 Hello, everyone. My name is Boisi and I'm a senior product manager at Amazon today. I will share with you a framework used by Amazon product managers. The framework is called PR FAQ, and it's used to construct and present new product ideas. Now, let me give you a quick preview of what you'll be taking away for next 30 minutes. The PR FAQ framework is a way to help you articulate product or business ideas to stakeholders and even to yourself. Imagine that you have a great idea and you would like to run this idea with stakeholders and potentially get resources to implement the idea. Your stakeholder may respond like this. Well, that sounds interesting, but I would need a little bit more to evaluate. Who is your customer? Why does it matter? How big is the opportunity? How would you achieve this? And so on so forth. So the PR FAQ framework will help you to address these key questions. It will help you to think through the important aspects of the product idea and eventually get buy-ins from the stakeholders. Now, before I get into the details, I'd like to provide a quick intro about myself. I'm currently a senior product manager at Amazon. I focus on shipping products and integrations with third-party shipping software. Before Amazon, I was not in the tech industry. I was a procurement associate at ExxonMobil, where I used to manage contracting and negotiation with international shipping lines and global freight forwarders. My journey as a product manager really started after I joined Amazon. And as aspiring product manager, I always find frameworks helpful to guide my thinking for my product development and product management. So that's why I like to share one of the frameworks that I use most often, which is the PR FAQ and hopefully you can use it in your product development process. Now, let's get started. PR FAQ is short for press release and frequently asked questions. It's one of the most used approaches for Amazon product managers to present ideas and get buy-ins. It's basically representing the working backward culture or working backward principle, which also originated from Amazon. Here, you're trying to think through and articulate how your product will look like when it's having the big launch and being successful and made it to the newspaper headline. And what does it take to get there? In terms of the format of PR FAQ, when in Amazon, it's already presented as a written document. And as many of you know, Amazon has a huge writing culture and almost everything has communicated through documents and PR FAQs as well. Now, let's take a closer look. Press release is the hypothetical news report of your product. Here, you're describing the ideal state in the lens of the news report. How would you like your customers to talk about your products when they're being interviewed by the news reporter? It's typically composed by the customer codes and feedback. Here, you would like to, through the eyes of the customers, describe your product and the impact of your product. An example would be like David, customer of ABC Software, speaks about new service. I've been waiting for a solution like this. It's a true one stop shop for all many things like that. The FAQ section is for the most important questions and answers for your product. This section is for you to think through all aspects of your product. It should address how you think about the product and what you anticipate from stakeholders, such as leaders and investors, who will decide whether or not to invest in your idea. Examples of the questions would be, what problems are you trying to solve? What are the existing solutions to this problem? How does this problem solve it better? Who is your target customers? And so on and so forth. And we'll get into the details in later slides. Now, more often, you would actually find it's easier to come up with product ideas and even stores for ideas from customers who can be giving you ideas about what new features to build or engineering teams who can recommend how to build your product more efficiently. But it's hard to get the ideas across, and this is why you need a PR FAQ. Developing the PR FAQ would help you to articulate the idea to yourself. What that means is that it's a forcing function for you to consider all key aspects of the product. Think around the corners and make sure that you are not missing any important aspects. After developing the PR FAQ, you should at the very least get this idea passed by yourself. And you should be convinced that this is an idea worth developing. And more importantly, developing a PR FAQ would help you to articulate the idea to decision makers, stakeholders. In the PR FAQ, you should define who are your stakeholders and consider what buy-ins do you need from them to implement or support the product. Example of stakeholders would be what decision makers would be leaders or investors who will determine whether they can provide resources to implement your idea. Engineering teams would be implementing your idea if it's a software product. Sales and customer service would provide customer engagement and reach out to new customers for your product and so on and so forth. Now, we've talked about what is PR FAQ and why do you need it. Let's move on to the help. How to actually use the PR FAQ process or development PR FAQ. Now disclaimer first, what I'm about to share is what has been working for me. Remember, this is a framework and you should use it to help you not to constrain you. You should take what I've shared but you can adjust for your product and for contacts for your own company. So the PR FAQ consists of press release and frequently asked questions. I typically start with the key FAQs so that I nailed down my most important aspects of the products first. Next, I will work on the press release which will help me to define ideal state of the product when it's successful and it's hitting the newspaper headline. Next, I will review the draft of the PR FAQ with the stakeholders. I will refine and extend the documents. And I will repeat this review and the refinement process a few times until I get buy-ins from the stakeholder. And let's begin with the key FAQs. By developing the key FAQs, what you are really doing is to ask yourself, what are the key aspects to consider