Instead of creating a product then finding customers, Amazon asks "What does the customer need?" and works toward the product.
✅Customer need --> Create product
❌Create product --> Find customer
1/ Amazon is famous for its writing culture:
• "Mock press releases / FAQs" for new product pitches
• "6-page memos" instead of Powerpoint
Two former Amazon execs wrote a book called "Working Backwards" detailing the philosophy.
Here are some insights 🧵
Instead of creating a product then finding customers, Amazon asks "What does the customer need?" and works toward the product.
✅Customer need --> Create product
❌Create product --> Find customer
To determine if the customer need makes biz sense, employees write a press release:
• What problem is the new product solving
• Why it's better than existing options
To persuade a customer, the document has to be jargon-free and tell a story.
You don't write a press release for an incremental improvements.
Creating a product worthy of a press release means really solving a customer problem and going after markets with large TAMs.
Addressing every potential customer question can help identify hurdles to getting something to market...and also uncover opportunities.
Amazon famously has execs write 6-page narrative-driven memos instead of Powerpoint decks.
The practice began in 2004 when Jeff Bezos noticed nothing was being decided after 60-minute long meetings with his inner circle (AKA S-Team).
People read faster than people can talk meaning that -- for a 60 minute meeting -- reading a memo before discussing an issue conveys much more information (10x more per one of the book's authors).
Narratives are also more memorable.
In Powerpoint presentations, a great presenter can sell a bad idea. Conversely, a poor presenter may be unable to sell a great idea.
In a memo, the idea wins.
Powerpoint's hierarchical (and sequential) structure is not ideal to address complex issues.
Narrative-driven memos can be multi-causal and provide a 360-degree view on a topic.
If every meeting participant spends the first 1/3rd of a 60-minute meeting reading, there is a huge transfer of information.
It's a forcing function to get everyone on the same page and makes the remaining 40-minutes high quality.
Whether or not one agrees with everything in a memo, focussed reading of a document provides a shared knowledge base with which to begin discussions.
Further, someone can quickly "get up to speed" by reading past memos.
Powerpoint and Excel are great at communicating data.
However, at the executive level, you are making complex decisions and leading. This requires a mastery of narrative (AKA memo writing) to persuade stakeholders.
At 20 employees, Bezos could be in every meeting. At 1k+ employees, he needed a way to “inject his lens of thinking” into the organization.
An archive of writing helps encode the thinking across the company (e.g. Annual letters)
For more on the book, check this a16z podcast:
https://t.co/Gz876YZs1b
Here's the book:
https://t.co/qTzLMrCCYw
https://t.co/TnEdX81mCo
(1/10) Lots of coverage on Netflix's culture.
— \U0001d683\U0001d69b\U0001d69e\U0001d697\U0001d690 \U0001d67f\U0001d691\U0001d68a\U0001d697 \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6 (@TrungTPhan) September 8, 2020
The company has a cutthroat reputation and willingness to pay top dollar for superstar talent (AKA "100x engineers").
The reason why is explained in these 6 slides.
And it has to do with creativity and complexity. \U0001f447\U0001f447 pic.twitter.com/Htt5PtsLhW
More from 𝚃𝚛𝚞𝚗𝚐 𝙿𝚑𝚊𝚗 🇨🇦
More from Culture
Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"
The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.
1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!
2) "Repressed memory" syndrome
3) Facilitated Communication [FC]
All 3 led to massive abuse.
"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.
Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.
FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
For three years I have wanted to write an article on moral panics. I have collected anecdotes and similarities between today\u2019s moral panic and those of the past - particularly the Satanic Panic of the 80s.
— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) September 29, 2018
This is my finished product: https://t.co/otcM1uuUDk
The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.
1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!
2) "Repressed memory" syndrome
3) Facilitated Communication [FC]
All 3 led to massive abuse.
"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.
Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.
FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.
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