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Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup ever | 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. In today’s podcast, we will discuss: • How velocity is at the heart of Ramp’s culture and success • How writing can unlock clarity, creativity, and rapid problem-solving • How to empower your product team through context sharing • How to practically approach problems from first principles • How Ramp approaches hiring in a unique way • Suggestions for breaking into the world of product management — Brought to you by Ezra—The leading full-body cancer screening company: http://www.ezra.com/lenny | Coda—Meet the evolution of docs: https://coda.io/lenny | Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups: https://attio.com/lenny?utm_source=lennyrachitsky&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=lenny-20230625 Find the full transcript at: ⁠https://www.lennyspodcast.com/velocity-over-everything-how-ramp-became-the-fastest-growing-saas-startup-of-all-time-geoff-charl/#transcript⁠ Where to find Geoff Charles: • Twitter: https://twitter.com/geoffintech • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffrey-charles/ Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • Twitter: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Geoff’s background (04:49) An overview of Ramp (06:20) The importance of velocity at Ramp (08:50) Single-threaded goals and how to keep teams away from distractions (13:20) Setting lofty goals (15:17) How Ramp empowers teams (17:37) How Geoff’s management style has evolved at Ramp (19:55) The product design process at Ramp (21:19) Ramp’s system for sharing feedback (23:07) How Ramp handles bug fixes (24:15) Advice for PMs who want to move faster (29:29) Why velocity and impact can help protect against burnout (32:33) Planning vs. doing (37:54) Ramp’s strategy documents (40:55) Finding your unique positioning (42:46) OKRs (44:53) The importance of first-principle thinking (48:53) How to use writing to think through problems (51:46) How Geoff carves out time for deep work (54:05) How Geoff manages tasks and stays organized (57:15) Why other roles share the PM load at Ramp (1:00:30) PM responsibilities at Ramp (1:01:46) Identifying A+ talent (1:06:02) The skills Ramp looks for when hiring (1:07:33) Advice for people wanting to break into product management (1:10:37) Lightning round Referenced: • How Ramp builds product: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-ramp-builds-product • Bill: https://www.bill.com/ • Expensify: https://www.expensify.com/ • Concur: https://www.concur.com/ • Coupa: https://www.coupa.com/ • Nicole Forsgren on Lenny’s Podcast: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-measure-and-improve-developer-productivity-nicole-forsgren-microsoft-research-github-goo/ • Sheryl Sandberg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheryl-sandberg-5126652/ • Getting Things Done: https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0143126563 • When Breath Becomes Air: https://www.amazon.com/When-Breath-Becomes-Paul-Kalanithi/dp/081298840X • The Bear on Hulu: https://www.hulu.com/series/the-bear-05eb6a8e-90ed-4947-8c0b-e6536cbddd5f • Whoop: https://www.whoop.com/ Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.

Geoff CharlesguestLenny Rachitskyhost

Aug 5, 20231h 16mWatch on YouTube ↗

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Inside Ramp’s playbook: tiny empowered teams, extreme velocity, huge impact

Ramp’s VP of Product, Geoff Charles, explains how Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS and fintech company by aggressively prioritizing velocity, small empowered teams, and A+ talent. The company repeatedly built competitive products to incumbents like Amex, Expensify, and Bill.com in months with very lean teams, by focusing on single-threaded ownership, first-principles thinking, and minimal process. Strategy at Ramp centers on clear goals, strong financial targets, and a roadmap ‘contract’, while product teams are given wide autonomy and context instead of top-down control. Geoff also digs into how they avoid burnout, structure planning, organize support under product, hire and evaluate PMs, and why writing and deep work are core to good decision-making.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Optimize for velocity with small, single-threaded teams and big goals.

Ramp repeatedly shipped full competitors to large incumbents (Amex, Expensify, Bill.com) in ~3 months with 3–8 engineers by giving pods one clear objective, tight timelines, and shielding them from distractions or shared responsibilities.

Empower teams with context over control to scale decision-making.

Leaders align with teams on goals, hypotheses, and key data, then largely step back from dictating solutions; teams closer to the problem own the ‘how,’ while leaders act as ‘repeater-in-chief’ for strategy and context.

Use simple, lightweight strategy instead of heavy OKR machinery.

Ramp moved away from time-consuming quarterly OKRs toward biannual one-page company priorities, a strong financial plan with clear owners, and team-level strategy docs that define goals, hypotheses, metrics, risks, and why Ramp has a right to win.

Maintain quality at high speed through clear control metrics, not process.

They fix every surfaced bug, track NPS/CSAT, operational burden (ticket rate per user), and ‘confused’ tickets; when these go red, teams stop shipping new features and must improve quality before resuming.

Treat support as a product failure and put it under product.

Customer support reports into product, is incentivized to reduce contacts (not just resolve them), and feeds structured customer feedback directly into teams—resulting in a tiny support staff serving hundreds of thousands of users.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

Velocity is everything at Ramp. It’s how we design our product development process, how we incentivize teams, who we hire, and who we promote.

— Geoff Charles

Every support ticket is a failure of our product.

— Geoff Charles

Any second you spend planning is a second you don’t spend doing.

— Geoff Charles

I actually think velocity is a way to potentially avoid burnout. When I felt burnout, it was when I had the lowest amount of velocity.

— Geoff Charles

Don’t take everything I’m saying at face value. Start from first principles for your own company.

— Geoff Charles

Culture of velocity and how Ramp operationalizes shipping extremely fastSingle-threaded, small pods and empowerment (context over control)Strategy, planning, and the roadmap–financial plan ‘contract’Quality, support, and control mechanisms that prevent chaos at high speedFirst-principles thinking in product, org design, and customer supportHiring, talent density, and the role of A+ engineering and designPersonal productivity, writing, and avoiding burnout in a high-velocity environment

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