The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 64 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Jeff Bezos uses three specific criteria to evaluate new product investments
“And I sort of asked him like, what's your criteria for sort of investing in something new? And he said, well, it's like three things. One, is it a big idea? And then second, is it something we should be doing? So if maybe you have an idea, if you have this new…”
McAllister: Product leadership requires operating existing products, not just building new ones
“Being a product leader is not just about building new things. It's about, you know, how well you run, which you've already built. And if you, If you're really paying attention to the product that you operate, it will give you ideas for things you could do to d…”
McAllister: Leaders have more impact teaching mental models than giving prescriptive advice
“I think you'll have a lot more lasting effect if you could kind of abstract it to a degree and teach the lesson, because then that person will hopefully learn the lesson and can apply it to a bunch of future situations, and also understand the why more, and it…”
Ipsen: Founders overgeneralize talent quality based on prestigious resume brands
“And just because someone has a brand on their resume at the right time, I think oftentimes CEOs and founders will do this thing where they kind of overgeneralize, well, You know, Amazon's prime team at this time was amazing or something like that. It's like th…”
Shah: Amazon PMs cannot divorce product from business and revenue growth
“Amazon was a place where you couldn't divorce business and product. You couldn't be a product manager without thinking about revenue growth, without thinking about go to market.”
Shah: Amazon works backwards from launch; Airbnb works backwards from quality
“I would almost frame it as working backwards from sort of like a moment in time or a launch, like you said with Amazon versus working backwards from a quality standard in some sense of an 11 star experience.”
Jackson: Google and Amazon spike in sincerity; Apple spikes in sophistication
“Amazon is sincere and competent. Google is sincere and competent. Apple is not. Apple has a little more of that, like sophistication to it.”
Colin Bryar drafted Jeff Bezos's famous 2004 memo banning PowerPoint at Amazon
“Apparently he was the one that drafted this memo. He handed it to Jeff, sent it out. They didn't think it was going to be that big a deal, but of course the deal that not only changed all of Amazon, it probably changed every other company.”
Rachitsky: Amazon's six-page narrative is designed to expose flawed ideas early
“The narrative approach at Amazon, one of the benefits of that and the reasons they go there is partly for you to realize this is a bad idea before anyone even needs to give you feedback. And that's why they force you to write six pages in depth about your idea…”
Carr: Amazon required S-team plan alignment before granting team autonomy
“There's, there was an intense review process at Amazon where either, you know,
At some level, whether it be the vice president, senior vice president, or all the way up to the Jeff level and his direct reports called the S team, this plan would be reviewed and…”
Carr: Amazon Borrowed Bar Raiser Hiring Process from Microsoft
“So they created this bar raiser process, which by the way, they borrowed from Microsoft, which had a process called as appropriate.”
Carr: Amazon measured its key selection input metric incorrectly for years
“We tell a story in the book about one of our most important input metrics, which was how much selection do we have? And we were actually not measuring that right for several years. We had to refine that measurement.”
First Round Review attracted disproportionate subscribers from Google, Apple, and Amazon
“Whenever we would look at our list of subscribers, we had a disproportionate number of email addresses within those companies that were clearly curious about the startup experience.”
McAllister: Amazon maintained a secretive, heads-down culture around 2010
“A lot of Amazon people I sort of felt were just like so hundred percent heads down. It was a little bit of a secretive culture, not maybe like Apple, but it was pretty private.”
Shah: Amazon gives new employees business writing classes and tip cards
“Every employee goes through actually like a business writing class after they started 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.”
Evans: Amazon engineer rose from SDE II to Director in eight years
“One of my best people I ever worked with joined my team at Amazon as what we would call an SDE two, which in Amazon is a level five employee. He grew with me kind of following this process to a senior engineer. Then he switched to management and ran a small te…”