for your products? Here are the four groups of the FAQs that I typically include in my PR FAQs. I summarize them as what, who, why and how questions. So what section addresses, what solution are proposing, what problem are you trying to solve and how is your solution better than the other solutions. Whereas the who section addresses, who are your customers, who will be using your product, what are the user experiences and who would be your potential paying customers. The why addresses, why someone should invest in private, what are the returns of this product. The return can be tangible returns such as monetization or cost saving opportunities or less tangible returns such as customer delights, social responsibilities. That would also articulate how big is the return. For example, how big is the monetization opportunity. And last but not least, the how section addresses how you will implement your idea. So you would be considering what resources you would need to implement your idea. For example, engineering resources, marketing resources, business development resources, what are the estimated efforts for developing your ideas. I would also recommend you to include a facing plan so that people can see a roadmap strategy of your product. Now, let's use an example to illustrate the process in a little bit more details. Again, I come up with this idea just for this talk is not based on a real product or real case study. But if any of you happen to find this interesting we can potentially make this a real product we can talk about this offline. The idea is basically to develop an app that helps street food vendors to build customer loyalties and promote their business. For the purpose of this talk let's name this app. I love street food. In the what section of the attitudes, what you want to address is what is I love street food. What problem does it solve an example will be 70% of the street food vendors in the US mainly rely on purchases from passerby customers. 80% of the street food vendors do not have any effective ways to either attract new customers or build loyalties with existing customers. This resulted in 50% less sales versus restaurant who are actively marketing or building customer loyalty. This defines the problem statement. What problem does I love street food solve? You can also provide a quick overview of what solution you're proposing. For example, I love street food is an app that helps street food vendors to create target ads and customer loyalty programs. This gives whoever that's looking at reviewing or PR FAQs a clear idea of the solution that you're proposing. Again, the example here numbers are completely made up just for the purpose of illustration. Next, for the who section of the FAQs, you want to talk about who are your users and what are their user experience. You also want to talk about the value proposition for the users. In another word, why should the users use your product? For the case of I love street food, I love street food have two types of users, the buyers and the vendors. Here you're describing, you're defining who are your users. You can also talk about who would be your paying users. For example, we would be monetizing on the services that we provide to the vendors. We won't charge any fees to the buyers. You're basically saying that the paying customers would be the vendors instead of the buyers. In terms of the user experience, an example would be buyers can sign up to I love street food to view for trucks, discover coupons, collect loyalty stamps, place orders, indicate pickups, delivery times and message with vendors. That's your buyer experience. For vendor experience, vendor can create target ads, coupons, loyalty programs, manage orders and payments. Vendors can also access premium service such as location and business offer recommendation to improve their sales and efficiency. That's your vendor experience. You can also talk about how your users can access this service. So for example, both buyer and vendors can access I love street food via website or mobile app. For the battle propositions, here is an example for buyers for I love street food apps through I love street food app they can discover food truck, collect coupons, loyalty rewards and save on their purchases for food. For vendors, they can reach out to new customers, maintain relationship with existing customers, digitize their order and payment process, and so on and so forth. I think it's very important to talk about the battle propositions. It's the selling points of your product. This section will basically lead to any monetization opportunities and how you can monetize it. In the why section of the FAQ, you want to talk about why someone will invest in this idea. You can do so by talking about the returns, the size of the opportunities and the size of the monetization opportunity. For the case of I love street food, you can describe how big is our opportunity by saying that street food business is an X million dollar industry. We estimate X million annual spent on ads and customer engagement. So here this is your entitlement of revenue. So this is a potential revenue that you can make through this app. And what are the returns? You can talk about tangible returns such as monetization, financial returns, intangible returns such as customer delight or supporting small and local business such as street food vendors. Lastly, for the how section, you want to talk about how this idea can materialize. So what resources do you need? How much? What's the estimated efforts and is there a facing plan? For example, you can talk about the number of engineers, software development weeks, business development managers, product marketing managers, customer service representatives. What resources do you need from each business segment? And besides this, I would also recommend to provide a product facing plan. So imagine that for the I love street food app, you've assessed that you need 200 software development weeks to reach your to your ideal state. So 200 software development week is a pretty huge investment and for you to get buy-ins from their leaderships or investors to put in such resources to support your idea, it's kind of hard. So instead of doing this, you can break down your idea into a