The Exchanges

Q Uh, I, I want to start with, you know, this show fundamentally is a benchmark for what great growth and great growth leaders look like. I think there's, um, a misunderstanding on growth and VP of growth. What does growth or VP of growth mean to you and how do you define it?

A Yeah, it's a great question. As you mentioned, like if you were to pull 10 different people on what their growth team looks like, you would get 10 different answers, uh, today. And it's often determined, at least, you know, historically kind of Ad hoc based on who's in the seed, who was hired first, what the org structure is rather than a principal decision. Personally, to me, a growth function is something that you build post product market fit and is the home for all high volume data and experimentation oriented customer acquisition, retention, engagement strategies. So what does that mean? Uh, typically things like paid marketing, SEO, as well as product-led growth website, uh, I would recommend working As closely together as possible structurally, uh, and at RAMP they're all under one roof, uh, which is great and have the same kind of north stars and goals. Uh, but I know other companies design them differently, but me personally, uh, I think you gotta put everything that drives acquisition and retention that's high volume and experimentation oriented under one roof.

AI assessment note: “a growth function is something that you build post product market fit”

Q Can I ask you a hard one that's not in schedule. Speaking of successes and failures, you said seven tips and fail. What's been the biggest failed growth experiment you've done, and how did it change your mindset?

A Things can fail in two ways, right? One is that you don't grow, uh, with the experiment, or you grow in the wrong way, uh, and it hurts the business in a different way. So I'll pick an example of the, of the second kind. When we were at Open Door, uh, we, competitive situation, and, and growth was slowing, and we were like, okay, we should try to figure out other ways of driving scalable growth that are not, you know, paid advertising or what have you. So one idea which seemed obvious to be had was that there's a bunch of people that are listing their homes on the market, uh, rather than trying to, you know, get buyers that are, that are not agent represented. Why don't we just put bids on homes that are listed on the market, uh, based on, you know, whatever our pricing model, uh, to drive acquisition volume, uh, at, at Open Door. I don't know if you guys, if you see why this didn't work coming already, but, uh, as you can imagine, When you're buying a listed home, there's a few things happening there. If the person is willing to sell to you after they've listed, it means there's probably some asymmetric information. They know something about the home that you don't because it hasn't sold and they've gotten a bunch of buyer feedback and they're willing to now take it off the market, uh, and sell it to you. Uh, there's also more costs involved for the seller, uh, when it's a lis…

AI assessment note: “When we were at Open Door... Why don't we just put bids on homes”

Q Is there a wrong motivation? If I say I'm inherently insecure, and actually title and view in the organization drives me to be fucking great. Would you be worried about that?

A And then I, I don't, I actually don't think, uh, there's necessarily a wrong motivation. I know that might be a controversial thing to say. So I, I pulled up this one-on-one template while we were talking, uh, and, and wanted to see what the wording of the question was. What motivates you? There's no right or wrong answer here. Some typical motivating factors can be customer impact, compensation, praise and recognition from peers, exposure to senior leaders, title or position. Functional learning, intellectually challenging problems, uh, external validation and recognition outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. I start off with that. I frame it in a very nonjudgmental way because I, I'd love to just start from a position of honesty, uh, and, and work with the incentives that are in people's heads, then try to create different incentives for them.

AI assessment note: “I actually don't think, uh, there's necessarily a wrong motivation.”

Q Uh, I, I want to start with, you know, this show fundamentally is a benchmark for what great growth and great growth leaders look like. I think there's, um, a misunderstanding on growth and VP of growth. What does growth or VP of growth mean to you and how do you define it?

A Yeah, it's a great question. As you mentioned, like if you were to pull 10 different people on what their growth team looks like, you would get 10 different answers, uh, today. And it's often determined, at least, you know, historically kind of Ad hoc based on who's in the seed, who was hired first, what the org structure is rather than a principal decision. Personally, to me, a growth function is something that you build post product market fit and is the home for all high volume data and experimentation oriented customer acquisition, retention, engagement strategies. So what does that mean? Uh, typically things like paid marketing, SEO, as well as product-led growth website, uh, I would recommend working As closely together as possible structurally, uh, and at RAMP they're all under one roof, uh, which is great and have the same kind of north stars and goals. Uh, but I know other companies design them differently, but me personally, uh, I think you gotta put everything that drives acquisition and retention that's high volume and experimentation oriented under one roof.

