Build

Build

Author

Tony Fadell

Year
2022
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Review

Tony Fadell (the author) played a big part in building the iPhone, iPod and the Nest Thermostat - some of the most iconic products of all time. Build is both an autobiography and a playbook - for how to build great products.

The inside story on Google’s acquisition of Nest was particularly interesting to me - Tony’s observations align with my personal experience as a Googler. The chapter on Assholes was refreshing, you need to know how to deal with these people! I also found myself agreeing with Tony’s product messaging framework.

This is an important read for anyone interested in building great products.

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Key Takeaways

The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.

  • There are too many mediocre companies and products out there. Strive for excellence - push those around you to do the same.
  • Dedicate yourself to a problem you’re passionate about. Find your community. If nobody is working on it - you maybe too early.
  • There are two types of decisions:
    • Data-Driven: Acquire, study, and debate facts and numbers that will allow you to be fairly confident in your choice. Easy to make, easy to defend and easy to get agreement.
    • Opinion-driven: Following your gut and your vision - without the benefit of sufficient data to guide you or back you up. Hard to make and always questioned.
    • You can’t turn an opinion-driven decision into a data-driven one
  • Know the different types of assholes (political, controlling, aggressive, passive-aggressive, mission-driven). Pushing for greatness, challenging assumptions and not tolerating mediocrity doesn’t automatically make you an asshole.
  • Quit if you’re no longer passionate about the mission, or you’ve tried everything and spoken to everyone and it’s still not working.
  • Design and prototype the entire user journey. Don’t just make a thing - make a better user journey. Every customer touchpoint is an expression of your brand and product.
  • Test prototypes with real customers as soon as possible.
  • If hardware doesn’t absolutely need to exist to enable the overall experience, then it should not exist.
  • Product story telling is really important - for both the customers and your team. Once you understand why your product is needed - you can focus on how it works
  • Version 1 of your product should be disruptive. Opinion driven vision > Customer Insights > Data. Aiming for product-market fit, not profitability.
  • Version 2 is typically an evolution. Decisions can be baes on data and customer insights once you are evolving your product - look for opportunities to disrupt yourself which aiming for profitability
    • You make the product. You fix the product. You build the business. Every product. Every company. Every time. Tony Fadell
  • The disruption tradeoff: Not so disruptive that you won’t be able to execute - Not so easy to execute that nobody will care.
  • Handcuff yourself and your team to a deadline - constraints make you more creative. Then codify your delivery process into a heartbeat - that sets the pace for product development.
  • Good ideas solve for a customer need, that’s important and frequent. Good ideas will follow you around - they persist in your mind.
  • On Org Design: Break your org into product specific groups so each product gets the attention it deserves. New products need new teams, otherwise they’ll never get made. Decisions speed up and everyone has a shared goal rather than conflicting priorities.
  • Design thinking means thinking through a problem and finding an elegant solution. Don’t outsource a problem unless you’ve tried to solve it yourself. Try to notice things, and avoid habituation, getting used to the inconveniences
  • Product messaging is key. What you should say? - Where you say it? You can’t say everything everywhere, so you need to get it right.
    • Understand your customers pains → map them to a pain-killer in your product
    • Test the messaging to check it resonates
    • Map your customer touch-points - and work out where each piece of messaging is displayed.
  • The product managers responsibility is to build the right products for the right customers
  • The things a CEO pays attention to become the priorities for the company.
  • Do something meaningful - make something worth making
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Deep Summary

Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.

Fully expanded this summary is 9600 words. Condensing 360 pages to about 20.

There are too many mediocre companies and products out there. Strive for excellence - push those around you to do the same.

Building Yourself

  • As a kid you make just 25% of your decisions. Largely you mimic your parents. In adulthood you have choice. This is your time - take risks.
  • Life is unstructured, no curriculum tests or grades. You’ll need to learn from failure, so change your relationship with it.
  • Follow your curiosity to find a job you love. What do you want to learn about? Surrounded yourself with people who you can learn from. Learn through productive struggle.
  • Start at the bottom, work hard, prove yourself and move up. Get in early, stay late. It’s your education.
  • Prioritise ‘Mission, People and Opportunity’ over ‘Money, Status and Title’
‣
Criteria for a great product/team/project/company
  • You can dedicate decades to a problem you’re passionate about. Find your community.
    • If nobody is working on it - you might be too early or going in the wrong direction.
    • If you find a small community keep going, get in early, build relationships and find mentors.
  • Put in the work to learn your field - aim to become the most knowledgable. Leverage your knowledge to meet leaders - that will create opportunity.
  • Make a connection at your target company. Keep sharing interesting stuff and they’ll notice you. Be persistence and helpful. Offer something don’t ask for something.
  • Get into a small company, building something meaningful, with some rockstars on the team. Help the rockstars, earn trust, win respect and nurture the relationships.
  • Don’t just to do you job (looking down). Spend 20%:
    • Looking up, to the mission and milestones ahead. Make sure you’re staying true to the mission and you’re on a path that makes sense.
    • Looking around: beyond your team, meet other functions, understand their needs, perspectives, and concerns. You’ll be able to judge the health of the company better this way.
  • For best results always engage other disciplines early; don’t wait until you’ve built something

