Build Quotes

“When considering your first legal hire, you may be tempted to hire a generalist—someone who can do a bit of everything. People think that will cut down on their need to hire outside specialists. But it’s the opposite. At this moment, you’re not hiring for breadth. You need to understand what’s at the core of your company—what your business is ultimately about—and hire for those specific legal specialties.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“The best lawyers understand that. They don’t only think like a lawyer. They take into account all their training and knowledge, but also weigh business objectives. They can help you understand the risks while also being very aware of the benefits.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“That’s why even when we were right on the verge of triumph in our lawsuit with Honeywell, we settled out of court. By that time Google had bought our company and Honeywell was a major customer of theirs. It didn’t matter that we were right and Honeywell was wrong; it was a business decision. Google decided that paying off Honeywell and maintaining that relationship was preferable to going to court—especially since the cost of the settlement came out of Nest’s coffers and not Google’s.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“When you’re in any kind of negotiation that includes legal, you always need to work out the fundamental deal points first, before the lawyers get called in—how much you’re paying for something, how much you’re willing to spend, how long a contract should last for, exclusivity, etc. Get the term sheet roughly approved, then let the lawyers argue the legalese. Otherwise negotiations can drag on forever, with you footing the bill as your lawyers fight with their lawyers. Nobody wants to deal with that.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“But I’d learned from my experience at Apple—I couldn’t just hand the decision for what to do over to legal. Lawyers love to win—they will never give up the fight, will battle to the death. But this is business. Death is not an acceptable option. You don’t get a great ROI with death.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“You do not want your business to crumble because of a stupid mistake—because you screwed up your employment agreements or your terms and conditions.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“But for the gray areas, for the tricky stuff, for the million nuanced opinion-driven decisions that will determine the direction of your company, always remember that lawyers live in a black-and-white world. Legal versus illegal. Defendable versus undefendable. Their job is to tell you the law and explain the risks. Your job is to make the decision.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“If you’re moderately successful at something disruptive, you’ll probably be a target. If you’re really successful, you definitely will be.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Competitors will sue you as a business tactic to shut you down. Merit may have nothing to do with it—they’ll hammer you with nuisance lawsuits just to drain your coffers and your will.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Lawyers are trained to think from the competitor’s viewpoint or the government’s viewpoint or that of pissed-off customers or irate partners or suppliers or employees or investors. Then they look at what you’re working on and say, “Doing it this way will almost certainly get you in trouble.” Or, on a really good day, “Doing it this way may turn into a lawsuit but we’ll probably be able to handle it.” You will never get a pure, unadulterated “yes, go ahead—there’s no danger ahead” because there’s no ironclad way to prevent a lawsuit. Anyone can sue you for anything—at least in the United States.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“When you’re hiring an outside law firm, you want a lawyer who talks fast and does not care about your children—at least not when they’re on the clock.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Law firms are generally all about billable hours. The first fifteen minutes they talk to you might be free, but they’ll charge for every fifteen minutes after that, or even every five. They’ll bill you for the time they spent thinking about your company in the shower. They’ll bill you for copies, travel, and postage (with an added handling fee, too). They’ll charge extra every time they need to call in someone with a specific legal expertise—so if your lawyer brings you into a conference call with another lawyer, expect a jaw-dropping bill.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“And the rules for every successful human relationship are the same: before you can jump headfirst into a major life-changing commitment, you need to get to know each other. Trust each other. Understand each other.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Once commissions are vested on a schedule that prioritizes customer relationships, a lot of the ugliness that usually defines sales cultures disappears. Salespeople do a better job qualifying customers, the hypercompetition eases up, the backslapping fades, the teams align their expectations and their goals. It just works better. For everyone.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“First set up a mini–internal board populated by those other teams—customer support, customer success, operations—to approve each sales deal. That will start shifting the mindset from lone-wolf salesperson to being part of a team. Then start talking about the change to commissions. Don’t say you’re getting rid of them—that messes with people’s heads—just say that you’re doing them differently. Boost the size of the commission but start vesting it over time. And tell the sales team they’ll lose the remainder of the commission if the customer leaves. You can also offer an even larger commission if they’ll take stock over cash.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“1. If you’re starting a new sales organization, do not offer traditional monthly cash commissions. It’s best to have everyone in your company compensated in the same way—so offer salespeople a competitive salary and sales performance bonuses of additional stock options that vest over time. Stock provides a built-in incentive to stick around and invest in long-term customers who are good for the business. 2. If you’re trying to transition to a relationship-driven culture, you may not be able to kill traditional commissions right away. In that case, any stock or cash (stock is still preferable) that you give as a commission should vest over time. Pay 10–15 percent of the commission at first, then another tranche in a few months, then another a few months after that, etc. If the customer leaves, the salesperson loses the remainder of their commission. 