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Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making
Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.
So that's what this book is. An advice encyclopedia. A mentor in a box.
Written for anyone who wants to grow at work - from young grads navigating their first jobs to CEOs deciding whether to sell their companies - Build is full of personal stories, practical advice and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.
Each quick 5-20 page entry builds on the previous one, charting Tony's personal journey from a product designer to a leader, from a startup founder to an executive to a mentor. Tony uses examples that are instantly captivating, like the process of building the very first iPod and iPhone. Every chapter is designed to help readers with a problem they're facing right now - how to get funding for their startup, whether to quit their job or not, or just how to deal with the jerk in the next cubicle.
Tony forged his path to success alongside mentors like Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell, icons of Silicon Valley who succeeded time and time again. But Tony doesn't follow the Silicon Valley credo that you have to reinvent everything from scratch to make something great. His advice is unorthodox because it's old school. Because Tony's learned that human nature doesn't change.
You don't have to reinvent how you lead and manage - just what you make. And Tony's ready to help everyone make things worth making.
So that's what this book is. An advice encyclopedia. A mentor in a box.
Written for anyone who wants to grow at work - from young grads navigating their first jobs to CEOs deciding whether to sell their companies - Build is full of personal stories, practical advice and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.
Each quick 5-20 page entry builds on the previous one, charting Tony's personal journey from a product designer to a leader, from a startup founder to an executive to a mentor. Tony uses examples that are instantly captivating, like the process of building the very first iPod and iPhone. Every chapter is designed to help readers with a problem they're facing right now - how to get funding for their startup, whether to quit their job or not, or just how to deal with the jerk in the next cubicle.
Tony forged his path to success alongside mentors like Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell, icons of Silicon Valley who succeeded time and time again. But Tony doesn't follow the Silicon Valley credo that you have to reinvent everything from scratch to make something great. His advice is unorthodox because it's old school. Because Tony's learned that human nature doesn't change.
You don't have to reinvent how you lead and manage - just what you make. And Tony's ready to help everyone make things worth making.
416 pages, Hardcover
Published May 3, 2022
About the author
Tony Fadell
4 books104 followersAnthony Michael Fadell is an American engineer, designer, entrepreneur, and investor. He was senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple Inc. and founder and former CEO of Nest Labs.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 620 reviews
May 17, 2022
I was curious about how this book would play out. Given Tony's role at Apple during the time of Jobs and how much of that culture was toxic bordering on abusive I was a little curious about what he had to tell the world about leadership. It also felt a little odd for someone who was pretty well known in the industry for being a shitty boss to try and wash his reputation with a leadership book. If you want more details on the toxic environments he fostered, read some reviews of how he ran Nest.
I couldn't make it out of the first chapter. This starts as a lot of Gen X hagiography about work culture. The opening paragraphs on what school can and can't teach you are rote, and you can get this sort of old world leadership clap trap written better in other books. He comes off as a dinosaur of Gen X startup culture. The sort of person who ignores every lucky break and privilege they've enjoyed and talks solely about bootstraps and being self made .
Maybe he pulled the book out of the nose dive, but when he started in on the "show up early, work late, work over weekends & holidays and don't expect a vacation" I was done. The world needs fewer people who act and treat people like Steve Jobs did. It's an mp3 player, you didn't cure cancer.
This book will likely appeal to a certain sort of white male. Its' almost destined to be a feedback loop for the sorts of people who believe in #hustle & #grind culture. If you're one of those people there are better books for you. There are better books to pound your chest to than this guy who bullied subordinates constantly and treated people so horribly it should disqualify him from writing a book about it
I couldn't make it out of the first chapter. This starts as a lot of Gen X hagiography about work culture. The opening paragraphs on what school can and can't teach you are rote, and you can get this sort of old world leadership clap trap written better in other books. He comes off as a dinosaur of Gen X startup culture. The sort of person who ignores every lucky break and privilege they've enjoyed and talks solely about bootstraps and being self made .