Building Your Career

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6 things to think about if you’re thinking about becoming a manager...
  • Learn to let go. Get over the fear that the product will suffer. Trust your team - give them room and opportunity. Don’t overdo it - make sure you still know what’s going on. Examining the product in great detail and caring deeply about quality is not micromanagement. That’s exactly what you should be doing.
    • Steve Jobs used jeweller’s loupe to check individual pixels were properly drawn. He inspected every piece of hardware, every word on the packaging - he showed the level of detail expected at Apple
  • Agree how to work up front. Your product development, design, marketing and sales process. Set a schedule, define how you’ll work together. Get everyone to sign off on it, then let go and let the team work.
  • Track progress with regular team meetings. Goal is to give everyone clarity. Keep a list of your priorities, questions and risks for each project and person. When the list gets too long you need to either dive deeper or back off
  • Know your management style. Find out what connects with your team, find out how to share your passion and motivate them. Tell them why you’re passionate? How this small detail relates to the mission.
  • Help people succeed and become the best version of themselves. It’s your responsibility to help them work through failure and find success. Celebrate when they do.

On Decision Making

  • There are two types of decisions:
    • Data-Driven: Acquire, study, and debate facts and numbers that will allow you to be fairly confident in your choice. Easy to make, easy to defend and easy to get agreement.
    • Opinion-driven: Following your gut and your vision - without the benefit of sufficient data to guide you or back you up. Hard to make and always questioned.
  • You can’t turn an opinion-driven decision into a data-driven one. Data can’t solve an opinion-based problem. No matter how much data you get, it will always be inconclusive. This leads to analysis paralysis—death by overthinking.
  • If you don’t have access to data - use insights and consult...
  • Customer panels aren’t helpful. People can’t articulate what they want clearly. They’re adverse to new stuff.
  • You can’t A/B test your way to achieving your mission. Experimentation is not a replacement for a product vision. Think through what you test. Testing is a tool that’s best used on the smaller stuff (e.g where to put the buy button) - not ‘the core’ of your proposition.
  • This is not a democracy:
  • Why did your boss call in consultants?? — Are you causing delay? Do they fear for their job? Do they know what they want - but don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings?

On Assholes

  • Political Assholes: Masters of corporate politics. Do-nothing-take-credit types. They are risk averse - focused only on survival and pushing others down so they can reach the top. They don’t build. They hide from tough decisions but are quick to say ‘I told you so’. They may try to swoop in and save the day like superman.
  • Controlling Assholes: Micromanagers that strangle creativity and suck joy out of work. Can’t be reasoned with - all good ideas have to be theirs. They are threatened by talent and never give credit. They dominate big meetings - get defensive and angry if their ideas are questioned.
  • Asshole Assholes: They suck at work and everything else. They are mean, jealous and insecure. Can’t deliver - they aren’t productive - they try to deflect attention away from themselves. They will lie, gossip and manipulate others to get people off their scent. At least they don’t last long. They can be either...
  • Mission-driven Assholes: Sometimes a little crazy - always crazy passionate. They have no filter - and often don’t care “how things are done around here.” They are neither easygoing nor easy to work with BUT unlike true assholes, they care. They listen. They work incredibly hard and push their team to be better. They are unrelenting when right, but open to changing their minds. They praise genuinely great work. Typically stories follow them around (crazy things they’ve done) but everyone agree’s they’re not that bad, really. The team ultimately trusts them, respects what they do, and looks back fondly on times they were pushed to do the best work of their lives. A mission-driven “asshole” might tear apart your work, but they won’t attack you personally.
  • Pushing for greatness, challenging assumptions and not tolerating mediocrity doesn’t automatically make you an asshole.
  • Before deciding if somebody is an asshole - understand their motivation. There’s a big difference between being ‘emphatic and passionate to benefit the customer’ and ‘bullying someone to appease your own ego.’
  • How to deal with a controlling asshole → Kill them with kindness. Ignore them. Try to get around them. Quit. In that order.

On Quitting

  • If you’re no longer passionate about the mission. You’re staying for the paycheck or status. Time is goes slowly at your desk. QUIT.
  • If you’ve tried everything. You’re passionate about the mission, but the company is letting you down. You’ve spoken to everyone - understood the roadblocks - pitched the solutions. You’re project is going nowhere - the company is falling apart. QUIT and find another way to work on the mission.