Geoff Charles
32 statements across 1 episodes · 2 bullish · 2 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Dec 6, 2023 by Geoff Charles · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Geoff Charles's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Everything said about Geoff Charles, oldest first
Dec 6, 2023
Product Candidates Who Cannot Convince Interviewers Cannot Guide Engineering Teams
“Largely what a product team really does with the engineering design team is like, they're the ones advocating for something and influencing teams. And so if you can't influence me, that this is a good idea. You're not gonna be able to influence the team.”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Freeze Headcount for New Executive Hires for at Least Six Months
“Don't hire executives that will then hire people under them, because that obfuscates a lot of their performance, and so be clear to the leaders that you're hiring, like, you're not gonna have headcount for at least, like, six months. You're gonna have to do th…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023 positive
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Products Usually Fail Because the Underlying Hypothesis Was Wrong
“I think oftentimes PM are enamored with their solution and they're not actually good at defining the hypothesis that led them to that solution. And they just ship this product and the product doesn't work. And then they have to go back and say, like, why didn'…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023 negative
OKRs Encourage Political Gaming by Focusing on Metrics Over Strategy
“The reason why I don't like The framework is that it doesn't actually talk about strategy. It just gives a goal and then it just tells the team like, go hit this goal, but there's no thinking on the exec level about like how we can actually achieve that goal a…”
Dec 6, 2023
GTM Teams Must Stay Single-Product Focused Until Securing Strong Market Share
“So I think that for the majority of the company, You need to be like single product oriented for a very long time until you get to the really good market share. But as a tech team, you actually need to have an R and D department that is constantly shipping new…”
Dec 6, 2023
Ramp Product Team Members Post Public Weekly Goal and Progress Updates
“Monday morning, the first thing everyone on my team tells me, what did they get done last week? What are they going to get done this week? What are the key decisions that they're going to make? And what do they need my help on? And it's public, and so everyone…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Early Ramp Teams Manually Logged Into Customer Software to Switch Cards
“We were extremely aggressive in terms of making it super easy for them to switch. And what I meant by that is like, we literally had teams say, give me your old credit cards. I will log in to all of your other software and I will switch your cards for you. I w…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Pre-Product-Market Fit Software Systems Usually Have a 12-18 Month Shelf Life
“When you're pre-product market fit, you know, it's very easy to try to build systems that have extremely long shelf life, and I think you should only do that if they are Very high confidence, meaning like you know that this system is going to be alive for a ve…”
Dec 6, 2023
Ramp Practices Building in the Open With Cross-Team Commenting
“We have a culture at RAMP where even if you're not in the team, you can Advise and leave comments and suggestions to other teams. And we build in the open. And so what I mean by that is like, if you're a salesperson, you can go into my product spec and leave a…”
Dec 6, 2023
Ramp Engineers Publicly Self-Assign Sprint Goals and Report Results
“We basically have engineers that sign up and then we post publicly here are our goals and here's who's doing what. And so the scoreboard is super, super clear. And then before the start of the next sprint, we basically go and say, this is what we wanted to ach…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Evaluate New PMs by Embedding Them Into Existing High-Performing Teams
“For ICPMs on my team, I basically place them in teams that are high performing. And I, and we immediately see whether they are, they're at the bar. So, so you take basically something that is fixed, you add a variable and you, and if anything changes, right, i…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023 negative
Founders Do Not Need to Remain Head of Product
“I listened to that and I love that. I don't agree. And again, this is the Shopify, you know, obviously, you know, Toby's like very involved in the product surface area at ramp. I think we have Slightly different approach. I think that the, our founder Eric is …”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Company Stage Experience Matters Far More Than Category Experience for PMs
“I think the category Is not that relevant. You know, I come from more consumer than B to B. And I think that's actually an advantage because you're focusing on metrics. You're focusing on conversion. You're focusing on models like lead scoring and lead routing…”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023 positive
Software UIs Will Shift From Tables to Conversational Interfaces
“So a hundred percent, I think the software is going to look a lot less like tables, graphs, and dropdowns, and a lot more like a conversation Where I release a UI that is extremely dynamic, that abstracts the data that you actually would need to see, and just …”
Dec 6, 2023
Dec 6, 2023
PMs Must Excel in One Key Discipline Early in Their Career
“You got to spike at one thing. Either you deeply understand technology, so you're an X coder, you know how to code. Either you deeply understand business equations, you're an X VC, or you just read, like, 10 k's for fun, or you're just a deep snob when it come…”