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

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

The Twenty Minute VC

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

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 6 December 2023

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

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?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Products should sit with sales and should be in every single sales demo. You actually should be
0:04.4	like a bit more professional services oriented as a product team earlier on. The founder or the
0:09.0	first product manager should be selling the first hundred customers. And so as you go multi-product,
0:13.5	you should need to ask yourself, what can I reuse from the first product in terms of the second
0:18.3	product? The reality is it's very hard for large companies to actually innovate.
0:22.6	Welcome back 20 Product with me, Harry Stebbings.
0:24.6	Now 20 Product is the monthly show where we sit down with the best product leaders
0:28.6	to discuss how they start, scale and manage product teams.
0:32.6	Today we have one of the fastest growing companies' product leaders joining us.
0:36.6	Jeff Charles, VP of Product at RAM.
0:38.3	Jeff leads the product management, operations and support teams at RAM.
0:42.3	And prior to RAM, Jeff helped spin off Mission Lane and scale credit products to millions of customers.
0:47.3	This is a super tactical episode. We get very granular.
0:50.3	And so get the notebooks out and be prepped.
0:53.3	You will want to take notes on this one.
0:55.2	But before we dive into the episode's day, I'm refreshing the 20VC Mero board and I'd love your
1:00.3	input again. It's really easy. Just head on over to Mero.com forward slash 20VC and leave your guest
1:06.2	suggestions for future shows and you can do it with a digital sticky note or a comment. You can
1:10.8	head over to Mero.com forward slash two zero VC and Mero for future shows, and you can do it with a digital sticky note or a comment, and you can head
1:11.0	over to mero.com forward slash two zero VC, and mirror actually sponsored this episode.
1:16.5	If you haven't already tried it, I think you'll love it.
1:18.8	Mero is the online workspace for innovation.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Twenty Minute VC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Twenty Minute VC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.