AI assessment note: “Personally, to me, a growth function is something that you build post product market fit”

Q You also said about North Star metric that I think one of the biggest problems that I see honestly, Sri, is that people have the wrong North Star metric. Often it's revenue and revenue for me is an output. It's not an input. Um, how do you advise founders today on choosing the right North Star metric and how do you approach it?

A Yeah, I think, uh, as you mentioned, there's, there's not a per, I personally think there's not gonna be a perfect North Star metric for growth. It'll obviously depend on your business. And there's always kind of multiple pushes and pulls that you're trying to optimize for. One of them you're hinted at. Obviously one of those experiments would be simple and intuitive for people to understand. You want it to be, as you mentioned, something that the teams can actually directly impact. Uh, so something that is much closely related to their inputs, but something that's also very aligned with the ultimate value creation of the company, right? Uh, and I typically like to have like a volume goal and efficiency or ROI goal for growth teams. Um, on the volume goal, Like if you were to take the B to B example, right, uh, you could have the growth team's goal be some sort of qualified leads like MQLs or, or PQLs or something like that. But as you know, businesses are ultimately valued on long-term, you know, dollars of profit and cashflow generation. And then humans are very good at intentionally or unintentionally optimizing for, uh, the targets and metrics that they're, uh, that they're given. So in this particular example, how could it go wrong if you give a team qualified lead goal, uh, Uh, they can hit that goal by bringing a bunch of small leads or lower quality leads, uh, that don'…

AI assessment note: “I typically like to have like a volume goal and efficiency or ROI goal”

Q You said there about the speed of the feedback loop being so important. You, you said before slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Could be a line from Karl Masutra. Um, some things get edited out, some don't. We'll see what the editors decide on that one. What did you mean by slow is smooth and smooth is fast?

A Yeah, I, uh, I think it's, this one's actually, uh, repurposed from the Marines. Uh, but basically, uh, the concept is that, you know, well, I'll maybe just use the growth example directly, which is, uh, you know, in the early days of growth, you've got kind of a small ragtag team that's throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what works, right? Um, this works for a bit, um, but it often tends to devolve into undiagnosable chaos. If things aren't working, you have no idea why. Uh, and, uh, and if things are working, you still have no idea why and don't know where to double down. So what I tend to do, uh, you know, usually bringing in a growth leader is a nice opportunity to do it, but you can do it anytime, which is, uh, to slow down a bit, like reset, uh, the basic structures of a team. So what, what do you do during this quote unquote slow down period is One thing is what we just talked about is set the right North star metrics for the team, uh, create a framework for how do you prioritize, um, projects? How do you measure success, uh, and ROI? And I think once you have that clear process of this, how we select projects, prioritize them, promote experiments, you know, is clean and understood and aligned. I think it helps the team move a lot faster. I don't want to slow down teams with a lot of process, but I think some sort of lightweight process And align framew…

AI assessment note: “slow down a bit, like reset... once you have that clear process... helps the team move a lot faster”

Q That is very, very kind of you. I want to start, and growth is this kind of weird new-ish discipline, really. So how did you first make your way into the world of growth, and what was that first entry point for you?

A Yeah, as you mentioned, growth is a relatively new field that's at the intersection of product marketing and data and analytics, right? I've been, I've come here in a slightly different path than most, probably. I've been thinking about growth as a consultant and an investor prior to becoming an operator, and I joined Opendoor when I was 40 people in hyper growth phase got to see it grow to, you know, 2000 people nearly and five billion of revenue. And being an early business generalist worked on anything that, you know, needed help. So sales, analytics, pricing, et cetera. And, uh, and then subsequently went to Instacart where the key problem that they had at the time was building out the ads business. And so I kind of leveraged my analytics and investment background into a growth role that way. Spent time Working on growth, uh, at Instacart, primarily in the ads business first, and then the overall business, and now lead, uh, growth at RAMP. So I kind of came to it via an investment and analytics background versus a product or marketing background, which is often how you see a lot of, uh, growth leaders, and I think you'll see more people like me because I think increasingly growth is a discipline of making a portfolio of bets, thinking about ROI, and, uh, and thinking about data and experimentation in a rigorous way, which I think my background, uh, speaks to.

