Build Quotes

“The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude higher than to produce it.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Steve Jobs once said of management consulting, “You do get a broad cut at companies but it’s very thin. It’s like a picture of a banana: you might get a very accurate picture but it’s only two dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get three dimensional. So you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends—I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes—but you never really taste it.” If you do”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“From the moment you’re born until you move out of your parents’ house, almost all your choices are made, shaped, or influenced by your parents.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“No matter how much you learn in school, you still need to get the equivalent of a PhD in navigating the rest of the world and building something meaningful.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Take whatever job you can at one of those companies. Don’t worry too much about the title—focus on the work. If you get a foot in the door at a growing company, you’ll find opportunities to grow, too. Just whatever you do, don’t become a “management consultant” at a behemoth like McKinsey or Bain or one of the other eight consultancies that dominate the industry. They all have thousands upon thousands of employees and work almost exclusively with Fortune 5000 companies. These corporations, typically led by tentative, risk-averse CEOs, call in the management consultants to do a massive audit, find the flaws, and present leadership with a new plan that will magically “fix” everything. What a fairy tale—don’t get me started. But to many new grads, it sounds perfect: you get paid incredibly well to travel around the world, work with powerful companies and executives, and learn exactly how to make a business successful. It’s an alluring promise. Parts of it are even true. Yes, you get a nice paycheck. And yes, you get plenty of practice pitching important clients. But you don’t learn how to build or run a company. Not really. Steve Jobs once said of management consulting, “You do get a broad cut at companies but it’s very thin. It’s like a picture of a banana: you might get a very accurate picture but it’s only two dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get three dimensional. So you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends—I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes—but you never really taste it.” If you do choose to go that route and find yourself at one of the Big Four or the other top six firms, then that is of course your choice. Just know before you go what you want to learn and the experiences you need for your next chapter. Don’t get stuck. Management consulting should never be your endpoint—it should be a way station, a brief pause on your journey to actually doing something. Making something. 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. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail. You have to be there when it falls apart so you can put it back together. You have to actually do the job. You have to love the job.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“The story you’re telling shapes the thing you’re making.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Even if you sell lubricants to a factory that’s been buying the same thing for twenty years. There’s a competition for market share and a competition for mind share. If your competitors are telling better stories than you, if they’re playing the game and you’re not, then it doesn’t matter if their product is worse. They will get the attention. To any customers, investors, partners, or talent doing a cursory search, they will appear to be the leaders in the category.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“And after you move out of your parents’ house, there’s a window—a brief, shining, incredible window—where your decisions are yours alone. You’re not beholden to anyone—not a spouse, not kids, not parents. You’re free. Free to choose whatever you’d like. That is the time to be bold. Where are you going to live? Where are you going to work? Who are you going to be? Your parents will always have suggestions for you—feel free to take them or ignore them. Their judgment is colored by what they want for you (the best, of course, only the best). You’ll need to find other people—other mentors—to give you useful advice. A teacher or cousin or an aunt or the older kid of a close family friend. Just because you’re on your own doesn’t mean you have to be alone with your decisions. Because this is it. This is your window. This is your time to take risks.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Joz always, always understood the context and was able to turn it into an effective narrative. It’s how we were able to convince Steve. And reporters. And customers. It’s how we could sell iPods.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“The CEO and executive team are mostly staring way out on the horizon—50 percent of their time is spent planning for a fuzzy, distant future months or years away, 25 percent is focused on upcoming milestones in the next month or two, and the last 25 percent is spent putting out fires happening right now at their feet. They also look at all the parallel lines to make sure everyone is keeping up and going in the same direction. Managers usually keep their eyes focused 2–6 weeks out. Those projects are pretty fleshed out and detailed, though they still have some fuzzy bits around the edges. Managers’ heads should be on a swivel—they often look down, sometimes look further out, and spend a fair amount of time”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Anyone who’s ever stuck with a job they hated knows the feeling. Every meeting, every pointless project, every hour stretches on and on. You don’t respect your manager, you roll your eyes at the mission, you stagger out the door at the end of the day exhausted, dragging yourself home to complain to family and friends until they’re as miserable as you are. It is time and energy and health and joy that disappear from your life forever. But hey, that title, that stature, that money—it’s worth it all, right?”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“And talk to the people who are closest to the customer, like marketing and support—find teams who communicate with customers day in and day out and hear their feedback directly.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Not only was she worried that the features we were building were charming but useless, she was also worried we wouldn’t actually build them.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“The key is persistence and being helpful. Not just asking for something, but offering something. You always have something to offer if you’re curious and engaged. You can always trade and barter good ideas; you can always be kind and find a way to help.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“You should know where you want to go, who you want to work with, what you want to learn, who you want to become. And from there, hopefully you’ll start to understand how to build what you want to build.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“This is an adventure and adventures never go according to plan. That’s what makes them fun. And scary. And worth doing. That’s why you take a deep breath, surround yourself with great people, and head out into the wilderness.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Adulthood is your opportunity to screw up continually until you learn how to screw up a little bit less.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Most tech companies break out product management and product marketing into two separate roles: Product management defines the product and gets it built. Product marketing writes the messaging—the facts you want to communicate to customers—and gets the product sold. But from my experience that’s a grievous mistake. Those are, and should always be, one job. There should be no separation between what the product will be and how it will be explained—the story has to be utterly cohesive from the beginning. Your messaging is your product. The story you’re telling shapes the thing you’re making”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“became a fantastic manager—focused on team building, never afraid to ask questions or push boundaries, insatiably curious about every aspect of the business.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Building a product is like making a song. The band is composed of marketing, sales, engineering, support, manufacturing, PR, legal. And the product manager is the producer—making sure everyone knows the melody, that nobody is out of tune and everyone is doing their part. They’re the only person who can see and hear how all the pieces are coming together, so they can tell when there’s too much bassoon or when a drum solo’s going on too long, when features get out of whack or people get so caught up in their own project that they forget the big picture.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“the superpower of every truly great product manager—is empathy.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“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.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“People do stupid things when they have a giant budget—they overdesign, they overthink. That inevitably leads to longer runways, longer schedules, and slower heartbeats. Much, much slower. Generally any brand-new product should never take longer than 18 months to ship—24 at the limit. The sweet spot is somewhere between 9 and 18 months. That applies to hardware and software, atoms and bits.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Customers need to see that your product solves a real problem they have today—not one that they may have in some distant future”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“It’s the responsibility of a passionate person—especially a leader—to describe their decision and make sure you can see it through their eyes. If they can tell you why they’re so passionate about something, then you can piece together their thought process and either jump on board or point out potential issues.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Just whatever you do, don’t become a “management consultant” at a behemoth like McKinsey or Bain or one of the other eight consultancies that dominate the industry. They all have thousands upon thousands of employees and work almost exclusively with Fortune 5000 companies. These corporations, typically led by tentative, risk-averse CEOs, call in the management consultants to do a massive audit, find the flaws, and present leadership with a new plan that will magically “fix” everything. What a fairy tale—don’t get me started.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making