Maybe he pulled the book out of the nose dive, but when he started in on the "show up early, work late, work over weekends & holidays and don't expect a vacation" I was done. The world needs fewer people who act and treat people like Steve Jobs did. It's an mp3 player, you didn't cure cancer.
This book will likely appeal to a certain sort of white male. Its' almost destined to be a feedback loop for the sorts of people who believe in #hustle & #grind culture. If you're one of those people there are better books for you. There are better books to pound your chest to than this guy who bullied subordinates constantly and treated people so horribly it should disqualify him from writing a book about it
June 2, 2022
Meh. For building products, no really big insights for me. And not sure what's supposedly "unorthodox", since overall Fadell's learnings are solid but similar to those in many other Lean Startup / Design Thinking books. Mainly interesting as a memoir - nice look behind the curtains at Apple, Nest and Google.
May 6, 2022
This book left me energized and inspired, which is the best possible outcome from a nonfiction business book.
Tony played a prominent role in creating the iPod and iPhone, then launched Nest. The critical and commercial success of his creations give him a lot of credibility.
This book is his attempt to share his hard-earned knowledge about building new things with the world. This is what worked for Tony. These are the practices that helped him create billions of dollars in company and personal wealth.
It's opinionated. This isn't a research-based book, it's an experience-based book. And that's okay.
As I've gotten older, I've realized that there are always several ways to do things. As I read the book I pulled out the nuggets that resonated with my lived experience and ignored the ones that didn't.
- Tony hates the term Product Owner? The companies transformed by SCRUM would disagree.
- Tony thinks people shouldn't go into management consulting? I disagree. It was an amazing way to spend the first decade of my career. I've watched the Steve Jobs fruit video. I had amazing breath and depth exposure while also building long-term practices, offerings, and teams.
- Tony hates Google. I work there now, and many of his observations are right (Memegen is ridiculous, people are entitled, TGIF isn't a great use of time, etc.). But despite it's flaws, it's better than what I've observed spending time with 30+ other companies as a consultant.
There's some great wisdom in this book. Take what you find useful and what you believe. Go and build!
Tony played a prominent role in creating the iPod and iPhone, then launched Nest. The critical and commercial success of his creations give him a lot of credibility.
This book is his attempt to share his hard-earned knowledge about building new things with the world. This is what worked for Tony. These are the practices that helped him create billions of dollars in company and personal wealth.
It's opinionated. This isn't a research-based book, it's an experience-based book. And that's okay.
As I've gotten older, I've realized that there are always several ways to do things. As I read the book I pulled out the nuggets that resonated with my lived experience and ignored the ones that didn't.
- Tony hates the term Product Owner? The companies transformed by SCRUM would disagree.
- Tony thinks people shouldn't go into management consulting? I disagree. It was an amazing way to spend the first decade of my career. I've watched the Steve Jobs fruit video. I had amazing breath and depth exposure while also building long-term practices, offerings, and teams.
- Tony hates Google. I work there now, and many of his observations are right (Memegen is ridiculous, people are entitled, TGIF isn't a great use of time, etc.). But despite it's flaws, it's better than what I've observed spending time with 30+ other companies as a consultant.
There's some great wisdom in this book. Take what you find useful and what you believe. Go and build!
October 14, 2022
I enjoyed this memoir and how-to guide, mostly because of the author's distinctive voice: 11 index entries for "assholes"! I'm far from his intended audience: I'm a retired guy, and I've never had any real interest in starting a company. But it's a fun book, and I just skimmed over the bits that were of no interest to me. Start with the publisher's preview above, which is unusually good. Then move on to the WSJ's review, which is first rate. It's paywalled, but I would be happy to email a copy to non-subscribers. For me this was a 3.5 star book.
Here's the WSJ review that led me to read the book: https://www.wsj.com/articles/build-bo...
Excerpt:
"Tony Fadell, the author of more than 300 patents . . . His credits include the Apple iPod, the Apple iPhone and the Nest Learning Thermostat. In [his book] Mr. Fadell, who is now mentoring the next generation of startups at his Paris firm Future Shape, recounts his life in the idea maze.
