How to ship features with quality and speed
Plus: Why you should start thinking about promoting talent internally
· 686 words
Christian Woese & Melanie Gabriel
December 16, 2025 • Read time: 3 minutes
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Dear hustlers, founders, operators and visionaries,
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang became the FT person of the year, while Time magazine named the “AI architects” the person of 2025. No matter if you are team Boom or Doom, their impact will for sure be lasting. Disney has already placed its bets: it announced a $1bn investment into OpenAI. After all, we’ll have more time to watch movies when AI does all the work. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.
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Promote an internal talent, or hire someone external who has already done the job? External hires seem like the safe option to many, but Paddy Lambros thinks otherwise. Internal talent already knows the team, knows how to get things done, and values opportunities. Things which are hard to get from an external person. Who are the future leaders in your own org?
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From us
Shipping new product features can never be fast enough. How do you increase speed while ensuring quality? Geoff Charles from Ramp shared their playbook to keep the bar for builders high while not slowing down.
The key: any team can ship to early access customer tiers and only needs approval for general release. For this approval, the following questions need to be answered and signed off:
What did we build and why
What's the demo in < 3mn (Loom)
Did we meet our goals in early access (hex dash)
Are customers raving about this (think: LLM on Zendesk tickets, Sprig surveys, Gong transcripts)
Will customers easily discover and start using it
Is sales ready to sell, AM ready to activate, and support ready to troubleshoot
Do we have a clear rollout plan