How to Build a Growth Team -- Sri Batchu, Head of Growth at Ramp

Finding product-market fit, in my opinion, is the founder's primary job. It is not something that you outsource to a growth team. In my view, like a growth team in the, in the beginning days is honestly like sales team, the founder, and maybe one kind of like early career generalist that has like an analytical background that can run some experiments and tests.

Right.

I think once you have clear product-market fit and you have some escape velocity and you're actually like growing is when I would actually staff a growth team that's more than like one person. Right. I don't know where the right number is. Is it like $5 million ARR, maybe something like that? I don't know. I'm sure people can arrive at different numbers or thresholds to get there, but that's like one opinion.

I would love you to give me a very precise— $4.23 million ARR.

You need to at that point.

Okay, so say we find that tipping point where we need it. Do we hire a junior analyst who is super analytical and smart and hustles and experiments, or do we hire a growth leader? Which role is the right to hire for?

A growth leader is helpful when you have multiple, like, quote unquote programs that are starting to show work. So when I say programs, I mean you've spent a little bit on paid marketing. It seems like it's working. You've got potentially somebody full-time working on paid marketing or thinking about it. And you've, you know, you've got some initial traction on product-led growth or what have you is when I would say you start looking for that, like, you know, director-plus level of person. The early days of growth can be managed by, in my opinion, a lot of different types of people. I actually really like the Biz Ops profile for the early days until you're like ready to really put some gas on the fire and, you know, hire a VP. But I think what's great about growth is that it's truly a cross-disciplinary field. And so I actually think people that are generalists do a lot better than hiring a specialist early on.

Do you think you need to hire someone who's been ahead of growth before? It's such a small field.

Yeah, yeah, I don't think so. I think what you, what you want to look for is people that have, you know, the T-shaped classic thing where they have like a deep spike in one area or one discipline of growth in some way. And whether that spike is product, some function of marketing, or, you know, analytics and data, and you can invest in somebody to try to scale into the other areas and really build out a growth function. And you're right there, it's not like the function has been around for so long that there are so many, you know, people that you can hire from that are good.

So speaking of investing in someone, I need to freaking hire them, and you're my angel investor, Sri, so you get to help me. How do I structure the process for hiring the first growth hire, and what do the stages look like?

I could probably speak to like a more senior growth hire, how you kind of think about it. I think in terms of sourcing, I don't think the process looks that different versus another kind of senior leader or what have you that you're trying to do. And I think Gokul has actually done a good job of summarizing on Twitter what people actually do, which is use your network of your investors and executives to— identify companies and people that you think are 1 to 2 stages ahead of you that are exceptional at the function, namely growth here. And you use those companies and people to find more people and you kind of validate reputations, et cetera. And depending on how advanced the company is, you target people that are actually at the head of the role at that company or you target one level below that. And as you know, the best candidates are often passive and the role, as we've talked about before, can be very nebulous. Get ready for a long process because you'll have to iron out the scope and think about your own org structure as you bring that person in. And then once you actually get mutual fit and feel like there's something with a few candidates, I think the next step is actually having them do something that simulates the actual job. I'm a big believer in doing a little bit of homework or case study type of thing. And it works at— I think fundamentally you should do it for all levels. People often think about it as like, something that you do for potentially a more junior candidate.

Do we make them do a case study on our company, on their old company, on a neutral company? Which one?

I would prefer the third. The way I kind of think about it is you want a space where neither you nor the candidate has asymmetric information, right? Because then that can cloud your judgment on their performance. You either pick something that, you know, is about a third company or you pick a problem at your company that's relatively new to you that you haven't worked out yet and give them the context to see how they think about it. So you're kind of jamming on it together, so to speak.

Do we bring other disciplines in? So they do the case study, they impress. Do we bring head of product, engineering? How does that work in terms of who we bring in?

Yes, absolutely. And what I actually have done in the past is have a panel, so not just have them write out a case or whatever, but have a small panel where they actually present their work and where you bring the cross-functional leaders in and you can ask them questions, see how they react to on-the-spot thinking as well as how they react to feedback. And you learn a lot about how this person works. The main thing— and we use the term, probably overuse it, growth mindset in the tech world, but I think it's especially critical for somebody in growth. To be nimble in their thinking and be open to new information and creative.

So Sri, what questions do we ask in the interview process? What determines the growth mindset? There's some that we love to go back to. I have mine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I always love my favorite is how did you first make money?

My favorite interview question that I ask that tests that, which is a very simple one, is what's something that you are bad at that you enjoy doing? For me, I think one thing that it shows is like, how interested are you in learning versus only doing things that you are good at? And how afraid are you of failure? I think there are two data points that you get when people struggle to answer that question. If they can't name a single thing that they're bad at that they like doing.

Sri, I don't know what to say. There's so many things I suck at, so I stop doing them.

But I'm sure there's something that you're bad at that you like doing.

What if I told you as a response to that. I believe in focusing on your strengths and really honing in on your superpower because I'll only ever be mediocre at what I'm bad at. Yeah.

And I think that's, that's fair. Uh, I, uh, from a like skillset perspective, but I think from a knowledge perspective, because this is such an interdisciplinary field, like you want somebody that is interested in going places where they necessarily don't have the expertise or knowledge and have that intellectual curiosity and not just staying in their own lane where they are knowledgeable and they're good at something.

Are there other massive red flags that you see in this process that worry you when you see them?

I think if you see a lot of defensiveness during the case presentation, for me, that's like a big red flag. I think people that are very open to feedback and respond thoughtfully versus feeling like they have to quote unquote defend their work. Because look, you worked on it for whatever, a day, on a problem space that you don't know a lot about. So if you come in with humility and an open mindset, obviously green flag, but there are some people that come in pretty defensive.