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Build book cover
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Build

by Tony Fadell

Build

Part I: Build Yourself

Career Philosophy

“Only failure in your twenties is inaction. The rest is trial and error.”

  • Start by asking “What do I want to learn?” not “How much money do I want to make?”
  • Follow curiosity over conventional wisdom; try things even if they fail
  • Your twenties are a window of freedom—be bold
  • Work at startup AND big company to understand breadth of business thinking

Choosing Right Opportunities

Companies that change status quo have:

  • Novel technology
  • Solve real pain points
  • Large existing market
  • Adapting leadership

Look for businesses solving real problems, not creating demand for nonexistent needs (Google Glass failure).

Individual Contributor to Leadership

  • ICs focus on next week; managers 2-6 weeks; executives 25% fires, 25% near term, 50% horizon planning
  • IC should look up 20% of time to understand broader context
  • Becoming manager means stopping what made you successful before
  • Do NOT micromanage; being exacting and expecting great work is not micromanagement

Part II: Build Your Career

Management Fundamentals

  • Honesty more important than style; don’t fear team outshining you
  • Team should get feedback immediately, not surprised months later
  • Psychology of management is managing own fears and anxieties
  • Managers need therapy, yoga, self-understanding to manage their reactions

Data vs. Opinion and Intuition

“Data AND intuition” not “data or intuition”

  • Data-driven decisions kill creativity when data can’t answer opinion-based questions
  • A/B testing is tool/diagnosis, not product design
  • If basic functionality flexes based on test whims, there is no product core
  • For truly new products, there’s nothing to test or compare to—must ship and see

Managing Difficult People

  • Assholes kill good ideas by being difficult and draining energy
  • Brandolini’s law: energy to refute bullshit is order of magnitude higher than to produce it
  • Better to remove toxic people than try to manage around them

Career Transitions

  • People won’t remember how you started, only how you left
  • Hating job is never worth money—find work that inspires you
  • Never use quitting as negotiating tactic—it’s final card

Part III: Build Your Product

Intangible Journey

Real building includes full journey: awareness, acquisition, onboarding, usage, retention, advocacy.

  • Don’t make hardware unless critically necessary and transformative
  • Customers experience everything as one brand—ads, app, support
  • Every phase has bumps where customer asks “why?” You must help them over

Personas and Research

  • Create detailed personas with names, faces, homes, interests, jobs, spending
  • Thoughtful details (like extra screwdrivers included with Nest) become symbols of entire experience
  • Small inclusions stay in brain longer than expected—functional beauty matters

Storytelling

Great product stories: appeal to rational AND emotional sides, simplify complex concepts, focus on “why”

  • “Virus of doubt” technique: remind people of daily frustrations, then prime them for solution
  • Steve Jobs told same story daily for months during development, refining it constantly
  • Analogies give customers superpowers—“1,000 songs in your pocket” more powerful than specs

Evolution vs. Disruption vs. Execution

  • Keep what defines product (iPod’s click wheel, Nest’s round screen)
  • Can change motor but not basic form
  • Push incremental innovation between big swings
  • Companies become complacent if they only protect first innovation

Launch Philosophy

  • Write press release at START of project, not end—clarifies what really matters
  • If you launched now, would press release be mostly true? If yes, product ready
  • Commit to deadline and “handcuff yourself” to it—force completion
  • Need 3 generations before profitability on new, disruptive products
  • Small teams (10 people) accomplish huge amounts

Part IV: Build Your Business

Spotting Great Ideas

  • Best ideas are painkillers, not vitamins
  • “Why now?” is most important question—technology must enable solution
  • Must understand unfair advantage and secrets to beat incumbents
  • Spend months researching before committing

Startup Readiness

  • Work at startup, work at big company, get mentor, find cofounder
  • Most successful founders are late 30s/early 40s
  • Must know five names for first employees before starting
  • Cannot succeed without mentor; mentor is non-negotiable

Funding Approach

  • Always start pitching when you DON’T need money
  • Founders can’t fire VCs; design relationship carefully
  • List major risks in pitch deck to show you understand challenges
  • Present risks too—investors want to know you know what’s hard

Market Focus

Steve Jobs lesson: any company trying both B2B and B2C will fail. Focus on one customer.

Part V: Build Your Team

Hiring and Firing

  • Interview by digging into psychology; stress test candidates
  • Firing someone from unsuitable job is positive for both
  • Never shock someone being fired—ongoing 1:1s should make it clear

Organizational Scaling

  • One person can manage 8-15 direct reports early, shrinks to 7-8 as company grows
  • At ~120 people need directors (managers of managers) who think like CEOs
  • At 60-80 people bring HR in-house

Design Thinking Across Organization

  • Everyone should think like designer—solving problems elegantly
  • Avoid habituation—people filter out inconveniences as unchangeable
  • Young people question status quo; “staying beginner” (Steve Jobs) keeps fresh perspective

Marketing Integration

  • Marketing must work with product from very beginning
  • Product is the brand—actual experience matters more than advertising
  • Best marketing is telling the truth blended with emotion

Product Management Role

  • Product manager is producer of product “band”—ensures all functions aligned
  • Must work with engineering, sales, support, marketing, manufacturing simultaneously
  • If PM makes all decisions, they’re not a good PM—should guide, not dictate

Part VI: Be CEO

CEO Responsibilities

  • Focus and passion trickle down
  • Read customer support articles to understand product experience firsthand
  • Not Invented Here Syndrome kills innovation
  • Primary responsibility: hire and fire self, long-term vision

Board Management

  • Board’s main job: hire and fire CEO
  • No surprises in meetings—prep board one-on-one before big announcements
  • Only good surprises: exceeded numbers, ahead of schedule, cool demos

Culture and Perks

  • Perks are frosting, not culture—high-fructose corn syrup approach doesn’t work
  • If something is free, it’s worthless; when people pay, they value it
  • Specialness disappears when perks happen all the time
  • Unless you have Google profit margins, don’t give Google perks

Knowing When to Step Back

  • If you can’t get excited about new ideas, you’ve become babysitter CEO
  • Leaving company creates bizarre emptiness and quiet
  • Takes months to get through deferred to-do list before finding new inspiration
  • Must get bored before finding new inspiration

“What do I want to learn?” is the right career question.

“Get your hands dirty. To do great things, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop.”

“Make the intangible tangible.”