AI assessment note: “leveraged my analytics and investment background into a growth role”

Q Is there a wrong motivation? If I say I'm inherently insecure, and actually title and view in the organization drives me to be fucking great. Would you be worried about that?

A And then I, I don't, I actually don't think, uh, there's necessarily a wrong motivation. I know that might be a controversial thing to say. So I, I pulled up this one-on-one template while we were talking, uh, and, and wanted to see what the wording of the question was. What motivates you? There's no right or wrong answer here. Some typical motivating factors can be customer impact, compensation, praise and recognition from peers, exposure to senior leaders, title or position. Functional learning, intellectually challenging problems, uh, external validation and recognition outside the company, et cetera, et cetera. I start off with that. I frame it in a very nonjudgmental way because I, I'd love to just start from a position of honesty, uh, and, and work with the incentives that are in people's heads, then try to create different incentives for them.

AI assessment note: “I actually don't think, uh, there's necessarily a wrong motivation.”

Q Is there anything you have short-term gain for long-term pain?

A One area that I can think of is we, we do have parallel processes of acquisition that are going after the same clients that are automated versus manual. You know, there's some challenges in performance at different steps of like how the automated system performs versus how humans do the same, you know, prospecting and customer acquisition sales process, right? The short-term gain, of course, is that humans are better at certain steps because There's just a lot of intangibles that we haven't been able to productize and automate yet. Uh, so we, we hire a lot of, you know, we have a sales team that runs sales because they're good at certain things that are better than automating them. But I think the long-term pain, if we don't focus, uh, and, and pivot more and more things towards self-serve and automation is that we're going to end up having a massive sales team, uh, that, uh, is, you know, Hard to scale and manage and, and potentially expensive, although that's not the case today.

AI assessment note: “The short-term gain, of course, is that humans are better at certain steps”

Q You mentioned pre-mortems earlier. How do you do post-mortems?

A Yeah, so we do monthly post-mortems. They're somewhat structured. We actually have a, you know, air table system where we track all of our experiments. We score them, et cetera, in terms of impact. And so we share like aggregate statistics of the team on like what's been shipped and then what the impact has been. It's like an opportunity for us to like celebrate team members as well as like Encourage the notion of like velocity in a, in a more subtle way. And then outside of that, we have teams come back with one to two, um, wins or losses over the previous month that they present, uh, and get feedback and just share the learnings. So it's not super structured. Um, but there is like a regular cadence of it every month. So it's not just when like something great or something horrible happens is when we do postmortems. We actually do them in a systematic way.

AI assessment note: “we do monthly post-mortems. They're somewhat structured. We actually have a, you know, air table system”

Q You mentioned throwing spaghetti at walls. Brilliant analogy. But it is the early days of a growth team that are sometimes most important in setting the foundations. When is the right time to start thinking about a growth team?

A I think many of the other guests on your podcast have also said this before, which is, uh, finding product market fit, in my opinion, is the founder's primary job. Uh, it is not something that you outsource to a growth team. In my view, like a growth team, uh, in the, in the beginning days is honestly like sales team, the founder, and maybe one kind of like Early career generalist that has like an analytical background that can run some experiments and tests, right? I think once you have clear product market fit and you have some escape velocity and you're actually like growing, uh, is, is when I would actually staff a growth team that's more than like one person, right? I don't know where the right number is. Is it like five million ARR maybe something like that? Uh, I don't know. I'm sure people can arrive at different numbers or thresholds, uh, to get there, but that's like one opinion.

AI assessment note: “once you have clear product market fit and you have some escape velocity”

Q So what did you learn as a result of that?

