Ranjitha Kurra Shares Insights On Building Revenue Teams At Hyper-Growth Startups

A new type of business is taking the world by storm: hypergrowth companies. These companies are defined by their ability to rapidly increase their revenue, customer base, and market share, often at an exponential rate. Harvard Business Review explains that it is achieved when businesses rapidly expand, company valuation skyrockets, and the compound annual growth rate hits 40% or higher.

Ranjitha Kurra is a revenue leader with 15 years of experience crafting go to market strategies for new products and services spanning Fortune 500 companies to pre-revenue startups across multiple industries. She is particulary passionate about launching and scaling Sales and Marketing functions at hyper-growth businesses, which require a fundamentally different approach than an established business. 

Ranjitha is currently a Vice President at Remitly, a cross-border payments company, where she is launching a new B2B platform. Prior to that, she was the GM of mid-market at Convoy, a hyper-growth supply chain start-up, where she introduced Convoy’s suite of products to a brand new segment. She shared her experiences launching new businesses at Convoy and Remtily - two of Seattle’s fastest growing technology companies.  

Scaling hyper-growth startups: insights from Ranjitha Kurra

Ranjitha joined Convoy, a hyper-growth startup in the supply chain and logistics space, at the tail end of Series B and built the go-to-market function from the ground up. Because the company was disrupting a traditional industry with a long history of inefficiencies, there weren’t any reliable existing KPIs or benchmarks they could rely on. So they built their own and refined them over time as the business evolved. They developed agile planning processes that allowed them to make quick decisions and adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. 

"Our revenue was growing 4x YoY, so past year's data was irrelevant," Ranjitha said. "We had to develop an agile planning process that allowed us to plan quarterly and, in some cases, monthly to adapt to the growth." 

Solving customer problems

“Love Problems, Not Solutions” was a core company value at Convoy. The revenue teams did not approach customers to sell a solution. Instead, they spent time identifying and solving top customer priorities and pain points using Convoy’s network and technology. For some customers this was reducing costs on certain shipping routes, for others it was delivering critical shipments on time and some others it was reducing their emissions footprint. This allowed Convoy to not only expand the business rapidly but also co-create innovative supply chain solutions that became new product and business lines in the future. 

“We approached customer conversations with open mindedness and curiosity.” Ranjitha said. “We spent a lot of time understanding the strategic priorities of customers that automatically led to solutions. Customers appreciated our approach and the results we delivered that opened access to future expansion opportunities”  

Building resilient teams

In hyper-growth companies, deeply functional or specialized roles don’t exist, at least early-on. Everyone from the most junior employee to the CEO wears multiple hats and learns on the job. Instead of focusing on specific skills, Ranjitha focused on hiring people with a strong history of results and the right values, especially customer centricity. She created a dynamic culture of learning and experimentation and empowered her teams to explore new ideas and fail fast, in pursuit of developing innovative customer solutions. This culture was critical to fostering a growth mind-set and delivering customer value. 

“Our business was growing so fast that the nature of my team’s work changed on a daily basis. One day we were researching the legal nuances of insurance clauses for a contract and another day we were forecasting the impact of rising fuel prices on long-term pricing.” 

Ranjitha encourages her team to stay curious and continually seek new knowledge and experiences. This approach has personally helped her stay ahead of the curve and bring fresh insights to her work. "Early in my career, I've learned to ask the right questions to the right people and with the right intent. It opened up doors that I thought were impossible to open. People love talking and helping someone who knows how to ask for help." 

Unlocking rapid business growth

In a hyper growth environment, traditional paradigms are often challenged, and agility, adaptability, and innovative thinking are essential. A deep understanding of customer problems, a culture grounded in experimentation and agility, and resilient teams are all key ingredients to building revenue teams in dynamic environments.