3. Every sale should be a team sale. So if you have a customer success team (the team that actually delivers, sets up, and maintains whatever is sold to the customer), then it should sign off on every deal. Sales and customer success should be under one leader, in the same silo, being compensated in the same way. In this setup, sales can’t just throw a customer over the fence and never think about them again. If there’s no customer success team, then sales should work very closely with customer support, operations, or manufacturing—create a board of people to approve each commitment.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“There is a different model that aligns short-term business goals without neglecting long-term customer relationships. It’s based on vested commissions. Rather than focusing on rewarding salespeople immediately after a transaction, vest the commission over time so your sales team is incentivized to not only bring in new customers, but also work with existing customers to ensure they’re happy and stay happy. Build a culture based on relationships rather than transactions.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Even if on the surface everything seems to be working, there are a lot of downsides when the traditional commission model is fully played out. Most notably, it can breed hypercompetition and egoism and incentivize making a quick buck rather than ensuring that customers and the business are successful in the long term.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“This person is a needle in a haystack. An almost impossible combination of structured thinker and visionary leader, with incredible passion but also firm follow-through, who’s a vibrant people person but fascinated by technology, an incredible communicator who can work with engineering and think through marketing and not forget the business model, the economics, profitability, PR. They have to be pushy but with a smile, to know when to hold fast and when to let one slide. They’re incredibly rare. Incredibly precious. And they can and will help your business go exactly where it needs to go.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Amazing product managers usually emerge from other roles. They start in marketing or engineering or support, but because they care so deeply about the customer, they start fixing the product and working to redefine it, rather than just executing someone else’s spec or messaging. And their focus on the customer doesn’t cloud their understanding that ultimately this is a business—so they also dive into sales and ops, try to understand unit economics and pricing.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Many people assume product managers have to be technical, but that’s absolutely not true. Especially in B2C companies. I’ve met many great product managers who are able to build trust and a rapport with engineering without any kind of technical background. As long as they have a solid basic understanding of the technology and the curiosity to learn more, they can figure out how to work with engineering to get it built.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“The customer story helped engineering understand the pain point. They built a product to address that pain. Then marketing crafted a narrative that gave every person who had experienced the pain a reason to buy the product.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“So the product manager has to be a master negotiator and communicator. They have to influence people without managing them. They have to ask questions and listen and use their superpower—empathy for the customer, empathy for the team—to build bridges and mend road maps.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Product managers look for places where the customer is unhappy. They unravel issues as they go, discovering the root of the problem and working with the team to solve it. They do whatever is necessary to move projects forward—that could be taking notes in meetings or triaging bugs or summarizing customer feedback or organizing team docs or sitting down with designers and sketching something out or meeting with engineering and digging into the code. It’s different for every product.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“A good product manager will do a little of everything and a great deal of all this: Spec out what the product should do and the road map for where it will go over time. Determine and maintain the messaging matrix. Work with engineering to get the product built according to spec. Work with design to make it intuitive and attractive to the target customer. Work with marketing to help them understand the technical nuances in order to develop effective creative to communicate the messaging. Present the product to management and get feedback from the execs. Work with sales and finance to make sure this product has a market and can eventually make money. Work with customer support to write necessary instructions, help manage problems, and take in customer requests and complaints. Work with PR to address public perceptions, write the mock press release, and often act as a spokesperson.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“And the reason for it is simple: the customer needs a voice on the team. Engineers like to build products using the coolest new technology. Sales wants to build products that will make them a lot of money. But the product manager’s sole focus and responsibility is to build the right products for their customers.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“A lot of small startups skip this step. They think they can stretch the truth and nobody will notice. But if you are successful, they always notice—especially the class-action lawyers. And even an innocent white lie in your marketing can taint everything you do when it’s exposed. You can instantly lose customer trust.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“So when breakpoints come for you, remember how you’ve been reassuring the team and take your own advice: know they’re coming and get ready. Talk to your mentor. Understand what your job should look like well before every transition and plan for it. And always remember that change is growth and growth is opportunity. Your company is an organism; its cells need to divide to multiply, they need to differentiate to become something new. Don’t worry about what you’re going to lose—think about what you’re going to become.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Coaching and mentorship is critical before breakpoints. Especially at the transition to 30–40 people, when managers emerge, and around 80–120, when you promote people to director.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“But when you hit 60–80 employees, you need to bring HR in-house. Because you’re not just dealing with 60–80 people. It’s actually 240. Or 320. Most employees come with a family—spouses, partners, dependents. And each of those people will have some need that falls on your shoulders; they’ll get sick or pregnant or need braces or want to take a leave of absence or just have questions about benefits.”
― Tony Fadell, Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making