What the term means In this conversation, Guillermo Rauch contrasts two ways companies can work — and he does not declare a winner. A written culture puts its faith in specs, rigor, and proofs: he points to Amazon and Stripe, and to AWS using mathematical proofs (TLA+) to earn trust for clinical records [^1b713f71@]. A prototype culture puts its faith in demos and iteration: he points to Apple, where you 'demo to Steve, get ripped, make it better' — creative product work that can't be proofed in advance.