Sri Batchu
Head of Growth at Ramp. Previously Head of Growth at Instacart and VP Operations at Opendoor. Known for his thinking on growth engine design, the North Star Translation Layer, and the principle of failing conclusively rather than merely failing fast.
At Ramp, Batchu oversaw a period of extraordinary growth: $100M ARR in two years, a 4× year-on-year growth rate during a period when most SaaS companies barely grew, and sustained outperformance at under 500 employees — a striking revenue-per-employee ratio.
Key positions
- Small teams of high performers out-execute larger teams of mediocre people; talent density is a structural multiplier, not a hiring nice-to-have.
- The right growth North Star has two properties: clear linkage to business value, and direct influenceability by the team goaled on it.
- Every team’s local metric should be translatable into the company North Star; the translation layer is what enables cross-team resource allocation and unified planning.
- Failing conclusively retires a hypothesis permanently. Failing fast but inconclusively means the same idea gets re-run every time a new executive joins.
- The cap table strategy: load influential founders and operators onto your cap table early — they become first customers and first evangelists.