“Build,” which is less a memoir than an “advice encyclopedia,” imparts nuggets of wisdom in six sections: Build Yourself, Your Career, Your Product, Your Business, Your Team—and Be CEO. An engineer’s engineer, Mr. Fadell presents a series of bullet-pointed chapters, numbered like a software product for easy cross-referencing (e.g., Chapter 5.4: “A Method to the Marketing”). Each chapter is eminently digestible on its own but also works as part of the overall narrative. Mr. Fadell details problems encountered over the course of his 30-year career, how he tried to solve them, what he did when his initial ideas failed, and what ultimately worked."
Here's the WSJ review that led me to read the book: https://www.wsj.com/articles/build-bo...
Excerpt:
"Tony Fadell, the author of more than 300 patents . . . His credits include the Apple iPod, the Apple iPhone and the Nest Learning Thermostat. In [his book] Mr. Fadell, who is now mentoring the next generation of startups at his Paris firm Future Shape, recounts his life in the idea maze.
“Build,” which is less a memoir than an “advice encyclopedia,” imparts nuggets of wisdom in six sections: Build Yourself, Your Career, Your Product, Your Business, Your Team—and Be CEO. An engineer’s engineer, Mr. Fadell presents a series of bullet-pointed chapters, numbered like a software product for easy cross-referencing (e.g., Chapter 5.4: “A Method to the Marketing”). Each chapter is eminently digestible on its own but also works as part of the overall narrative. Mr. Fadell details problems encountered over the course of his 30-year career, how he tried to solve them, what he did when his initial ideas failed, and what ultimately worked."
May 9, 2022
This book will probably make me quit my job.
July 1, 2022
Common sense, not worth reading.
May 18, 2022
First time ever, I was sad…
Yes, probably this is the first time that I felt sad when the book ended. And to remind myself, this is a non-fiction! A total of 396 pages of absolute pleasure. When I started reading the book, a lot of Tony’s stories felt little cold, data driven, objective, and to a significant degree prescriptive. But, as I kept myself pushing through them, a different fabric unfolded. The same recommendations started resonating like stories of hard fought battles where the protagonist kept marching through uncertainties in the uncharted territories of new product development, go to market strategies, organizational growth, breakpoints, employee relationships, culture development, and eventually converging into a larger than life acquisition and all good and evils associated with it. If you are a founder/builder yourself (to some degree), you will undoubtedly experience this read as a VR experience! The author adequately drives you through the nuances of new tech venture development with an incredible storytelling capacity that only resembles a movie (Tony, how about a movie for the next one? -:)
I would like to break the book in two parts. The first half is more tactical with operational tidbits and techniques to handle the process of starting something new or escalating something small to a grand scale. This half intricately narrates different technicalities about how to germinate a small idea and then drive it to something that will be adopted by millions - almost like a cookbook. The second half, the one that I like the most, explores the finer expressions of the human aspect of entrepreneurship. For a builder, these attributes of human relationships that involve continuous exchange of ideas, personalities, aspirations, incentives, and pure dreams make this book more valuable. And this is where it converts into one of a kind personal development guide but with empathy. Here, you will come to know the human side of the author, and the representative of many of us, builders.
My biggest take away from this book is – “You don’t have to be an expert in everything. You just have to care about it.” We only grow from any pursuit only when we care about it, whether it’s work or relationship.
Yes, probably this is the first time that I felt sad when the book ended. And to remind myself, this is a non-fiction! A total of 396 pages of absolute pleasure. When I started reading the book, a lot of Tony’s stories felt little cold, data driven, objective, and to a significant degree prescriptive. But, as I kept myself pushing through them, a different fabric unfolded. The same recommendations started resonating like stories of hard fought battles where the protagonist kept marching through uncertainties in the uncharted territories of new product development, go to market strategies, organizational growth, breakpoints, employee relationships, culture development, and eventually converging into a larger than life acquisition and all good and evils associated with it. If you are a founder/builder yourself (to some degree), you will undoubtedly experience this read as a VR experience! The author adequately drives you through the nuances of new tech venture development with an incredible storytelling capacity that only resembles a movie (Tony, how about a movie for the next one? -:)
I would like to break the book in two parts. The first half is more tactical with operational tidbits and techniques to handle the process of starting something new or escalating something small to a grand scale. This half intricately narrates different technicalities about how to germinate a small idea and then drive it to something that will be adopted by millions - almost like a cookbook. The second half, the one that I like the most, explores the finer expressions of the human aspect of entrepreneurship. For a builder, these attributes of human relationships that involve continuous exchange of ideas, personalities, aspirations, incentives, and pure dreams make this book more valuable. And this is where it converts into one of a kind personal development guide but with empathy. Here, you will come to know the human side of the author, and the representative of many of us, builders.
My biggest take away from this book is – “You don’t have to be an expert in everything. You just have to care about it.” We only grow from any pursuit only when we care about it, whether it’s work or relationship.
May 26, 2022
This book will only be good for a very specific group of people. Outdated advice. Lots of BS.
September 25, 2022
Master's Advice, with a Whiff of Ass
Assholes: These are mostly men and sometimes women who come in some flavor of selfish, or deceitful, or cruel.
Tony Fadell may be the worlds most successful builder for world-changing products. I would argue he surpasses both Musk and Jobs, since Fadell was primary driver behind not only the iPod and iPhone, but also showing he could do it independently at Nest. Tony is also an asshole, and that coprolite scent unfortunately has diffused into the entire book.
Just as sewage backflow can ruin even the best meal, Fadell's crass and righteous arrogance spoils otherwise interesting stories.(1) Warning signs come in the introduction, where he tells his readers that The world is full of mediocre, middle of the road companies creating mediocre, middle of the road crap. But the first red flag was a chapter creating an entire nomenclature of assholes working in tech. If you meet with so many assholes that you need a categorization system, you might be the asshole.
It's hard to come off poorly in your own memoir, but Fadell succeeds. His business competitors are either dumb or vindictive, indeed anybody not working at a high paying tech job must be dumb or defective. He takes joy in creating enemies. That's right fuckers, we're coming for your lunch. He even manages to fail to understand the business model of both his former employer and many other companies [Their] goal is to sell user's data to big business. That's the story of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Instagram.
Much of the book is goldilocks advice: Listen to your lawers, but not too much. Empower your teams, but not too much. Too bad Tony preaches that If you want to start a company ... you have to be the mission driven asshole. It's a shame because I see good people who believe this turn into bad people. They don't pay their employees, they steal time and create broken families, they treat other humans in strict proportion to their ability to help the 'mission' of a startup. It might start with the workaholic gen-X Apple culture that Steve Jobs created and Fadell proseltyzes, but it ends with Theranos and the excesses of Uber.
In sum, taking this book's advice might make you a better hardware PM, but it'll also make you a worse person.
**
(1) Even at a dining establishment with a sewage problem, sometimes the wind shifts just right and you get good bites - some quotes I found helpful:
* The value of startups is simply Another lesson learned via gutpunch
* Manager Advice: If you are doing what you loved in your old job, then you're probably doing the wrong thing. You're doing the job that you used to be good at, so you should be spending about 85% of your time managing.
*Breakpoints - company breakpoints come at 18, 40.
*No project should last longer than 18 months. After that point the project is either infinite in time, or the company priorities will have changed too much for the project to continue.
97th book of 2022; 1.5 Stars
Assholes: These are mostly men and sometimes women who come in some flavor of selfish, or deceitful, or cruel.
Tony Fadell may be the worlds most successful builder for world-changing products. I would argue he surpasses both Musk and Jobs, since Fadell was primary driver behind not only the iPod and iPhone, but also showing he could do it independently at Nest. Tony is also an asshole, and that coprolite scent unfortunately has diffused into the entire book.
Just as sewage backflow can ruin even the best meal, Fadell's crass and righteous arrogance spoils otherwise interesting stories.(1) Warning signs come in the introduction, where he tells his readers that The world is full of mediocre, middle of the road companies creating mediocre, middle of the road crap. But the first red flag was a chapter creating an entire nomenclature of assholes working in tech. If you meet with so many assholes that you need a categorization system, you might be the asshole.
It's hard to come off poorly in your own memoir, but Fadell succeeds. His business competitors are either dumb or vindictive, indeed anybody not working at a high paying tech job must be dumb or defective. He takes joy in creating enemies. That's right fuckers, we're coming for your lunch. He even manages to fail to understand the business model of both his former employer and many other companies [Their] goal is to sell user's data to big business. That's the story of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Instagram.
Much of the book is goldilocks advice: Listen to your lawers, but not too much. Empower your teams, but not too much. Too bad Tony preaches that If you want to start a company ... you have to be the mission driven asshole. It's a shame because I see good people who believe this turn into bad people. They don't pay their employees, they steal time and create broken families, they treat other humans in strict proportion to their ability to help the 'mission' of a startup. It might start with the workaholic gen-X Apple culture that Steve Jobs created and Fadell proseltyzes, but it ends with Theranos and the excesses of Uber.
In sum, taking this book's advice might make you a better hardware PM, but it'll also make you a worse person.
**
(1) Even at a dining establishment with a sewage problem, sometimes the wind shifts just right and you get good bites - some quotes I found helpful:
* The value of startups is simply Another lesson learned via gutpunch
* Manager Advice: If you are doing what you loved in your old job, then you're probably doing the wrong thing. You're doing the job that you used to be good at, so you should be spending about 85% of your time managing.
*Breakpoints - company breakpoints come at 18, 40.
*No project should last longer than 18 months. After that point the project is either infinite in time, or the company priorities will have changed too much for the project to continue.
97th book of 2022; 1.5 Stars
May 23, 2022
An interesting memoir-cum-how-to-do-product book. Fadell uses the opportunity to tell an (often hagiographic) autobiography with advice for starting a product-based company and managing it through to something that'll last forever or get sold. He's very UX-focused in his recommendations and a lot of the frameworks he promotes are rooted in standard thinking - personas, journeys etc. All of it is fairly high-level so as a general intro into these concepts it's pretty good but won't be of significant help to a practitioner except perhaps to help shift mindset.
Where he's most interesting is where he's telling juicy anecdotes about his times at Philips, Apple, Nest and (through the acquisition) of Nest. Astoundingly, he mentions Jony Ive only once in passing. I hadn't realised there was bad blood but it's clear what Fadell thinks of Jony Ive's contributions to eg the iPod or the iPhone and some of his points about team design etc feel laced with some measure of venom.
It's also fairly padded and every so often can repeat itself as he hammers home points about design-thinking and a-holes in business.
Where he's most interesting is where he's telling juicy anecdotes about his times at Philips, Apple, Nest and (through the acquisition) of Nest. Astoundingly, he mentions Jony Ive only once in passing. I hadn't realised there was bad blood but it's clear what Fadell thinks of Jony Ive's contributions to eg the iPod or the iPhone and some of his points about team design etc feel laced with some measure of venom.
It's also fairly padded and every so often can repeat itself as he hammers home points about design-thinking and a-holes in business.
December 13, 2022
If I had to describe this book in one word it would be "tired". Here comes another exec who's now got some time on their hands and decides to write a book about their career and try to translate the very specific things they did into universal learnings post-hoc.
Unlike some other negative reviews on here, I'm not bothered that he doesn't acknowledge how luck or privilege has played a part in his career, that's not what the book is about.
I also don't have any problem with the message of hard work, and have no doubt that Fadell busted his ass day in day out.
I don't even care too much about how his real life management approach (which may or may not involve bullying) compares to the teachings in the book: the best teachers are rarely the best practitioners.
