My co-founder posted this thread on Twitter and I thought it was too good not to share here. Solo-preneur to enterprise founder, I think these are valuable principles that all of us can benefit from.
Everyone wants to work at Amazon.
I did. For 5 years.
Here are the top 3 lessons that I learned while I was there:
These work for product. For founders. For program managers. For general managers.
I'm convinced anyone in tech would be better off if they learned these 3 Amazonian skills.
Measure: find out if it did.
Activate your learning loop w/ writing
Not at Amazon.
We obsess over details. We measure everything. No detail is too small not to matter.
A tenet is your thinking in advance about how you make hard decisions. It's a principle for choosing.
If you can write a good tenet, you can run a good business.
A tenet is one simple sentence that tells clearly how you choose between two opposing tensions (e.g. end buyers vs. vendors at Amazon).
A good tenet is not obvious in advance. It's written with attitude. It's a teaching tool. It's designed to help you spread your thinking at scale.
Master tenets, and you'll be able to run AND scale a business.
Bonus: you'll also think better and be surprised less often!
One last piece of wisdom: always add the Amazonian "unless you know better" to your tenets and your thinking.
Be humble, write out your thoughts, invite debate.
Let the best idea win!
These 3 skills are what I'm using for the foundation of my new project: Rocketsugar.io. The best part about what these skills have done? We've built out our entire idea and website with an hour of meetings... total.
Everyone wants to work at Amazon.
I did. For 5 years.
Here are the top 3 lessons that I learned while I was there:
These work for product. For founders. For program managers. For general managers.
I'm convinced anyone in tech would be better off if they learned these 3 Amazonian skills.
- Make yourself write out your thoughts. There's a lot of chatter about magic documents (like PRFAQ's), but I will tell you there's nothing magical about them.
Measure: find out if it did.
Activate your learning loop w/ writing
- Sweat the details more the higher up you go.
Not at Amazon.
We obsess over details. We measure everything. No detail is too small not to matter.
- Learn how to expose your assumptions and write tenets.
A tenet is your thinking in advance about how you make hard decisions. It's a principle for choosing.
If you can write a good tenet, you can run a good business.
A tenet is one simple sentence that tells clearly how you choose between two opposing tensions (e.g. end buyers vs. vendors at Amazon).
A good tenet is not obvious in advance. It's written with attitude. It's a teaching tool. It's designed to help you spread your thinking at scale.
Master tenets, and you'll be able to run AND scale a business.
Bonus: you'll also think better and be surprised less often!
One last piece of wisdom: always add the Amazonian "unless you know better" to your tenets and your thinking.
Be humble, write out your thoughts, invite debate.
Let the best idea win!
These 3 skills are what I'm using for the foundation of my new project: Rocketsugar.io. The best part about what these skills have done? We've built out our entire idea and website with an hour of meetings... total.