Sri Batchu: Biggest Growth Lesson from Instacart & Opendoor; 70% of Experiments Should Fail | E1040
15Sri Batchu currently leads Growth at Ramp. He previously led Growth Strategy and Operations at Instacart where he also helped grow their Ads business. Prior to that, he was one of the first 50 employees at Opendoor where he built, scaled, and managed a variety of business teams including Analytics, Sales, and Pricing. During his time, the company grew from $100M to $5B+ revenue and to 1500+ people. He started his career in management consulting at McKinsey and also held various investing roles including in private equity at Bain Capital.
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Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(0:41) The Journey to Growth
(08:10) Feedback Loops and Experimentation
(17:57) How to Build a Growth Team
(25:52) Culture and Team Alignment
(31:32) Effective Leadership
(41:12) Navigating Growth Challenges
(48:51) Tips for Operator-Investors
(1:03:04) Final Thoughts and Inspirations
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In Today’s Episode with Sri Batchu We Discuss:
1. From Harvard to Private Equity to Leading the Best Growth Teams:
How did Sri make his way into the world of growth with Instacart and Opendoor?
What are 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from his time at Instacart? How did it change his approach and mindset towards growth?
How did Zilllow burn themselves by buying homes? What did that teach Sri about hitting metrics and goal setting in growth teams?
2. Growth Teams Should Fail and Fail Fast:
What is the right ratio of success to failure within growth teams?
What are specific ways that growth teams can increase the speed with which they fail?
How are the best post-mortems run? Who joins them? Who leads the agenda?
What are Sri’s biggest lessons on how to set the right goals?
Where do so many growth teams go wrong with the North Star that they set for themselves?
3. Building the Bench: Hiring a Growth Team:
When is the right time to make your first growth hires?
What profile should your first growth hires be?
How should one structure the interview process when hiring growth teams?
What is the first question Sri asks all new hires?
Why does Sri believe you have to hire slowly?
Should candidates do case studies as part of the process, if so, on a new company or on the company they are interviewing for?
4. When Operators Become Investors:
Why does Sri believe the best investors of the next 10 years will be operators?
Why does Sri believe that operators can do due diligence to a higher level than traditional VCs?
Why does Sri believe that investors should not take cold emails?
Why does Sri believe that it is not wrong for an investor to hire from their portfolio companies?
What does Sri believe the future of venture holds over the next 10 years?
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