VP of Product at Ramp, discusses how to become a product leader, when and who to hire for the first product team, increasing velocity using sprints, and going multi-product. Also explores building strong relationships with customers and tech teams, achieving speed and welcoming debate in product development, considering reusability and durability, navigating the balance of launching new products, and hiring for velocity and problem-solving skills.
Product managers should be involved in selling to customers and should sit with sales during demos.
Immerse yourself in the customer's world to truly understand their pain points and gather insights for product improvement.
Large companies need to disrupt their business model and go-to-market strategies to overcome challenges in innovation and foster new teams and mindsets.
Deep dives
The Importance of Product and Sales Alignment
Products should sit with sales and be part of every sales demo. The first product manager should be involved in selling to the first hundred customers. Reusing elements from the first product in subsequent products is essential.
Understanding Customer Pain Points
To truly understand customer pain points, immerse yourself in their world. Listen to what they listen to, attend conferences they attend, and spend time with them to ask the right questions. Observing them using your product firsthand can reveal more pain points and improvement opportunities.
Challenges in Innovation for Large Companies
Large companies face challenges in innovation due to board expectations, go-to-market dynamics, and ingrained engineering and product structures. Breaking these barriers requires disrupting the business model and go-to-market strategies, as well as fostering new teams and mindsets.
Key Point 1: Reusability and durability of systems
When building systems, it is important to consider their reusability and durability. Before product-market fit, systems should have a shorter shelf life (12-18 months) unless they have a high confidence of long-term viability and high risk if they fail. Once product-market fit is achieved, focus on scaling the existing product and adding new products that can leverage economies of scale and reuse existing systems. This approach allows for sustainable growth and the ability to sustain future product developments.
Key Point 2: Importance of product strategy and leading metrics
Product strategy, rather than just goal-oriented OKRs, plays a crucial role in achieving success. Instead of focusing solely on lagging metrics such as revenue or market share, emphasis should be placed on leading metrics such as customer acquisition and feature deployment. Value-based metrics that reflect net revenue retention and product usage are more valuable indicators of success. Additionally, the ability to think deeply on the spot, ask the right questions, and get to the root problem quickly are vital skills for product leaders.
Geoff Charles is the VP of Product at Ramp, leading the product management, operations, and support teams. Prior to Ramp, Geoff helped spin off Mission Lane and scale credit products to millions of consumers. He started his career advising Fortune 100 financial services companies.
In Today's Episode with Geoff Charles We Discuss:
1. How to Become a Product Leader:
How did Geoff make his way into the world of product?
What are the single most important skills for product people to learn early?
What are the biggest mistakes that product people make early in their career?
2. When and Who to Hire for the First Product Team:
When is the right time to hire your first product people outside of founding team?
Why are the best product teams in the early days professional services teams?
What is more important; the person has stage or sector experience, when joining?
Should you hire senior product people or junior product people as the first hires?
3. How to Increase Velocity Using Sprints:
How does Geoff and Ramp use two-week sprints to have insane product velocity?
How are they structured? How are goals set? Who is included?
What makes a good vs a bad sprint? How is accountability tied to sprints?
When do two-week sprints no longer become possible? What happens then?
4. Going Multi-Product, Will Incumbents Kill You and Product Re-Usability:
When is the right time to add a second product?
What are the biggest mistakes companies make when going multi-product?
Why is it unlikely that an incumbent is the one to kill you? What competitor should worry you?
What does Geoff mean when he speaks of "product re-usability"? Why is it crucial to velocity?
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