A Yeah, uh, great question. I think, um, a lot of growth teams, especially when push comes to shove, think about, okay, let's, let's hit our goals of whatever, you know, Top line North star metric goals that we've talked about. Uh, and, uh, and, and don't think about kind of pre-mortem, uh, what, what might happen, like what can go wrong as well as like really keep in mind that paired metric that we talked about. Um, so actually, I don't know if I mentioned earlier when we talked about North stars, we want a volume goal and an efficiency goal. So you want something that you track even as you're hitting volumes to make sure that you're driving growth. Profitably or efficiently, right? And so for something like this, we probably should have had a, what is the specific profitability of this program and should we track it early to make sure that it doesn't go off the rails? Uh, it would have been one way to solve for this.

AI assessment note: “we probably should have had a, what is the specific profitability of this program”

Q Which one-to-one question do you find most revealing? And is there one that people find hardest?

A I find the motivation one, obviously, uh, very revealing. Um, I, uh, as well as the career goals, uh, and I asked them to give me like the time horizons, like where do you see yourself in three, five, 10 plus years. A lot of people haven't really given it thought on like, okay, what does it take for me to get to the 10 year mark? What does my three year outcome look like? You know, five year outcome look like, uh, et cetera. And, and it actually gets people to start thinking about, uh, stuff like that. The, the thing that people have a hard time also answering, which especially early career people, which they should be better at and more aware of is, uh, I asked them, you know, what can I do to help you succeed? And people are often like, I don't think people are often asked that. So they're like, stopped when, when somebody asks them, uh, you know, what their manager can do to, to help them succeed, uh, at the job.

AI assessment note: “I find the motivation one, obviously, uh, very revealing. Um, I, uh, as well as the career goals”

Q Management-wise, what do you think are the biggest fuck-ups you see young managers make?

A Related to that, actually, is when people get their, um, first, you know, report or what have you, um, and they find out that, well, for whatever reason, the person is not up to snuff, uh, in terms of the work product that they're creating. Temptation for a lot of early managers It's to just do the work for the person. Uh, so they will, like, spend an extra three hours in the evening, like, reviewing the work product, uh, of this person that they've hired recently, and, uh, and, and just, like, fix it, uh, rather than, uh, spend the time coaching, because their view is like, oh my god, it would take me so much longer to teach them how to do this than just do it myself. Uh, so let me just do that. And, and obviously they do themselves and the person a huge disservice by, by doing that. Most people's mistakes come Uh, come about when there's a trade-off, um, you know, short-term versus long-term, right? Uh, and so people are willing to, um, give up some, you know, long-term gain, uh, to avoid some short-term pain. So they're finding it more painful and slower to coach somebody. So they'll just do the work themselves or, or, or find another way to get it done rather than investing the time, uh, in coaching this person up to stuff or making the separation decision if that's the right decision.

AI assessment note: “Temptation for a lot of early managers It's to just do the work for the person.”

Q That's interesting. If you're in a startup where speed is everything, is it better to hire now and get it done versus be really slow?

A I'm a big believer in hiring slow, obviously, because I still do it despite getting the feedback that I'm hiring too slow. Uh, and, uh, and the reason being also, I actually, I'm also a huge believer in, um, diseconomies of scale for teams. Uh, I think teams get materially slower, uh, as they get bigger. Um, it's really like the equivalent of a resource curse, uh, for companies rather than countries, right? Uh, when you have too many resources, you get bad at prioritizing, uh, and you get bad at accountability, and you actually end up moving slower. So it is painful in the short term where, you know, some things might not get done, uh, and, uh, But, but I think the right things get done, uh, and they get done better, uh, on small teams, and, and I think one thing that you learn to get comfortable with as a more experienced manager, somebody told me, uh, a while ago, is that you have to let some fires burn. If you think you have to fight every fire, uh, you know, uh, on your team, you're gonna burn yourself out. Uh, so you just have to realize that, like, some things are just not gonna be worked on for a bit, and they're gonna be broken, and, uh, and be comfortable with that, because they're, Less important. And you, and, and try to be intentional about that. So whenever we do planning, it's like, what are you not doing? So like, you know, name the fire that you're letting burn.

AI assessment note: “I'm a big believer in hiring slow, obviously”

Q Do we bring other disciplines in? So they do the case study, they impress. Do we bring head of product engineering, see how does that work in terms of who we bring in?

A Yes, absolutely. And, uh, and what I actually have done in the past and, uh, is have a panel. So not just have them like, you know, write out a case or whatever, but have a, a, A small panel where they actually present their work, uh, and where you bring the cross-functional leaders in, uh, and you can ask them, you know, questions, see how they react, uh, to, you know, on the spot thinking, as well as how they react to feedback, and, and you learn a lot about, you know, how this person works. You know, the main thing, and we use the term, probably overuse it, growth mindset, uh, in the tech world, but I think it's like, especially critical for, for somebody in, in growth. Uh, to be nimble, uh, in their thinking, uh, and, uh, and be open to new information and creative, so.

AI assessment note: “Yes, absolutely. And, uh, and what I actually have done in the past and, uh, is have a panel.”

Q Is there anything you have short-term gain for long-term pain?

A One area that I can think of is we, we do have parallel processes of acquisition that are going after the same clients that are automated versus manual. You know, there's some challenges in performance at different steps of like how the automated system performs versus how humans do the same, you know, prospecting and customer acquisition sales process, right? The short-term gain, of course, is that humans are better at certain steps because There's just a lot of intangibles that we haven't been able to productize and automate yet. Uh, so we, we hire a lot of, you know, we have a sales team that runs sales because they're good at certain things that are better than automating them. But I think the long-term pain, if we don't focus, uh, and, and pivot more and more things towards self-serve and automation is that we're going to end up having a massive sales team, uh, that, uh, is, you know, Hard to scale and manage and, and potentially expensive, although that's not the case today.

AI assessment note: “The short-term gain, of course, is that humans are better at certain steps”

Q When you say under one roof, what do you mean by that? Do you mean like it's integrated into product and engineering? Do you mean it's a standalone team? How do you think about that? And what does under one roof mean?

A I think there's a couple of different ways to do it. I think there's, you could do it structurally as a different team, uh, and have like the growth product leader report to, you know, the growth leader, uh, as well as the high volume marketing channel leaders also reporting into the same leader. So that would be under one roof in a very literal sense in terms of, uh, reporting lines and, uh, and structure. Uh, I think you can, which works, uh, you can play with dotted lines versus solid lines on that. You know, a lot of product leaders that are very principled about Not having product teams report outside of product. Same with marketing leaders on that. So hence, there's so many permutations of growth leadership. I think the other way that you can do it is, even if you don't have solid line reporting into one place, is clear accountability. Like all three or whatever of these teams are driving towards the same North Star goals and are jointly accountable. The problem with a lot of joint accountability I tend to find in org structures is when more than one person is responsible, no person is responsible. Uh, and, uh, and so that's a balance that you, you have to strike culturally.

AI assessment note: “So that would be under one roof in a very literal sense”

Q So what did you learn as a result of that?

A Yeah, uh, great question. I think, um, a lot of growth teams, especially when push comes to shove, think about, okay, let's, let's hit our goals of whatever, you know, Top line North star metric goals that we've talked about. Uh, and, uh, and, and don't think about kind of pre-mortem, uh, what, what might happen, like what can go wrong as well as like really keep in mind that paired metric that we talked about. Um, so actually, I don't know if I mentioned earlier when we talked about North stars, we want a volume goal and an efficiency goal. So you want something that you track even as you're hitting volumes to make sure that you're driving growth. Profitably or efficiently, right? And so for something like this, we probably should have had a, what is the specific profitability of this program and should we track it early to make sure that it doesn't go off the rails? Uh, it would have been one way to solve for this.

AI assessment note: “we probably should have had a, what is the specific profitability of this program”

Q You mentioned throwing spaghetti at walls. Brilliant analogy. But it is the early days of a growth team that are sometimes most important in setting the foundations. When is the right time to start thinking about a growth team?

A I think many of the other guests on your podcast have also said this before, which is, uh, finding product market fit, in my opinion, is the founder's primary job. Uh, it is not something that you outsource to a growth team. In my view, like a growth team, uh, in the, in the beginning days is honestly like sales team, the founder, and maybe one kind of like Early career generalist that has like an analytical background that can run some experiments and tests, right? I think once you have clear product market fit and you have some escape velocity and you're actually like growing, uh, is, is when I would actually staff a growth team that's more than like one person, right? I don't know where the right number is. Is it like five million ARR maybe something like that? Uh, I don't know. I'm sure people can arrive at different numbers or thresholds, uh, to get there, but that's like one opinion.

