20Growth: Biggest Growth Lessons from Instacart and Opendoor, Why 70% of Growth Experiments Should Fail and How to Fail Fast, How to Hire a Growth Team; Secrets and Tips & Why Operator Investors WIll be the Best Investors in 10 Years with Sri Batchu @ Ram

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sri Batchu currently leads Growth at Ramp. He previously led Growth Strategy and Operations at Instacart where he also helped grow their Ads business. Prior to that, he was one of the first 50 employees at Opendoor where he built, scaled, and managed a variety of business teams including Analytics, Sales, and Pricing. During his time, the company grew from $100M to $5B+ revenue and to 1500+ people. He started his career in management consulting at McKinsey and also held various investing roles including in private equity at Bain Capital.

In Today's Episode with Sri Batchu We Discuss:

1. From Harvard to Private Equity to Leading the Best Growth Teams:

How did Sri make his way into the world of growth with Instacart and Opendoor?
What are 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from his time at Instacart? How did it change his approach and mindset towards growth?
How did Zilllow burn themselves by buying homes? What did that teach Sri about hitting metrics and goal setting in growth teams?

2. Growth Teams Should Fail and Fail Fast:

What is the right ratio of success to failure within growth teams?
What are specific ways that growth teams can increase the speed with which they fail?
How are the best post-mortems run? Who joins them? Who leads the agenda?
What are Sri's biggest lessons on how to set the right goals?
Where do so many growth teams go wrong with the North Star that they set for themselves?

3. Building the Bench: Hiring a Growth Team:

When is the right time to make your first growth hires?
What profile should your first growth hires be?
How should one structure the interview process when hiring growth teams?
What is the first question Sri asks all new hires?
Why does Sri believe you have to hire slowly?
Should candidates do case studies as part of the process, if so, on a new company or on the company they are interviewing for?

4. When Operators Become Investors:

Why does Sri believe the best investors of the next 10 years will be operators?
Why does Sri believe that operators can do due diligence to a higher level than traditional VCs?
Why does Sri believe that investors should not take cold emails?
Why does Sri believe that it is not wrong for an investor to hire from their portfolio companies?
What does Sri believe the future of venture holds over the next 10 years?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Growth has just a typically high failure rate.
0:02.3	You know, so two-thirds of your projects are likely to fail.
0:05.3	What's important is that you fail quickly and conclusively.
0:09.0	Startups should have time periods of planning that are much, much shorter on a two-week sprint
0:13.3	cadence.
0:14.3	So you really reduce the cycle time to output.
0:16.1	I mean, the amount of granular tactical advice in this show is just incredible.
0:19.8	Welcome back to 20 Growth
0:21.1	with me, Harry Stebbings. Now this is the monthly show, where we sit down with the leading
0:24.9	growth experts to unpack how they start, scale and manage growth themes today. And we're
0:29.8	joined by one of the fastest growing companies in tech in the form of Ramp, with their head
0:33.9	of Gross, Shri Batchut, joining us in the Hot Seat today. Prior to Ram, Shri led growth strategy at Instacard, where he also helped grow their ads business.
0:42.3	Before Instacard, he was one of the first 50 employees at Open Door, and during his time at Open Door,
0:47.3	the company grew from $100 million to $5 billion plus in revenue and up to 1,500 people.
0:53.3	But before we dive into the show's day, I need your help.
0:56.0	I need your input on the 20 VC Mero board as I'm booking new guests that we should feature on the show in 2023.
1:03.0	Head on over to Mero.com forward slash 20VC and leave your suggestions with digital sticky notes or comments.
1:10.0	That's Mero.com forward slash 20VC.
1:14.1	Mirror actually sponsored this episode.
1:16.1	For those of you that haven't used it before,
1:18.1	it's a tool that I think is really powerful and game-changing.
1:21.3	Just ask the one million plus people who sign up for Mero every month.
	...

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