Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

The world is full of mediocre, middle-of-the-road companies creating mediocre, middle-of-the-road crap, but I’ve spent my entire life chasing after the products and people that strive for excellence. I’ve been incredibly lucky to learn from the best—from bold, passionate people who made a dent in the world.

“The only failure in your twenties is inaction. The rest is trial and error.” —ANONYMOUS

If you’re not solving a real problem, you can’t start a revolution.

However, the only thing that can make a job truly amazing or a complete waste of time is the people.

Even if your hands aren’t on the product, they should still be on the wheel.

The data wasn’t a guide. At best, it was a crutch. At worst, cement shoes. It was analysis paralysis.

If you’re testing the core of your product, if the basic functionality can flex and change depending on the whims of an A/B test, then there is no core. There’s a hole where your product vision should be and you’re just shoveling data into the void.

We were right to define our target customer clearly, to talk to them and find out what problems they had. But then it was our job to figure out the best way to fix those problems. We were right to ask their opinions and get feedback about our designs. But then it was our job to use those insights to move forward in a direction we believed in.

That’s what life is. Most decisions we make are data-informed, but they’re not data-made.

Throughout your career, you’ll encounter some real assholes. These are (mostly) men and (sometimes) women who come in different flavors of selfish or deceitful or cruel, but have one unifying characteristic: you cannot trust them. They can and will screw you and your team over, either to get something for themselves or just to push you down and make themselves look like the hero.

However, you will also encounter people who can be very difficult to work with—who are gruff or loud or bossy or infuriating—and who may, at first, seem like assholes, but whose motivations and actions tell a very different story.

Plenty of people think I’m an asshole. It’s usually because I get loud. I ask nicely a few times and then—if we’re still not getting anywhere—I stop asking nicely. I put pressure on myself and the people around me. I don’t let up. I expect the best—from myself, from everyone else.

The bullshit-asymmetry theory, Brandolini’s law, will be at play here: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than to produce it.”

But most people just want to go to the office and make something cool.

Your product isn’t only your product.

A good product story has three elements: » It appeals to people’s rational and emotional sides. » It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple. » It reminds people of the problem that’s being solved—it focuses on the “why.”

He used a technique I later came to call the virus of doubt.

He’d always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others.

You should always be striving to tell a story so good that it stops being yours—so your customer learns it, loves it, internalizes it, owns it. And tells it to everyone they know.

So when we started work on the Nest Protect smoke and CO alarm, our second product, you’d think it would be easier. That everything we’d built already would let us skip a few steps. But the second you start a new product, you have to hit the restart button—even if you’re at a big company. Sometimes it’s even harder the second time around because all the infrastructure that’s been built up for the first product gets in the way. So you’ll still need to go through at least three generations before you get it right.

The best ideas are painkillers, not vitamins. Vitamin pills are good for you, but they’re not essential. You can skip your morning vitamin for a day, a month, a lifetime and never notice the difference. But you’ll notice real quick if you forget a painkiller.

You can fast-track a lot of things and skimp on others, but you cannot cheat time.

But knowing what can kill you makes you stronger. And knowing that you’ve already deflected some major bullets makes you stronger still.

If you don’t have the confidence to move forward quickly, you’ll have to continually slow down to consult a hundred people about a thousand decisions.

You’ll lose sight of where you’re trying to go in the face of all the different ways to get there.

If you didn’t make your mark fast enough or your project ran into issues or dragged on, Philips corporate would descend upon you, ready to “save the business” from your mistake or steal it out from under you.

Command and control doesn’t mean decree and ignore.

It is a battle to find amazing talent. You cannot afford to ignore any part of the population

We expected candidates to be mission-driven and good on their feet, the right fit for the culture, and passionate about the customer. We also had a “no assholes” policy.

Any employee could come to five lunches a year. And each lunch was a cultural inoculation, a vaccine against indifference and apathy, against thinking that what you do doesn’t matter and that nobody at the top knows who you are.

At many companies I’ve seen HR topics left to the end of team meetings, or lumped into a separate HR or recruiting meeting. But your priority is your team, its health and growth. The best way to show that is to make it the first agenda item each and every week.

So write down your company values and post them on your physical and virtual walls.

Everyone should know what matters at your company—what defines your culture. If you don’t explicitly know your values, you can’t pass them on, maintain them, evolve them, or hire for them.

Your messaging is your product. The story you’re telling shapes the thing you’re making.

Joz always, always understood the context and was able to turn it into an effective narrative.

You don’t have to be an expert in everything. You just have to care about it.

In this job, respect is always more important than being liked. You can’t please everyone. Trying can be ruinous.

And just because you’re in charge does not mean you’re in control.

Freedom is a double-edged sword. But it’s still a sword. You can use it to cut through the bullshit, the hesitation, the red tape, the habituation. You can use it to create whatever you want. The right way. Your way. You can change things.

When we handed out perks, I wanted them to be purposeful in the same way. So we didn’t try to trap people in the office—we rewarded employees by paying for dinner out with their families, or a weekend away. And we were happy to throw serious cash at stuff that genuinely improved people’s experience, that brought them together and exposed them to new ideas and cultures and turned coworkers into friends.

The mission should fill and fuel your company. The perks should be a sprinkle of sugar on top.

There’s no challenge to being a babysitter CEO. No joy. And worse—it’s bad for the team. Bad for the company.

In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with.

The things you make—the ideas you chase and the ideas that chase you—will ultimately define your career. And the people you chase them with may define your life.

The thing holding most people back is themselves. They think they know what they can do and who they’re supposed to be, and they don’t explore beyond those boundaries.