Velocity over everything: How Ramp became the fastest-growing SaaS startup of all time | Geoff Charles (VP of Product)

**Geoff Charles** (0:00)
So when I joined, we were about 10-ish folks, about eight engineers, and in three months, we built a competitor to Amex. Six months after that, we built a competitor to Expensify, both publicly traded companies. We hit 100 million in annual revenue. I think we were under, at that point, 50 total in the R&D department, less than four engineers and three PMs. And then we started expanding into a Calfs Pable. It was three engineers, one designer, one PM, three months, and they hit it out of the park, and that product is moving in billions of dollars a year. And I think the recipe for all this is...

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:32)
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 Geoff Charles, who is VPR product at Ramp. This episode is a unique glimpse into a startup and an approach to product that optimizes for moving quickly, thinking from first principles, and empowering individual team members. If you're not familiar with Ramp, they are the fastest growing SaaS business in history, getting to over $100 million in annual run rate in two years, which is just wild. And as you'll hear in this episode, they did this with 50 people. In our conversation, Geoff shares how they operationalize a culture of velocity, how they do a lot with few people, how they organize planning, how they define strategy, how they interview product managers, and keep a very high bar for talent, plus also avoid burnout in a very fast moving culture, and so much more. My advice is to seriously study how RAMP operates because there's a lot to learn from their success and their approach to product. Enjoy this episode with Geoff Charles after a short word from our sponsors.
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