When PMs hear someone making a request directly to their devs instead of going through them

My ULTIMATE Guide to the Best Books for Product Managers

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RT @carlvellotti: Pyramid of Manager Skills. I'd say this applies very directly to product management too.

Pyramid of Manager Skills. I'd say this applies very directly to product management too.

product-market fit, visualized

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It's easy to think of Prime Day as a foregone conclusion. That it was always bound to happen. But as we've seen, it wasn't. Amazon manufactured a completely new holiday through sheer force of will and an amazing 30yo PM. So remember: You can bend the world to your will. 17/17.

Despite the initial social media reaction, the event was a massive success. The stock jumped 18% overnight, surpassing Walmart for the first time ever. Amazon was the world's largest retailer. They got what they'd needed: a big freaking win. 16/17.

Days later, the team celebrated the end of their exhausting journey by whacking a real piñata. The results were in. More than 34.4 million items ordered, 398 items per second. 1.2 million new Prime memberships started. It was Amazon's biggest revenue day in history. 15/17.

The PR team started poring through the sales numbers and releasing as much data they could find on what products were being discounted and how quickly they were selling out. Social media wasn't quelled, but the real press was more balanced. Finally, Prime Day was over. 14/17.

Bezos "lost his mind.". “He was screaming at me and my team that we needed to be clear that these aren’t shitty deals. He was being maniacal, saying, ‘Get this fixed! You’ve got to show this is a success!’ ”. 13/17

If you want to relive this moment, I made this search filter: 12/17

Prime Day cascaded through Europe and then the US, where the social media reaction was brutally negative. Armchair shoppers weaponized Amazon’s proposed hashtag #HappyPrimeDay and took to Twitter to criticize the company. 11/17

They weren't ready for how much bigger. The day finally arrived. The event kicked off in Japan. Millions of people overwhelmed the site and crashed it immediately. 10/17

And he was getting involved in other ways too. He started reviewing promotional materials and wading into the details. Good Morning America wanted him on the show to talk about this event. Wulff started to get the sense that this might be even bigger than they'd planned. 9/17

Everyone was skeptical about the deadline. And remember, Prime Day wasn't a thing before this. Getting buy-in for this random crazy project was extremely difficult. Bezos has to personally involve himself to snap everyone into line. 8/17.

Wulff's team code-named this project "Project Piñata" because they were about to get beat up. In May, after 2 months of prep, she went on a whirlwind trip to Tokyo, London, Paris & Munich. She needed to form a confederation of merchandisers, markers & supply chain execs. 7/17.

Amazon's goal was to offer deals on 10,000 items, a larger selection than even Black Friday. Think about crazy this is. Wulff had to convince thousands of vendors to supply tens of thousands of discounts randomly in the middle of the year, with only a few months' notice. 6/17.