Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Engineers should have full autonomy beyond meeting their core product commitments

Geoff Charles · Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles · Aug 6, 2023 · at 1:03:43

Geoff Charles, VP of Product at Ramp, discusses engineering autonomy and the boundaries of product management responsibility.

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“Your job is to make sure that they're aligned with the long-term vision and that they can deliver what they've committed to. But on top of that, they can do whatever the hell they want. And if they're taking on something that puts the things that they committed to at risk, they'll communicate that.”

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Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ramp built competitors to American Express and Expensify in months
“In three months, we built a competitor to Amex. Six months after that, we built a competitor to expensify, you know, both publicly traded companies.”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 9:12 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
Insight
Shield new product teams from organizational chaos until product-market fit
“Small teams have a single threaded focus give them the resources they need to execute, big lofty goals, very tight timelines, and then like shield them from the chaos that is the rest of the organization. Basically don't bother them and don't even tell the res…”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 9:50 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
Insight
Fast-moving teams should stress-test product decisions at GA, not pre-beta
“It's the difference between a beta and the GA that that's where we really get plugged in when we make the decision to go live. To the rest of the customer base and asking sales to start selling. That's where I'll really come in and stress test the hypotheses a…”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 20:43 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
Opinion
Ramp's velocity is driven primarily by elite engineering and design talent
“Behind ramps velocity is a lot less like the culture that, that I try to amplify a lot more, the quality of the engineering and design talent candidly.”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 24:59 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
Insight
Teams should only invest in planning accuracy where precision delivers high value
“Because accuracy has cost, make sure that you're only increasing the accuracy of planning for the things that have high value of that accuracy.”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 33:48 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
Disclosure
Ramp replaced quarterly OKRs with a biannual one-pager of company priorities
“We moved from like quarterly, very expensive quarterly planning, which took one month every three months. So basically, 33% of the time was planning to a biannual one pager on these are the company priorities. And it's much more smooth and much faster.”
Geoff Charles Aug 6, 2023 ▶ 40:03 Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | Geoff Charles
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