The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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

Geoff Charles, VP of Product at Ramp, shares his journey from advising Fortune 100 companies to leading product teams. He discusses the key skills aspiring product leaders should cultivate and the common pitfalls to avoid. Geoff explains how Ramp utilizes two-week sprints for rapid product development and the right timing for hiring a product team. He also delves into strategies for going multi-product, emphasizing the importance of customer engagement and the value of reusable product elements for long-term success.

52:55

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Episode guests

Geoff Charles

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Highlights

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Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

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.

PMF comes from the demo and design partners

01:29

Understanding Customer Pain Points and Building Relationships with the Tech Team

01:21

B2B is more intuition than data

01:30

Importance of refining hypotheses in startup solutions

01:22

Intro

3min

Navigating Customer Insights and Personal Passion in Product Management

2min

Navigating Hiring and Team Dynamics

16min

Building for the Future: Reusability in Product Development

9min

Crafting Effective Goals and Hypotheses in Product Development

2min

Postmortems and Product Strategy Insights

18min

Reflections on Innovation and Community Engagement

2min

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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The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

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

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

The Importance of Product and Sales Alignment

Understanding Customer Pain Points

Challenges in Innovation for Large Companies

Key Point 1: Reusability and durability of systems

Key Point 2: Importance of product strategy and leading metrics

PMF comes from the demo and design partners

Understanding Customer Pain Points and Building Relationships with the Tech Team

B2B is more intuition than data

Importance of refining hypotheses in startup solutions

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts