Let's say I told you that you could sit down to chat with the inventor and designer of some of the most successful products in history — things so crazy innovative, useful, and cool that they generated *hundreds of billions* of bucks. Heck, one of those products may even be in your pocket right now. And let's say the guy has a lot of great stories to tell — working with the geniuses of his age, taking mad risks, making huge mistakes, scoring epic wins. And he's a pretty good storyteller to boot.
Interested? Well, Tony Fadell is that guy — the man behind the iPod, iPhone, Nest Thermostat and and much more you may not have heard of. If you didn't know his name or story till now, here's your chance to learn from one of the greatest inventor-entrepreneurs of all time, and drink in his hard-earned, often counterintuitive wisdom.
Fadell divides his book into six parts: Build Yourself; Build Your Career; Build Your Product; Build Your Business; Build Your Team; Be CEO. Each part comprises a few chapters telling stories from his career along with the lessons learned. Each chapter begins with a nugget of concentrated Tony wisdom which is basically incompressible. Heck, the entire *book* is pretty incompressible — I highlighted almost a third of it. Here's one about mentorship:
"A good mentor won’t hand you the answers, but they will try to help you see your problem from a new perspective. They’ll loan you some of their hard-fought advice so you can discover your own solution."
This is straight-up Buddha talk, the 'ehi-passiko' of "Yeah, I've got some ideas to share but I want you to go figure it out on your own" — if the Buddha were a world-class coder, designer, manager, fundraiser, and CEO. Here's another one on what kind of company to join:
"If you’re going to throw your time, energy, and youth at a company, try to join one that’s not just making a better mousetrap. Find a business that’s starting a revolution. A company that’s likely to make a substantial change in the status quo has the following characteristics:
1) It’s creating a product or service that’s wholly new or combines existing technology in a novel way that the competition can’t make or even understand…
2) This product solves a problem—a real pain point—that a lot of customers experience daily…
3) The novel technology can deliver on the company vision—not just within the product but also the infrastructure, platforms, and systems that support it.
4) Leadership is not dogmatic about what the solution looks like and is willing to adapt to their customers’ needs.
5) It’s thinking about a problem or a customer need in a way you’ve never heard before, but which makes perfect sense once you hear it."
What would I have given to have known that as a kid! There's a lifetime of wisdom scrunched down into those five bullet points there — and several more in the rest of the book. Really you'll want to read it for the stories of both epic triumph and epic failure, sometimes happening at the same time. Fadell tells the tales of brilliance and fallibility, the geniuses you may have never heard of, and how the success of no venture, no matter how innovative and well-planned, is ever foreordained.
I won't give away too much so you can fully experience the joy of discovering this book on your own. This is obviously required reading if you're a budding entrepreneur. But if you're at all interested in leadership, innovation, management, resilience, or just the origins of miraculous gizmos, you need to read this book. It's about as close as you're going to get to living inside the head of one of our modern-day entrepreneurial legends.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer, startup coach and author of The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible, the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine
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Popular Highlights in this book
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.Highlighted by 2,078 Kindle readers- “I can’t make you the smartest or the brightest, but it’s doable to be the most knowledgeable. It’s possible to gather more information than somebody else.”Highlighted by 1,878 Kindle readers
- Adulthood is your opportunity to screw up continually until you learn how to screw up a little bit less.Highlighted by 1,735 Kindle readers
From the Publisher
About the author
An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making: I’m Not A Builder/Maker And I LOVE This Book
So - as the title suggests I am neither a builder nor a maker… of electrons or atoms. What I am is a 55 year old self-professed geek who has lived through the technology revolution. I went to a video arcade as a kid. I had a TRS-80, a Kaypro computer, a Channel F gaming console and (of course) every iPod, iPhone, iPad… just keep it coming. I LOVE technology. What fascinated me about this book is that it is not just about creating the next great thing and trying to disrupt the world. It teaches us about things like inspiration and drive and setting goals and thinking clearer… As the aforementioned geek I have to admit that I LOVE knowing the history of some of the most disruptive devices in our near history… I had a Sony Walkman… world changed with the iPod. I had a Motorola Q - which was so killer… then came Apple and Steve Jobs and (of course) Tony Fadell with the iPhone. As an early adopter of course I got one… Life changed. This book is so insightful. It encourages all of us to follow what guides us. Whether it’s an MP3 player or a phone or a thermostat. Fantastic book. Cannot praise it enough.
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- Pankaj mishraReviewed in India on September 26, 2023
Good book but only focus on building teams
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