Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

by Tony Fadell

This product solves a problem—a real pain point—that a lot of customers experience daily. There should be an existing large market.

“If you make it, they will come” doesn’t always work. If the technology isn’t ready, they won’t come for sure.

To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty.

“I can’t make you the smartest or the brightest, but it’s doable to be the most knowledgeable. It’s possible to gather more information than somebody else.”

One of the hardest parts of management is letting go. Not doing the work yourself.

Examining the product in great detail and caring deeply about the quality of what your team is producing is not micromanagement. That’s exactly what you should be doing.

As a manager, you should be focused on making sure the team is producing the best possible product.

So as a manager, you have to find what connects with your team. How can you share your passion with them, motivate them?

Sometimes you have to double down on the data; other times you have to look at all the data and then trust your gut.

Customers will always be more comfortable with what exists already, even if it’s terrible.

If a product is really new, there’s nothing to compare it to, nothing to optimize, nothing to test.

When you’re handcuffed to a hard deadline, you can’t keep trying this and that, changing your mind, putting the finishing touches on something that will never be finished.

So keep your project small as long as you can. And don’t allocate too much money at the start. People do stupid things when they have a giant budget—they overdesign, they overthink.

Throwing darts at a wall is not how you pick a great idea. Anything worth doing takes time.

If you want to start a company, if you want to start anything, to create something new, then you need to be ready to push for greatness. And greatness doesn’t come from nothing. You have to prepare. You have to know where you’re headed and remember where you came from.

Understanding your customer—their demographics and psychographics, their wants and needs and pain points—is the foundation of your company. Your product, team, culture, sales, marketing, support, pricing—everything is shaped by that understanding.

Get advice. Take deep breaths. Make a plan.

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

Managers should always be paying attention to how many hours teams are sitting in meetings—both intra-team and inter-team—and working to keep those numbers under control.

Being a good designer is more a way of thinking than a way of drawing. It’s not just about making things pretty—it’s about making them work better.

There are no perfect designs. There are always constraints.

you shouldn’t outsource a problem before you try to solve it yourself,

Marketing is part of every customer touchpoint whether you realize it or not.

Product management can create the messaging—the top features, the problem statement—but finding the best way to tell that story to customers is an art. It’s a science. It’s marketing.

A product manager’s responsibility is to figure out what the product should do and then create the spec (the description of how it will work) as well as the messaging (the facts you want customers to understand).

When you start out, your first customers are incredibly precious. They’re the ones who love you best, who take a risk on you.

The best CEOs push the team to strive for greatness, then take care of them to make sure they can achieve it. The worst CEOs care only about maintaining the status quo.

If you don’t give a shit about marketing, you’ll get shitty marketing. If you don’t care about design, you’ll get designers who don’t care, either.

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

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

Do something different. Shift customer expectations. Set the standard higher. It can make a market, a whole ecosystem, better.