AI assessment note: “once you have clear product market fit and you have some escape velocity”

Q So it's being investing in someone. I need to fricking hire them. And you're my angel investor, Sri, so you get to help me. How do I structure the process for hiring the first growth hire? And what do the stages look like?

A I could probably speak to, uh, like, um, a more senior growth hire, how you kind of think about it. I think in terms of sourcing, uh, I don't think the process looks that different, um, versus, uh, another kind of senior leader or what have you that you're trying to do. Um, and I think Gokul has actually done a good job of summarizing on Twitter what people actually do, uh, which is you use your network and, uh, uh, of your investors and executives to identify companies and people that you think are one to two stages ahead of you that are exceptional at the function, namely growth here. Um, and, uh, and you use those companies and people to find more people. And you kind of validate reputations, et cetera. And depending on, you know, how advanced the company is, you, you target people that are actually at the head of the role at that company, or you target one level, um, below that. And, uh, and as you know, the best candidates are, are often, uh, uh, passive and, uh, and the role, as we've talked about before, can be very nebulous. Get ready for a long process, because you'll have to, like, iron out the scope, uh, and think about your own org structure, uh, as you bring that person in. Um, and then, you know, once you actually get, you know, mutual fit, uh, and feel like there's something with, with a few candidates, uh, I, I think the, the next step is actually, um, having th…

AI assessment note: “next step is actually, um, having them do something that simulates the actual job”

Q That's interesting. If you're in a startup where speed is everything, is it better to hire now and get it done versus be really slow?

A I'm a big believer in hiring slow, obviously, because I still do it despite getting the feedback that I'm hiring too slow. Uh, and, uh, and the reason being also, I actually, I'm also a huge believer in, um, diseconomies of scale for teams. Uh, I think teams get materially slower, uh, as they get bigger. Um, it's really like the equivalent of a resource curse, uh, for companies rather than countries, right? Uh, when you have too many resources, you get bad at prioritizing, uh, and you get bad at accountability, and you actually end up moving slower. So it is painful in the short term where, you know, some things might not get done, uh, and, uh, But, but I think the right things get done, uh, and they get done better, uh, on small teams, and, and I think one thing that you learn to get comfortable with as a more experienced manager, somebody told me, uh, a while ago, is that you have to let some fires burn. If you think you have to fight every fire, uh, you know, uh, on your team, you're gonna burn yourself out. Uh, so you just have to realize that, like, some things are just not gonna be worked on for a bit, and they're gonna be broken, and, uh, and be comfortable with that, because they're, Less important. And you, and, and try to be intentional about that. So whenever we do planning, it's like, what are you not doing? So like, you know, name the fire that you're letting burn.

AI assessment note: “I'm a big believer in hiring slow, obviously”

Q Management-wise, what do you think are the biggest fuck-ups you see young managers make?

A Related to that, actually, is when people get their, um, first, you know, report or what have you, um, and they find out that, well, for whatever reason, the person is not up to snuff, uh, in terms of the work product that they're creating. Temptation for a lot of early managers It's to just do the work for the person. Uh, so they will, like, spend an extra three hours in the evening, like, reviewing the work product, uh, of this person that they've hired recently, and, uh, and, and just, like, fix it, uh, rather than, uh, spend the time coaching, because their view is like, oh my god, it would take me so much longer to teach them how to do this than just do it myself. Uh, so let me just do that. And, and obviously they do themselves and the person a huge disservice by, by doing that. Most people's mistakes come Uh, come about when there's a trade-off, um, you know, short-term versus long-term, right? Uh, and so people are willing to, um, give up some, you know, long-term gain, uh, to avoid some short-term pain. So they're finding it more painful and slower to coach somebody. So they'll just do the work themselves or, or, or find another way to get it done rather than investing the time, uh, in coaching this person up to stuff or making the separation decision if that's the right decision.

AI assessment note: “Temptation for a lot of early managers It's to just do the work for the person.”

Q What right now are you willing to have short-term pain for long-term gain?

