A Founder's Playbook for Shipping 10x Faster with AI | Yana Welinder
Candid advice from a serial founder on staying scrappy and being OK with mistakes. Plus full demos of Yana's best AI workflows to triage emails and aggregate customer feedback
Dear subscribers,
Today, I want to share a new episode with Yana Welinder.
Yana is Head of AI at Amplitude and a good friend. We had some real talk about how to stay scrappy inside a big company, including how to avoid decision by committee and endless internal debates. Yana also demoed her favorite AI workflows to triage her emails and aggregate customer feedback. I think you’ll love our banter 😅
Watch now on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
Yana and I talked about:
(00:00) “By the time you’ve debated 2 ideas, I’ve already shipped 10”
(03:21) Think “how would I run this company?” not “what’s my job?”
(05:22) Why we banned decisions by committee
(08:25) Cross-functional now means doing the work, not coordinating it
(11:22) Why frustrated users can become your biggest advocates
(15:19) Live demo: Using ChatGPT Atlas to triage emails
(24:38) AI is still terrible at prompting (and what you can do about it)
(28:48) Live demo: Combining qualitative feedback with quantitative data
(37:38) Why AI analytics is lagging (and what needs to change)
🔥 Join my private Slack community with 750+ other AI builders
We’ve set up channels to share AI workflows, discuss industry news, rant about PM life, and (most importantly) post memes. I’ll share more raw tips like the one above as well. Come hang out with us during the holidays 🙂
Top 10 takeaways I learned from this episode
“By the time you’re done debating 2 ideas, I’ve already executed on 10.” Amplitude’s CEO banned decisions by committee so everyone can ship faster. Every project has a clear DRI (directly responsible individual) who takes inputs from others but owns their decision and outcome.
Frustrated users can be your best advocates if you fix their issues fast. “The reaction of a user who had initial frustration, reported it, and you fixed it within 15 minutes is going to be so much better than the user who was just happy the first time.” Speed is what leads to polish.