Build by Tony Fadell
Lessons on building things that matter, and having a great career
👋 Hello! This week, I’m covering the book ‘Build’, written by one of the people behind the iPod: Tony Fadell. This book covers Tony’s experiences in the industry, ranging from startups to big companies like Apple and Google. I’ve really enjoyed reading this book, as Tony’s insights are remarkable, so I’m happy to share some of them with you today!
So who is Tony Fadell? Even though you might not know who he is, many of you will have felt his influence through the products he’s helped to create. (Every product managers dream, right?) The most prominent example of these are the iPod and the iPhone, where he was at the frontline of development, together with Steve Jobs. After Apple, he repeated his success by founding ‘Nest’, a company that creates connected-home products, which he ended up selling to Google.
Ever since he learned from the mistakes of the first company he joined, Apple spin-off General Magic, Tony has consistently helped create products that customers love. What seems to be a recurring pattern between all great product people, is that they have to learn the hard way that building something that customers love is not as straightforward as it might initially seem. Tony is no exception to this, and by writing Build, he’s hoping to give the next generation of product developers a head-start.
Should You Read This Book?
‘Build’ is essentially your career-coach in the form of a book. It provides great advice for various phases of your career, ranging from getting started as an intern, all the way towards becoming a CEO. It provides truths about three area’s: The self, the product, and the company. I’ve outlined the most valuable learnings for product managers in the corresponding sections below.
I’d especially recommend this book to product managers that are at the beginning of their career, as there is one thing that the book does incredibly well: Inspire you to build great things.
Build Yourself
When you’re at the beginning of your career, Tony recommends to spend as much time as possible learning. This involves practical lessons, but also simply acquiring industry knowledge by reading books and articles. The latter will reveal who are the best at your craft, and you can attempt to move closer to them in order to learn from them. A good mentorship is extremely powerful in the early days of your career.
After working in the industry for a while, if all goes we’ll, you probably will have to decide whether you want to become a manager or not. It’s important to know that you don’t have to become a manager to advance your career: Good individual contributors are also extremely valuable to a company, so know that you can also take that path if you don’t want to become a manager.
If you do end up becoming a manager, Tony advices you to be mindful of when to use a data-driven decision, and when to base a decision on your gut-feeling. The latter is often frowned upon by the industry, but that is a natural result of the fact that the majority of product managers are working in larger organisations. The organisations by nature have more data to work with, so making a data driven decision is easier to them. When a company is in its earlier stages, being able to make great decisions based on your gut-feeling is a high-leverage skill. You only get better at it by doing it!
A final great piece of advice on your career from the book, is to treat your career as if you’re a professional athlete. (That is, if you’re serious about advancing it. Nothing wrong with optimising for work-life balance.) Having a top 1% career and having a good work-life balance is a pipedream: You’re going to have to allow for some unbalance. Therefore, it is essential that you exercise, eat healthy, and sleep well. Just like its the case with professional athletes, resting is as important as putting in the work.
Build Your Product
When it comes to developing great products, it’s important to recognise that the physical product that you’re building is just a small part of the product. The entire customer journey is part of your product, and you should treat it as such. Tony provides a beautiful example of this from his time at Nest, building their state-of-the-art smart thermostat:
To ensure the thermostat was easy to install, Nest added a small, elegant screwdriver to their products packaging. This completely removed the agony the customers experienced when having to go and find the right screwdriver to install the device. The customers loved this so much, that over time, the screwdriver became a symbol of Nest, and its excellent customer journey.
When you pay extreme detail to the entire customer journey, people will notice. The product can be good, but the customer journey is the reason a company becomes a success.
One key pattern in great products, is that they always start with a good story: Their ‘why’. (As we learned in the edition about the book ‘Start With Why’ by Simon Sinek!)
The prime example of storytelling in products is of course Steve Jobs. According to Tony, the reason Steve excelled in this, is because he was always telling the story of the product to anyone that would listen: Colleagues, but also friends and family. Every time he would notice any form of confusion in his audience, he would improve his story in the next iteration. This resulted in his great speeches, for which never needed slides or a teleprompter to guide him.
Furthermore, you should always underpromise and overdeliver. Tony shares a great story from Apple on this topic:
As soon as Apple reached its goals in terms of battery life for their latest device, the team would always continue to improve it towards the release. In this way, when the customers tested the battery life, they would get hours more than Apple had initially promised. This resulted in excellent reviews. Furthermore, Apple was the first company to ship their devices with a charged battery, so they could immediately be used. Another testament to their focus on a great customer journey.
There are two final learnings I’d like to share here. First of all, try to keep your team as small as possible, so you don’t drown in communication overhead. And next to that, ensure that you always give yourself or your team a deadline. Force yourself to stick to it, and be ambitious: The deadline for the first iPhone prototype was only 10 weeks! This prototype gave them some key learnings about what they needed to change in the design. By using a deadline, you’re forcing yourself and your team to take action. Without this deadline, the team would probably still be creating design drawings after those 10 weeks.
Build Your Company
Tony shares many great lessons for building a company. Here, I’ll focus on the lessons that you can also apply to your section of the company as a product manager, your product team.
Your ‘why’ is the driving force behind your company. Therefore, it’s essential that you recruit people that believe in the mission of your company. Your team is your company. Tony learned this from the legendary Silicon Valley coach Bill Campbell, who we’ve seen referenced in other books before. (More on him in a future edition!) Bill didn’t have a single technical skill, but yet managed to lead billion dollar tech companies: He understood the value of his team like no one else.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t really know what a product manager does. This is something most of us have experienced before. The reason for this is that, according to Tony, the product manager doesn’t really have a clearly defined job description. Instead, product management is more like a set of skills, which change depending on the company- and industry needs at the time. A great product manager is the recurring theme in every successful product: These people are extremely rare, but also extremely valuable!
That last statement is why I’m dedicated to learning as much as possible about our craft, as it’s an incredibly difficult skill to master. In my opinion, this is also what makes it exciting!
Build Towards Perfection
Tony argues that in our industry, there are two things that are an order of magnitude more valuable than other things: The products you build, and the people your building them with. It is definitely worth it to invest a lot of your energy into this: Do something different, change the expectations of the customer, raise the bar.
Furthermore, you shouldn’t just be doing this for your products, but for yourself as well. Many people never get past the ‘V1’ version of theirselves, and get stuck in what they’re doing. But, just like products, people are never finished: We are constantly building the person we want to be.
I’ll leave you with a great quote from the book, that applies to both people and the products we build. Hopefully, it helps you get to the next version of yourself. Until next week!
“Most people are very satisfied with 90%. But even when you go from 90% to 95%, you’re only halfway on your way to perfection. You will only reach your final destination, if you complete the entire journey.”