The problem that I do have with this book is that it smells of bullshit the moment you start reading it.
The chapters are just romanticised retellings of various events in Fadell's career, followed by learnings that we are supposed to take away from them. However, these "learnings" seem, at least to me, painfully obviously contrived after writing the rest of the chapter with the hope of giving the whole story an air of wisdom and serendipity that it fundamentally lacks.
Two thoughts kept coming up in my mind throughout this book:
1. Just because you're successful by some metric doesn't mean you have anything new to say about success
2. If you want to write an autobiography, don't dress it up as a business book.
Unlike some other negative reviews on here, I'm not bothered that he doesn't acknowledge how luck or privilege has played a part in his career, that's not what the book is about.
I also don't have any problem with the message of hard work, and have no doubt that Fadell busted his ass day in day out.
I don't even care too much about how his real life management approach (which may or may not involve bullying) compares to the teachings in the book: the best teachers are rarely the best practitioners.
The problem that I do have with this book is that it smells of bullshit the moment you start reading it.
The chapters are just romanticised retellings of various events in Fadell's career, followed by learnings that we are supposed to take away from them. However, these "learnings" seem, at least to me, painfully obviously contrived after writing the rest of the chapter with the hope of giving the whole story an air of wisdom and serendipity that it fundamentally lacks.
Two thoughts kept coming up in my mind throughout this book:
1. Just because you're successful by some metric doesn't mean you have anything new to say about success
2. If you want to write an autobiography, don't dress it up as a business book.
August 14, 2022
t e c h
October 9, 2022
Tony Fadell na początku lat 90 próbował stworzyć smartfona. Czyli kilkanaście lat przed tym zanim zrobił to Apple. Pod koniec lat 90 próbował "mikrokomputery" w Philipsie. Potem dołączył do Apple gdzie był liderem zespołów odpowiedzialnych za stworzenie... iPoda i iPhone'a.
Kilka lat po tym jak dołożył swoją cegiełkę do rewolucji jaką wywołały iPod i iPhone, zabrał się za kolejną - stworzył firmę Nest, która pomogła zacząć trend Smart Home. Tę firmę potem kupił Google.
Tony Fadell w swojej książce o tym wszystkim opowiada. Jednocześnie na przykładzie tych doświadczeń daje wskazówki o różnych rzeczach na które można trafić w swojej karierze:
- rozwijanie umiejętności,
- szukanie pracy,
- budowanie produktów,
- budowanie firmy,
- zatrudnianie pracowników,
- bycie prezesem,
- praca z radą nadzorczą.
I inne przeróżne rzeczy na które można trafić na różnych etapach swojej kariery.
Dla mnie najciekawsze były te fragmenty, w których opowiadał co się działo po tym Nest zostało kupione przez Google. Szczególnie polecam tym, którzy lubią mówić "powinniśmy robić XYZ, bo w Google tak robią".
Kilka lat po tym jak dołożył swoją cegiełkę do rewolucji jaką wywołały iPod i iPhone, zabrał się za kolejną - stworzył firmę Nest, która pomogła zacząć trend Smart Home. Tę firmę potem kupił Google.
Tony Fadell w swojej książce o tym wszystkim opowiada. Jednocześnie na przykładzie tych doświadczeń daje wskazówki o różnych rzeczach na które można trafić w swojej karierze:
- rozwijanie umiejętności,
- szukanie pracy,
- budowanie produktów,
- budowanie firmy,
- zatrudnianie pracowników,
- bycie prezesem,
- praca z radą nadzorczą.
I inne przeróżne rzeczy na które można trafić na różnych etapach swojej kariery.
Dla mnie najciekawsze były te fragmenty, w których opowiadał co się działo po tym Nest zostało kupione przez Google. Szczególnie polecam tym, którzy lubią mówić "powinniśmy robić XYZ, bo w Google tak robią".
February 19, 2023
AMAZING! Please do yourselves a favour and read this book…it has something for everyone who is part of the working population! Also…it’s super entertaining!
