What Amazon's Working Backwards Method Taught Me About Building AI Products
By Khalel Dumaz
At Amazon, we wrote the press release before we wrote the code. Most founders do it backwards. Here's the framework and why I built it into Vora IQ.
- Amazon
- product management
- PR/FAQ
- startup frameworks
- product development
At Amazon, we wrote the press release before we wrote the code. Most founders do it backwards.
I spent years at Amazon working on the Ring Neighbors app. We scaled it to 21 million monthly active users in 60 days and eventually 30 million. But the feature that influenced me most wasn't something I built there. It was a document.
The PR/FAQ, explained simply
Amazon's Working Backwards method starts with a document called the PR/FAQ. It's simple: write a fake press release announcing your product as if it already exists. Then write the FAQ that would follow.
The press release forces you to answer four questions in plain language. What is this? Who is it for? Why does it matter? What does success look like?
The FAQ section forces you to answer the hard questions. How is this different from what already exists? What are the biggest risks? What do we not know yet? What would make us kill this project?
No code. No mockups. No pitch deck. Just a one-page document that forces clarity before commitment.
Why it works
The PR/FAQ works because it reverses the typical founder sequence. Most founders start with a solution (I want to build X), then go looking for a problem to justify it. The PR/FAQ starts with the customer outcome and works backwards to the product.
It sounds obvious when you say it. But watch how most founders operate: they spend weeks building features before they can articulate in one sentence what problem they're solving. The PR/FAQ makes that impossible. If you can't write a compelling press release, you don't have a compelling product.
Amazon uses this for everything. Not just products. Features. Internal tools. Process changes. If it's worth building, it's worth writing the press release first.
How to write one for your startup
You don't need to work at Amazon to use this framework. Here's how to do it in an afternoon.
The press release (one page max). Write it as if a journalist is announcing your product launch. Include: the name, what it does, who it's for, the key benefit, a customer quote (make it up, but make it real), and how to get it. If you can't make this interesting, your product might not be interesting.
The external FAQ (half a page). Answer the questions your customers would ask. How much does it cost? How is this different from [competitor]? Do I need to be technical? What happens to my data? These should be the real questions, not softballs.
The internal FAQ (half a page). Answer the questions your team or investors would ask. What's the business model? What are the unit economics? What's the biggest risk? What do we need to learn in the first 90 days? This is where you get honest with yourself.
The kill criteria. This is the part nobody wants to write. Under what conditions do you stop? What result in the first 30 days would tell you this isn't working? Having this written down before you start protects you from the emotional sunk cost of your own effort.
Why most founders avoid this exercise
Because it's uncomfortable. Writing a press release for something that doesn't exist yet exposes every gap in your thinking. You realize you can't explain who the customer is. Or the benefit sounds weak when you write it down. Or the FAQ questions are ones you genuinely can't answer.
That discomfort is the point. Better to feel it in a document than in a failed launch six months from now.
Why I built it into Vora IQ
When I started building Vora IQ, one of the first things I added to the document workspace was automatic PR/FAQ generation. Not because it's trendy. Because it was the single most powerful document I encountered in my career.
Most founders haven't heard of the PR/FAQ format. They've never worked at Amazon. They don't have a product manager friend who can walk them through it. So they skip it and go straight to building.
Vora IQ's Scribe agent generates a PR/FAQ based on your business context, your idea, and your industry. It's not a template you fill in. It's a real document with real industry data, built around what you're actually building. And it forces the same clarity that Amazon's process forces.
I added it because I believe in it that much.
The takeaway
You don't need Amazon's resources to think like Amazon. You need a one-page document and the willingness to answer hard questions before you build.
The founders who write the press release first don't build faster. They build the right thing. And that saves more time than any AI tool or coding shortcut ever will.
Sam Altman predicted the 1 person billion dollar company. We built the operating system to make it real.