Book Breakdown: ‘BUILD’ by Tony Fadell
Building a product or business? Then you need to read this.
Imagine if you had the chance to have one of the world’s most successful and influential businessmen mentor you personally. One-on-one. Like he was speaking to you over a cup of coffee.
This book is a distillation of years of experience, his wins and losses, his struggle with building his products, how he overcame obstacles, how he navigated the tempestuous world of Silicon Valley. A hardware engineer who became a CEO.
30 years worth of wisdom, with hundreds of patents to his name.
A ‘mentor in a box’. That’s what his book, ‘Build’ is all about.
I read it.
This is my breakdown, which I like to think of as a ‘table-of-contents on steroids’. Or on kombucha. Whatever you prefer.
Tony Who?
Ever heard of a podcast? The digital audio shows?
The term comes from where they first started out on, which were these little handheld music devices called iPods. Yes, I’m revealing my age here.
Before the iPod, people used to take these round flat discs called CD’s (compact disks) and put them in machines where they would play music from either speakers or headphones.
But then someone came along with the brilliant idea of putting not just one CD of songs, but hundreds of them in a little device that fit in your pocket.
That’s Tony Fadell. He pitched the idea to Steve Jobs. He was the guy who led the team that built it. No big deal. Just created the iPod.
You’re probably familiar, then, with another device called the iPhone.
You’re probably reading this on one right now.
Yeah. He built that too.
Breakdown
The book is divided into 6 parts, each covering his journey chronologically, dispensing advice along the way, neatly subdivided in topical segments with diagrams where needed.
I’ll start with a brief summary, list what you’re going to encounter and throw in some quotes here and there with some pics for those of you who don’t like to read. Who are reading an article…about a book…on a platform for readers.
Let’s go.
Part 1: Build Yourself
Got to start at the beginning, right?
Introduction section covering his career, from beginning to date of publishing. His beginnings at General Magic, Phillips etc.
Trajectory. What a young person is going to encounter and should undertake.
Mentors. Getting a job in your field, and seeking out your heroes in it.
Your role as an Individual Contributor to the team and vision concerning a project.
Aim high. The importance of a great goal and risk taking.
Part 2: Build Your Career
Like it says. This covers crafting a career and handling certain types along the way.
Management. The job role, personality traits.
Navigating decision making between Data vs Opinion. What drives your decision making process?
Dealing with Assholes. Yeah, you read that right. Handling the sorts you’re going to run into or already have encountered. For some reason Steve Jobs is in this chapter.
How to Quit; knowing when and how to have a gracious exit and how he did just that from Phillips and Apple to venture onto Nest.
Helping people to succeed is your job as a manager. It’s your responsibility to make sure they can become the best versions of themselves. You need to create a setting where they can surprise you. And surpass you.
Part 3: Build Your Product
Got something to offer the world? Whether it’s a product or service, he covers how to navigate the process. Concerning his career, this focuses on products but the advice can easily be ported to any sort of deliverable.
The trajectory of idea inception, development to distribution. Covers the birth of the iPod.
Prototyping Concerns developing a product regarding the customer’s journey.
What’s in the box? Nest product marketing and packaging.
One more thing. The importance of storytelling and the influence of Steve Jobs.
How to: Evolution VS Disruption VS Execution
Growth. Going from V1 (the first version of your product) to V2 (the second).
Tick tock. How teams deal with deadlines and milestones. He covers the ‘heartbeat’ and productivity tempo of teams.
Money time. The timeline of profitability in a company.
“You make the product. You fix the product. You build the business.
Every product. Every company. Every time.”
Part 4: Build Your Business
Building and maintenance advice for your venture.
Friends in need. Finding a co-founder. Investors.
Work/Life Balance and strategies to cope with workload and stress. Apparently Steve Jobs worked even harder on vacation than he did at the office. Don’t do that.
Dealing with crisis. A playbook on what to do, when it happens.
How to spot a great idea; what makes one and how to get ready to act on it.
“The best ideas are painkillers and not vitamins.”
Speaking about ideas and execution, I wrote an article just about that.
Part 5: Build Your Team
Arguably the most important part of the book and the one with most relevance. About the most important component of what companies are made of. People.
Hiring. Who to hire and for what.
Firing. Who to fire and for what.
Breakpoints. When to bring in management as your company grows.
Company organizational breakdowns for 15–16 people, 40–50 people, 120–140 people and 350–400 people. This book is incredible.
The right stuff. Specialists, management, organization, human resources.
Coaches/mentors in your company.
Company culture and values.
“We sought out the best of the best, and they created their own gravity — pulling in more and more talent.”
Design thinking for your customer and the product. How to approach a problem like a designer.
Have awareness. Know when to recognize potential. Compact discs were heavy and cumbersome, took up walls and shelves. Tony would DJ on weekends for fun and the CDs were heavier than his speakers. Answer: the iPod.
Marketing methodology. How to reach others. Marketing templates for Nest which he sent to countless other startups. (I was tempted to add it here but that’s pretty valuable information best delivered in the book itself.)
Project Managers. Who they are and how they are vital to any enterprise of scale.
Salespeople and moving away from a ‘boiler room’ stereotypical sales culture in general due to it’s inherent flaws.
Lawyers. Advice on lawyers, how to handle them. Which lawyers to hire, outside counsel and in-house and how to handle lawsuits. Hint: Beware chatty lawyers, time is quite literally money.
”You can’t solve for interesting problems if you don’t notice they’re there.”
Part 6: Be CEO
For the big boys at the top. I’m not there yet but this chapter is definitely going to be visited when the time comes.
Buying and being bought. The Google acquisition of Nest and culture shock from the Alphabet restructure.
The kinds of CEO. What you are supposed to do and be like. Vision as a CEO.
What to care about and how to manage your teams, handling push-back.
The commonalities and traits of CEOs. Vision, ownership and accountability.
Not all roses. The pitfalls and double-edged sword of the position. It’s lonely at the top.
The Board. How to structure one and build an effective team to lead.
Fuck Massages. Yes, that’s the name of chapter 6.4. Covers the pitfalls of too many perks and benefits for employees. Perks should not define business and an excessive amount cheapens their value and impact.
Unbecoming CEO. how to handle stepping down and when to know it’s time.
Becoming Yourself: Parting words for the future and current CEO.
Your job [as CEO] is to care. Because you’re it. You’re the top of the pyramid. Your focus, your passion, trickles down. If you don’t give a shit about marketing you’ll get shitty marketing, If you don’t care about design, then you’ll get designers who don’t care, either. Don’t rack your brain trying to decide which parts of your company need your attention and which don’t. They all do.
Conclusion
So there you have it. I thought I was going to read it over the course of a week instead read it cover to cover (400 pages) in a single sitting.
The writing was candid and conversational, in a direct and precise voice (as befitting his tenure) with data and case study interwoven. A highly accessible book indeed. Overall, an excellent and well-organized decades-worth distillation of business experience.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m going to be unequivocal in saying that this book is an essential business companion, and it’s presence on any entrepreneurial bookshelf is highly recommended. I intend to revisit this book many, many times in my career.
If you want to read it too, please consider buying it below via my Amazon affiliate link. That’ll help me review more books in the future.
Give it a click.
Thank you for reading.
I hope this book will aid you in your business endeavours, I know it will mine.
