For people who build products

Memos

The memos, letters and emails where real decisions were argued. Each is read against what happened next, with a verdict, the lessons and questions to take back to your own team.

26 May 1995 · Internal memo Mixed The Internet Tidal Wave Bill Gates, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft Reorient the whole of Microsoft around the internet, and treat a browser company as the main threat to Windows.
Letter on 1997, Amazon’s first year as a public company · Shareholder letter Paid off Amazon’s 1997 Letter to Shareholders Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com Tell investors in advance that Amazon would sacrifice short-term profit for long-term market leadership, and how it would make that trade.
15 January 2002 · Internal memo Paid off Trustworthy Computing Bill Gates, Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Microsoft Make security, availability and privacy Microsoft’s highest priority, and choose security over new features whenever they conflict.
29 April 2004 · IPO letter Paid off An Owner’s Manual for Google’s Shareholders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Co-founders, Google Go public on Google’s own terms: a dual-class share structure that kept control with the founders, no traditional earnings guidance, an auction-based offering and an explicit commitment to long-term, high-risk projects.
2 August 2006 · Public blog post Paid off The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me) Elon Musk, Co-founder, Chairman and principal funder, Tesla Motors Start with an expensive, low-volume sports car and use the money to fund progressively cheaper, higher-volume cars.
6 February 2007 · Open letter Paid off Thoughts on Music Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Call publicly on the major record labels to abolish copy protection (DRM) on music sold online, rather than opening Apple’s own DRM to competitors.
Published online, summer 2009 · Culture deck Mixed “Freedom & Responsibility,” the Netflix Culture Deck Reed Hastings, with Patty McCord, CEO and Chief Talent Officer, Netflix Replace most rules and processes with high talent density, candour and context, and let people go who are merely adequate.
29 April 2010 · Open letter Paid off Thoughts on Flash Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple Keep Adobe Flash off the iPhone and iPad for good, and explain the decision publicly as a choice for open web standards, battery life, reliability and touch.
8 February 2011 · Internal memo Backfired The “Burning Platform” Memo Stephen Elop, CEO, Nokia Prepare Nokia’s employees to abandon its own smartphone platforms, an announcement that came days later as a partnership to build phones on Microsoft’s Windows Phone.
18 September 2011 · Public blog post and email to customers Backfired An Explanation and Some Reflections (Qwikster) Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO, Netflix Split Netflix in two: keep streaming under the Netflix name and move DVD-by-mail to a separate service called Qwikster, with separate websites and accounts.
12 October 2011 · Internal post published by accident Paid off Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant Steve Yegge, Software engineer, Google (formerly Amazon) Argue that Google should treat every product as a platform, as Amazon did after Jeff Bezos required every team to expose its work through service interfaces.
1 February 2012 · IPO letter Mixed The Hacker Way (Facebook’s IPO Letter) Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Facebook Tell public investors that Facebook’s mission came before profit and that it would keep a culture of rapid, iterative building, which Zuckerberg called the Hacker Way.
Late February 2012, released by Congress in July 2020 · Internal emails Paid off The Instagram Acquisition Emails Mark Zuckerberg and David Ebersman, CEO and CFO, Facebook Buy young social apps, Instagram above all, before they could grow into threats to Facebook.
31 July 2013 · Internal memo Mixed We Don’t Sell Saddles Here Stewart Butterfield, CEO, Tiny Speck (later Slack) Position a group chat tool as organisational transformation, and make the team’s job selling that change rather than features.
10 July 2014 · Internal memo Paid off Bold Ambition and Our Core Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft Redefine Microsoft as “the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world,” moving the company’s centre of gravity away from Windows and devices.
2015 letter to shareholders, published April 2016 · Shareholder letter Paid off One-Way and Two-Way Doors (Amazon’s 2015 Letter) Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com Use different decision-making processes for irreversible and reversible decisions, and fight the tendency of large organisations to treat every decision as irreversible.
14 March 2023 · Internal memo, published Paid off Update on Meta’s Year of Efficiency Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO, Meta Cut about 10,000 jobs and 5,000 open roles, remove layers of management and cancel lower-priority projects, while protecting investment in AI and the long-term technology bets.