Geoff Charles
Geoff Charles is VP of Product at Ramp—the fastest-growing SaaS startup of all time, Fast Company’s #1 Most Innovative Company in North America, and a company I believe we should all study for how they operate, execute, and hire. At Ramp, Geoff has led the product team from the early days, including the development and release of 60+ products and features in the past year alone. He has been building financial services for over a decade, and his interview in Lenny’s Newsletter quickly became one of the most widely read newsletter issues of all time.
Building & Shipping Skills
High-speed product development requires isolating small teams with single-threaded focuses and shielding them from organizational overhead.
"And I think the recipe for all this is constantly small teams have a single-threaded focus, give them the resources they need to execute big lofty goals, very tight timelines, and then shield them fro..."
Protecting the development velocity of core teams requires dedicated operational layers to manage escalations and maintenance tasks.
"So we have a rotational program on production engineering, for example, where engineers are protecting the core team from escalations, from bugs, from issues. We have product operators that are protec..."
Team & Organization Skills
Shipping products at an exceptional pace naturally attracts top talent who are motivated by impact and tangible results.
"It's also a great way to have positive selection in terms of talent because talent wants to join companies that ship fast. And a lot of people who join Ramp, I ask them, 'Why are you interested in joi..."
Building a high-velocity company requires designing every organizational process and incentive around the speed of decision-making.
"Velocity is everything at Ramp. It's how we design our product development process. It's how we incentivize teams, it's who we want to hire, it's who we want to promote, and it's everything around how..."