Marcelo Calbucci is the author of The PRFAQ Framework, a six-time founder, and a seasoned CPO/CTO with 25 years in technology spanning Microsoft, Amazon, and 18 years of startup building across Seattle and London. Rising to prominence in the Seattle startup ecosystem through the 2000s and 2010s, he became known for translating enterprise innovation practices into frameworks accessible to founders and product leaders at any stage — culminating in his 2025 book adapting Amazon’s Working Backwards process for organizations of all sizes.
Previously, as a product and engineering leader at Amazon, Calbucci led a team inside the company’s HR organization, an experience that gave him a firsthand view of the PRFAQ process operating at full scale — with months-long document cycles, financial modeling, and cross-functional research teams backing major bets. Before Amazon, he spent approximately seven years at Microsoft, where he led engineering at Bing, then left to pursue 18 years of entrepreneurship, raising more than $40M across multiple startup ventures and studios in Seattle and London.
Earlier in his career, he helped build foundational institutions in the Seattle tech community, including what became the GeekWire Awards and the GeekWire 200. He currently organizes the Acquired Seattle meetup and Seattle Flow, two communities for operators and founders in the Pacific Northwest.
As the author of The PRFAQ Framework, Calbucci distills the Working Backwards methodology into a one-to-two-week process for individual contributors, startup founders, and executives who lack Amazon’s organizational infrastructure — arguing that the framework’s real value is teaching innovators to think critically about whether an idea is worth building at all.
Hey, Thanks for reading this. I mean that. There’s a lot of content out there competing for your attention, and you spent some of it here. I hope it was worth it. Even better, I hope it prompted you to think about something differently enough that you’d share it with someone who’d get something out of it too.I started this podcast because tactics never stuck with me. What stuck were stories — business biographies, autobiographies, the decisions people made and why they made them. The principle only clicks once you know the story behind it.
So I built the thing I wanted to listen to. Every week I have two conversations with people who build in technology and product. Then I write the essay in my premium newsletter (Taste Maker) to distill the principles and reflect on the narrative — one that puts you inside the conversation, through my eyes. What caught me off guard. What I kept thinking about after we hung up. Where the principle actually lives once you strip away the jargon.
I make this for myself first. If you read the way I do, you’ll want it too.
Subscribe to The Way of Product
PS — If you want to pitch coming on the show, or you know someone I should talk to, shoot me an email at caden@hey.com with "January752" in the subject line so it gets past my filters. I'm not optimizing for famous guests. I'm optimizing for interesting conversations, even from people who aren't LinkedIn influencers.
Get full access to The Way of Product w/ Caden Damiano at www.wayofproduct.com/subscribe