A We, uh, have historically been very much as a company, um, channel oriented for driving growth. So we would have each channel, they would have their goals, they would have their budget, uh, and they would drive, uh, outcomes, um, based on that. And that's how we, uh, organize the company. The, the big short-term pain that we're, we're taking is We're moving towards a larger company segment-oriented strategy, where we have cross-functional teams that are going after a customer segment, um, and, you know, budgeting, goaling, everything based on this segment, which is a very difficult way of working versus, you know, deploying budget across channels. This is going to be a difficult, painful transition for, for the company, but I think It will be great long-term gain because the segment-oriented teams presumably have a deeper understanding for the customers, and having all the cross-functional teams work on, you know, the same segment will drive better conversion, better results, etc.

AI assessment note: “The, the big short-term pain that we're, we're taking is We're moving towards”

Q I actually agree with you totally, but I get killed for being exclusionary. What if it's someone who doesn't know anyone in your ecosystem? Is that fair? And what do you, what should I respond?

A I think it's a fair question, but, uh, fortunately, uh, I think there are a lot more, uh, Systems available now to help with that, that are not as gatekeeping on deck is here. There's a few other networks like that. I don't think it's actually like for the entrepreneurial person, it's that hard to find a path, uh, to meeting the right set of investors. And it just depends on how friendly people are, right? Like if somebody messages me, uh, with a tenuous connection, I'm typically willing to help them, right? Like if they're like, uh, you know, um, Hey, like, uh, I went to the same college as you, blah, blah, blah. Like, will you take a meeting? Maybe. But if they're like, hey, I really want to get to know this person. Will you intro me? And obviously I do a dual opt-in. I'll message them being like, hey, like, I don't really know this person. Their profile seems interesting. I haven't really evaluated. Let me know if you'd be open to taking a convo. Uh, and even if they spray and pray with that tactic, they will get some meetings via warm intro. So you got to hustle somewhat. Uh, I think there's a way to get the warm intro, and if you can't even do that, uh, I, I, I struggle to find out you're gonna fundraise, find customers, et cetera.

AI assessment note: “I don't think it's actually like for the entrepreneurial person, it's that hard”

Q think the best growth and marketing leaders are actually very much like VCs. Place many bets, analyze what works, doubles down efficiently. So I totally agree with you there. I do have to ask, you mentioned Opendoor, you mentioned Instacart, two incredible companies. If you were to think about one or two big takeaways and how they impacted your mindset from each, what would you say they would be, Sri?

A Yeah, uh, one lesson and experience that I remember vividly from my time at Opendoor, for those of Uh, folks that know the market is, you know, Opendoor was the leader in the space called iBuying, buying and selling homes, and Zillow, the largest player, you know, in real estate, had entered our market, uh, in, in 2017, as you can imagine, uh, that had some impact on our growth because they entered the exact same markets that we were in, and we at Opendoor had a choice to make, um, which was, do we price compete? Do we price match, uh, Zillow to acquire customers if Zillow is bidding higher on homes or, or not? And, uh, and it was a really tough decision, and, uh, and something I learned from that process is sticking to your conviction if you've arrived at it on a first principles basis, even if it gets tough. So what we decided at Opendoor is our biggest asset in competitive mode is the ability to price accurately, and we're not going to compromise that for, uh, short-term growth, and, and we stuck to our guns. We never did a price match, uh, and we never negotiated, uh, on price with sellers of homes. Lo and behold, we were right longer term in the sense that Zillow eventually lost their shirt and exited the market a few years before the market crash, right? So they, they left a while still in a peak, uh, real estate market. So I'm proud of that decision. Uh, but you know, it…

AI assessment note: “one lesson and experience that I remember vividly from my time at Opendoor”

Q What about conflicts with your company? So say I'm in expense management, or I'm not in expense management, but then I pivot to it. Now I'm potentially competing with You.

A Obviously anything that could be competitive, perceived as competitive, or looks like it's down the line competitive, I don't even take the meeting, uh, and, uh, and I strongly advise against anybody at the company taking meetings as well, if they're considering them. And so I think that one's like a more obvious one, which is like, okay, like, you know, use your judgment. If you have a question, ask me or ask our GC. Uh, but the, the conflict that's like a little bit trickier Potentially is, um, uh, if ramp is in the market to buy the software or something like that, uh, and you've invested in the company or you're, uh, investing in the company, what there it's like, you want to be extra, extra above board, uh, make it clear to the company that you're not going to influence the purchasing process as well as, um, actually like not influencing the purchasing process.

