Jason Shah: recommendation

Transcript context

…You mentioned you picked up a bunch of tactics and kind of lessons from some of these companies. What's one concrete process or tactic that you took it away from either Amazon or one of these other companies that stuck with you that you like to kind of share with folks? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think one that Amazon is well-known for is the working backwards process, and for those that don't know, the idea is try to define effectively an ideal end state which funnily enough is very similar to some of what we both experienced at Airbnb and took away, and usually the mechanism for doing this is what's called a PRFAQ, and that's a press release and frequently asked questions, and it forces a certain degree of clarity to have to actually write a press release about the product that you're going to eventually launch. Every employee goes through actually like a business writing class after they start at Amazon. They give you a little card with five tips that you're supposed to keep on your desk about concision and specificity in the words you use. For example, you should never write the word great in an Amazon press release. You should write user friendly in X, Y, Z way and will save customers time 20 minutes each day through this. It's intended to be very concrete in a way that avoids some of the fluffiness that frankly... It's funny, when people try to move from slides to docs, they really just import the same mindsets that they use in slides, but just with more words now. And so, I think the working backwards process of establishing the long-term goal using a mechanism like a press release and the FAQs where every word matters, and even the FAQs, for what it's worth, there's a section for external FAQs that you would include for example as an appendix, but also internal FAQs that are meant to de-risk launch or raise the elephant in the room or dogs not barking as Amazon likes to call it often. So, that was a really helpful process that felt very true to me as a way I like to live my life as well, and then also very applicable. The tidbit about not using the word great is so interesting. Is there anything else there that you could share about just basically just like how to write effectively and communicate and launch. Is there any other tidbits along those lines?…

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