Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

As a parent you never stop worrying about your kid, planning for your kid, pushing your kid to do better, be better. A parent’s job isn’t to be friends with their kids all the time—it’s to build them into independent, thoughtful humans who will be ready and able to thrive in the world one day without their parents. Kids often resent them for it. Cry, slam doors, wail in anguish when you make them turn off the TV, get their homework done, get a job. But you can’t be a good parent if you’re worried about your kid being mad at you. Sometimes your kid won’t like you. Sometimes your employees won’t, either. Sometimes they’ll hate your guts. I remember walking into meetings and everyone rolling their eyes and sighing. I could see it on their faces, “Oh fuck, here we go again.” They knew I was going to keep harping on that one thing that everyone was sick and tired of hearing about. That one thing that was already 90 percent great and that would be so much work to change—too much work—but that I knew in my gut was the right thing for our customers. It’s not a great feeling, having twenty people look at you like that. Like you’re being ridiculous, unreasonable. Like what you want is impossible.