Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

Seed crystals are people who are so good and so well loved that they can almost single-handedly build large parts of your org. Typically they’re experienced leaders, either managers of large teams or super-ICs who everyone listens to. Once they’re in, a tidal wave of other awesome people will typically follow.

Find at least one person who you deeply trust and who believes in you. Not a life coach or an executive leadership consultant, not an agency, not someone who’s read a lot of case studies

be easier, that you’ll be able to skirt the difficulties of a startup by starting it within someone else’s corporation. Big companies are not a shortcut. Their spacious, attractive offices are littered with the skeletons of innovative little projects that died because they were set up for failure from the start.

Even if you’re at a billion-dollar company with nearly infinite resources, you can’t expect those resources to be funneled your way without a fight.

One reason we managed to put together an outstanding team to create the iPod was that our team could get relatively outsized stock and bonus plans that they couldn’t get anywhere else at Apple.

The other important reason was that we had Steve Jobs fully behind us.

There were times when the internal antibodies at Apple tried to expel us from the organization—we’d constantly hear “We have other priorities, we’ll help you if we have time.”

So if you don’t have a CEO who will go to bat for you, if you don’t have compensation packages that will attract a great team, if you don’t have the resources of a giant company but all of the overhead, then don’t try to start your project inside someone else’s business. Your best option is probably to go it alone. Either let your idea die or start a real startup.

If they’ve never been on a small team starting from scratch, they’re often a fish out of water. They spend too much money too fast. Hire too many people. Don’t put in the time, don’t have the startup mentality, can’t make hard decisions, are buried by consensus thinking. They end up making mediocre products or nothing at all.

Venture capital is not fueled by money. It’s fueled by humans.

Another thing: you’ll never hear “it’s not you, it’s me.” It’s always you. It’s your company, your ideas, your personality that will be judged.

If you do think you’re ready to take money, then what exactly do you plan to use that money for? Do you need to build a prototype? Recruit a team? Research an idea? Get a patent? Petition local government? Fuel a partnership? Create a marketing campaign? What’s the minimum amount necessary to meet your needs now, and how much will you require later as those needs change?

But regardless of what source of capital you choose, everything ultimately comes down to the individuals you’ll work with. Even if you get a meeting with the biggest firm in Palo Alto, you won’t be meeting with the whole firm.

Remember, once you take money from an investor, you’re stuck with them. And the balance of power shifts. A VC can fire a founder, but a founder can’t fire their VC. You can’t divorce them for irreconcilable differences.

Here are a few other warning signs:

In any case, it’s hard to generalize across an entire firm. It usually comes down to individuals. Just like everything else.

So when you reach out to pitch an investor, make sure you’re reaching out to the right person. Talk to founders who have worked with the VC in the past—who’ve gone through tough times together—and

You don’t have to take every word of advice or criticism, but you should understand the reasons behind it and adjust accordingly.

Listen to people’s feedback on your pitch and your plan, change it when it makes sense, but hold on to your vision and your “why” and don’t rearrange yourself based on the whims of every investor you talk to. Be clear with investors on how much money you need and exactly how you’re going to spend it.

Investors don’t like to see when founders or executives are “fully vested”—they want to make sure you have skin in the game.

In subsequent meetings, be up front with your risks and ways to mitigate them, who you need to hire, and the major challenges ahead.

Understanding your customer—their demographics and psychographics, their wants and needs and pain points—is the foundation of your company.

And corporate Chief Information Officers (CIOs) were accustomed to the countless enterprise-level services that Microsoft and Windows offered. Apple’s hardware was a tiny piece of the puzzle that these CIOs needed to make a purchase decision.

any company that tries to do both B2B and B2C will fail.

Other groups did not like that. They did not like us. I could feel their eyes on us and their daggers out.

The act of using a pen, then retyping and editing later, forced me to process information differently.

Those were the evenings when I’d realize why we were so overwhelmed—we had said “yes” to too many things and we needed to start saying “no.”

Everyone hated it. I literally watched people flinch when I’d bring out the papers, scanning them for the thing I’d been asking about for weeks. That thing I’d refuse to forget about because it hadn’t gotten crossed off the list yet. On June 3 you said it would be ready by the end of the month. It’s now July—what’s the status of this project?

It started as a one-sheeter. Eventually it grew to eight pages, ten pages. It was labor intensive. Arcane. Never-ending. But it worked.

Everyone thinks they can do your job better—until they actually have to do it and deliver. So even if you’re in a high-stress job, you need to take vacations. They’re important for your team.

As a leader, you’ll have to get into the weeds. Don’t be worried about micromanagement—as the crisis unfolds your job is to tell people what to do and how to do

And then, months after launch, during routine testing in our lab, a single flame grew much larger and higher than we’d ever seen. It rose, it danced . . . it waved. It fucking waved. And it hushed the alarm.

Well, if you’re in a crisis then it’s time to be a micromanager again.

And we told customers exactly what happened. No cover-up. Mea culpa and here’s a refund if you want one.

No evading, blaming, or making excuses. Just accept responsibility and be a grown-up.

The best teams are multigenerational—Nest employed twenty-year-olds and seventy-year-olds. Experienced people have a wealth of wisdom that they can pass on to the next generation and young people can push back against long-held assumptions.

Everyone leaves eventually. But before they go, you want them to mentor and train an army of young people. That’s how you keep your company going. That’s how you create a legacy.

Nobody works in a vacuum. Everybody has internal customers—people they need to deliver to. App designers, for example, create designs for engineers to implement. In this instance, engineers are their customers. So if you’re hiring an app designer, you’d better make sure they interview with an engineer.

Then we committed. We hired them. And despite any concerns, any potential areas for improvement, everyone started with 100 percent trust. Once you assess someone thoroughly, check references, and decide to hire them—you also have to decide to trust them.

You can’t start with zero trust and expect someone to prove themselves to you.

Of course, there will be disappointments—some people will knock your trust down to 90 percent, to 50 percent, to zero—but if you let that keep you from trusting others, you’ll never know the relationships and opportunities you missed. You can’t afford that. Hiring is too important. You’re going to need all the help you can get.

We also had a “no assholes” policy. Pretty self-explanatory, but very helpful. If someone walked in with a ton of experience and was exactly what we were looking for on paper, but came off as unbearably arrogant or dismissive or controlling or political, then that résumé would be tossed out.

An interview isn’t about carefree small talk. You’re there for a reason.

In an interview I’m always most interested in three basic things: who they are, what they’ve done, and why they did it.

I usually start with the most important questions: “What are you curious about? What do you want to learn?” I also ask, ...

And why do they want to join this company? That reason had better be completely different from why they left their previous job. They should have a new story, a compelling story, about what they’re excited about, who they want to work with, and how they want to grow and develop.

What approaches do they suggest? Do they ask about the customer? Do they seem empathetic or oblivious?

If you have fifty people who understand your culture and add a hundred who don’t, you will lose that culture. It’s just math.

So when bringing in new employees—especially execs—you shouldn’t just throw them in the deep end, hand them a branded company notebook, and think you’re done. The first month or two are crucial and should be a period of positive micromanagement.

Always remember that it’s scary joining a new team. Not knowing anyone. Not knowing if you’ll fit in. Not knowing if you’ll succeed.