few pieces. So for example, face zero, which would be a pilot that you will be using to prove the concept to prove your hypothesis of the business. And this only requires eight software development weeks. And only when you prove that you know your business value is down, then there is a real business opportunity here. You move on to face one, which is a minimum valuable minimum lovable product, which is the minimum requirement of your products. And this will require 100 or 100 software development week. And once you are proving to be successful for face one with your minimum lovable product, then will you move on to the scale face and build all of your nice and great features that you want to have for your ideal state of the product. So this way it's easier for the leaders and stakeholders to actually provide resources and try out your idea. So the, what, why, who, how are the core aspects that I would recommend to include in your graphic use or product development process. But there are other questions which are also think you should consider for the product. Some examples would include, first of all, what are the tenants, and here what tenants means is basically the guiding principle of your product. For example, for I love my street food, I love street food. You have buyers and vendors, and maybe one of your tenants is that your, you will prioritize the paying customers versus free users can use this app for free. So when you are making a decision to trade off vendor experience versus buyer experience based on this guiding principle you will prioritize the vendor experience because vendors are paying customers. So basically you're developing a set of tenants for guiding principles to guide you when you are you need to make a hard decision. So another FAQ that I would recommend to consider are the risk is the risk section. So what is the risk that you would anticipate for this product. Are there any financial risks, are there any operational risks of legal or PR risks. So consider any risks that you may incur for the development of this product. Another FAQ that I find pretty interesting is that you should think about are there reasons to not do this. And I find people putting this in their PR FAQs. And I think the good thing about this FAQ is that it completes your thinking loop. So basically you will incur such questions where you will review this PR FAQ or your product with with other stakeholders. So by raising this question ahead of the time, you will be prepared when this question arises. So so that you know how how to respond to such questions. And also it also helps you to really think is there any alternative ways to implement your ideas and business. The only solution that we're proposing so that you consider you complete the entire thinking for your product. Now, let's get to the press release part. The press release is basically the hypothetical news article about your product. It describes the ideal state of the product. When the your products is already having a big launch, and it's being reported by newspapers, writing the press release will force you to think about the ideal state. And how would you like your customers to talk about your product when they are interviewed by the reporters. So examples will be for I love street food. A brand new app I love street food has long to help street food vendors to promote businesses and create customer loyalty. David operates a Mexican food truck in Seattle speaks about the app excitedly. With the new app, it helps me to create target advertisements to customers who love street food. Things I start to use this app. I have new customers visiting every day. Another code would be Amy wants to for trucks in Los Angeles talks about her experience with a new app. I've been waiting for a solution like this. It makes the loyalty programs so easy to set up and manage. I'm glad to see so many repeating customers. These would be your codes from the vendor and remember that you also have a buyer with another set of user for your app. So you can include a code like Rachel, a frequent patron to local for trucks talks about the using the app. I love street food. It's a this is a really fun app to discover new spots and discounts. And it's a great way for me to support the local businesses. So here that here that here I think you are basically painting the picture. And you're basically painting the big picture so I'm trying to think big and think about what is, you know, the big success of your product. What is your ideal state. And what is a long term view of your product. And for the press release is typically put as the beginning of the PR FAQ. So it's not only serves as a section to help people to visualize the big picture and also get the viewers, the readers of your PR FAQ excited about the idea so So these are the main things I'd like to share with you about PR FAQ. Hopefully you find it interesting and we'll use it one day. Last but not least, I'd like to iterate that this is a framework. So what I'm thinking about the PR FAQ is that it pushes you to work backward. You use it to article article it idea of state and evaluate what it takes to make the product a success. So this working backward principle is what you really should focus on. Instead of the specific format, you can use the rate and you can use a written document or PowerPoint presidential, whichever fits your company culture better. I don't see any problems changing the format. And also in terms of the components of the what, the what, who, why, and how that I've shared. You can, you can, you can hear my recommendation you can take it or you can change it or adapt it to your own needs and contest I don't see any problems with that either as well as not as your, you understand this is a way for you to work backward. I think you should be fine, you should be able to use the PR FAQ pretty well. That's it for my talk. I really appreciate you joining my talk and hear about PR FAQs. I hope you enjoy it and we'll use it one day. This is my LinkedIn profile. If you have any question related to product management, Amazon PR FAQs or, or even if you have a product idea that we want to discuss it with someone feel free to reach out to me. I'm glad to talk to you. And again, thanks for coming to my talk.