AI assessment note: “anything that could be competitive, perceived as competitive... I don't even take the meeting”

Q What are the first things to break in a scaling org? You've been in some of the best. Instacart, Opendoor now, Ramp. What are the like the, ah, fuck, it broke again.

A The thing that breaks, uh, is, uh, is, is really just culture and engagement, actually, uh, as this companies grow, right? So let's imagine that you're not successful as you're scaling. Obviously people are going to be demotivated and, and, and whatever. So that one's obvious. But I think the thing that people miss is, um, if you are successful, uh, I think a lot of, um, you know, founders and executives can take, you know, the growth engine and the team, uh, for, for granted. And I think if you're not continuing to provide kind of guidance, feedback, gratitude, uh, the team will get burned out and disengaged and, and you'll see departures. So that, that's the one thing that I tend to find is like the danger of success is that, uh, the teams that drove that, uh, get taken for granted often, uh, because, you know, people want to focus on problems, not the things that are working, uh, and, uh, and so, uh, that can create its own challenges.

AI assessment note: “The thing that breaks, uh, is, uh, is, is really just culture and engagement”

Q So it's being investing in someone. I need to fricking hire them. And you're my angel investor, Sri, so you get to help me. How do I structure the process for hiring the first growth hire? And what do the stages look like?

A I could probably speak to, uh, like, um, a more senior growth hire, how you kind of think about it. I think in terms of sourcing, uh, I don't think the process looks that different, um, versus, uh, another kind of senior leader or what have you that you're trying to do. Um, and I think Gokul has actually done a good job of summarizing on Twitter what people actually do, uh, which is you use your network and, uh, uh, of your investors and executives to identify companies and people that you think are one to two stages ahead of you that are exceptional at the function, namely growth here. Um, and, uh, and you use those companies and people to find more people. And you kind of validate reputations, et cetera. And depending on, you know, how advanced the company is, you, you target people that are actually at the head of the role at that company, or you target one level, um, below that. And, uh, and as you know, the best candidates are, are often, uh, uh, passive and, uh, and the role, as we've talked about before, can be very nebulous. Get ready for a long process, because you'll have to, like, iron out the scope, uh, and think about your own org structure, uh, as you bring that person in. Um, and then, you know, once you actually get, you know, mutual fit, uh, and feel like there's something with, with a few candidates, uh, I, I think the, the next step is actually, um, having th…

AI assessment note: “the next step is actually, um, having them do something that simulates the actual job.”

Q You also said about North Star metric that I think one of the biggest problems that I see honestly, Sri, is that people have the wrong North Star metric. Often it's revenue and revenue for me is an output. It's not an input. Um, how do you advise founders today on choosing the right North Star metric and how do you approach it?

A Yeah, I think, uh, as you mentioned, there's, there's not a per, I personally think there's not gonna be a perfect North Star metric for growth. It'll obviously depend on your business. And there's always kind of multiple pushes and pulls that you're trying to optimize for. One of them you're hinted at. Obviously one of those experiments would be simple and intuitive for people to understand. You want it to be, as you mentioned, something that the teams can actually directly impact. Uh, so something that is much closely related to their inputs, but something that's also very aligned with the ultimate value creation of the company, right? Uh, and I typically like to have like a volume goal and efficiency or ROI goal for growth teams. Um, on the volume goal, Like if you were to take the B to B example, right, uh, you could have the growth team's goal be some sort of qualified leads like MQLs or, or PQLs or something like that. But as you know, businesses are ultimately valued on long-term, you know, dollars of profit and cashflow generation. And then humans are very good at intentionally or unintentionally optimizing for, uh, the targets and metrics that they're, uh, that they're given. So in this particular example, how could it go wrong if you give a team qualified lead goal, uh, Uh, they can hit that goal by bringing a bunch of small leads or lower quality leads, uh, that don'…

AI assessment note: “something that the teams can actually directly impact”