Lessons from scaling Ramp | Sri Batchu (Ramp, Instacart, Opendoor)

**Sri Batchu** (0:00)
I do think there's actually a general path that most B2B companies take and should take. My view is, you start off with founder-led sales, the early team needs to know how to act, show and sell. Then you hire your first couple of salespeople, then you start some very kind of low cost targeted marketing efforts. So whether it's like content, community, small scale events, and then PR, after all of that is when you start paid and brand effort. And then SEO probably start around the same time that you start paid marketing efforts.
The reason for the progression the way I've described it is the channels get more expensive as you go farther along and they get more effective as you understand more about your customers.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:43)
Welcome to Lenny's podcast where I interview world-class product leaders and growth experts to learn from their hard-won experiences building and growing today's most successful products. Today, my guest is Sri Batchu. Sri was VP of Ops at Opendoor, then head of growth at Instacart. And currently, he is the head of growth at RAMP, which as you'll hear at the top of the episode, is the fastest growing SaaS business and the fastest growing FinTech business in history. They hit a hundred million dollar yearly run rate in two years, which is absurd. And in the last year, grew 4X during a period where most companies barely grew at all.
I recently did a newsletter post on how RAMP builds product with their VP of product, Jeff Charles. And in this episode, we zero in on RAMP's approach to growth. We chat about what RAMP did in the early days to kickstart growth, how they mostly grow these days, how their growth team is structured, their prioritization framework, plus their North Star metrics, also how they operationalize velocity, which is at the core of their team culture. RAMP is a really special company that is clearly on an incredible journey. And I am really excited to share this glimpse into how they operate. Enjoy this episode with Sri Batchu after a short word from our sponsors.
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Sri, welcome to the podcast.

**Sri Batchu** (4:12)
Thank you, Lenny. Thanks for having me. I'm a huge fan and I've been following the podcast and the newsletters, so excited to be here.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (4:18)
Really appreciate that.
So let's talk about Ramp. So Ramp, where you lead growth, is apparently one of the fastest growing products in history. I believe it's the fastest growing SaaS product and business and also the fastest growing fintech business.
So first of all, is that generally true and correct?