Tony Fadell has pulled together learnings and anecdotes from across his roller-coaster-ish successful career (Apple, Nest, Philips, Google…not in that order) and condensed it into this gem with the help of his Co-writer - Dina Lovinsky (who definitely deserves a mention…because some of the sentences and turns of phrases are as beautiful as those that one might find in a work of fiction!)
“Build” is intended to be a mentor / guide to people across all stages of their career. It’s also one of the very few books which I feel can truly be opened and read from any chapter, without losing context! I’d just recommend that you familiarise yourself with Tony Fadell’s career timeline in the introduction chapter first before you dive in!
I foresee myself revisiting “Build…” in the future and recommending / gifting it to those around me! This book was originally gifted to me, and I am so glad that it was, because I’d probably never have picked it up myself! :)
Tony Fadell has pulled together learnings and anecdotes from across his roller-coaster-ish successful career (Apple, Nest, Philips, Google…not in that order) and condensed it into this gem with the help of his Co-writer - Dina Lovinsky (who definitely deserves a mention…because some of the sentences and turns of phrases are as beautiful as those that one might find in a work of fiction!)
“Build” is intended to be a mentor / guide to people across all stages of their career. It’s also one of the very few books which I feel can truly be opened and read from any chapter, without losing context! I’d just recommend that you familiarise yourself with Tony Fadell’s career timeline in the introduction chapter first before you dive in!
I foresee myself revisiting “Build…” in the future and recommending / gifting it to those around me! This book was originally gifted to me, and I am so glad that it was, because I’d probably never have picked it up myself! :)
January 17, 2024
I nearly slipped this after reading the top voted review in Goodreads, but I'm so glad I didn't. The review was so misrepresentative of the advice Tony Fadell is giving.
I loved this book! It's broken up into small chapters and sections that can be read in any order, and referenced later - the sections are numbered and named in a way that makes them easily referenced and found later. The author gives a good overview of how to make use of the book, and that the book itself is like having a mentor or coach on hand to dispel wisdom on a variety of topics as you navigate your career from Student to CEO.
I'm not sure how applicable the advice and anecdotes are to those outside of the "tech" industry, but I think there are at least one or two great lessons for everyone in this book.
I loved this book! It's broken up into small chapters and sections that can be read in any order, and referenced later - the sections are numbered and named in a way that makes them easily referenced and found later. The author gives a good overview of how to make use of the book, and that the book itself is like having a mentor or coach on hand to dispel wisdom on a variety of topics as you navigate your career from Student to CEO.
I'm not sure how applicable the advice and anecdotes are to those outside of the "tech" industry, but I think there are at least one or two great lessons for everyone in this book.
July 31, 2023
A solid 3+ star read. It covers a lot of ground but never dives too deep. Part autobiography, part start-up advice, part general professional life advice - a gentle snorkel through reefs of these topics. Very easy to listen to on Audible.
What I enjoyed the most is the candour of the delivery. The best examples are in chapters: "Assholes" and "F*ck Massages". The chapter "Why Storytelling" was also great!
I feel this book will benefit most a reader early in their career. If this is you, I would also recommend:
- The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha
- Mastery; and
- Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier
If you prefer more perspectives on building product or a company, I would recommend:
- Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
- Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future
And for biographical perspectives:
- Steve Jobs
- The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- Elon Musk: Inventing the Future
What I enjoyed the most is the candour of the delivery. The best examples are in chapters: "Assholes" and "F*ck Massages". The chapter "Why Storytelling" was also great!
I feel this book will benefit most a reader early in their career. If this is you, I would also recommend:
- The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. Reid Hoffman, Ben Casnocha
- Mastery; and
- Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier
If you prefer more perspectives on building product or a company, I would recommend:
- Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
- Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future
And for biographical perspectives:
- Steve Jobs
- The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- Elon Musk: Inventing the Future
April 16, 2023
چقدر کتاب خوبی بود
کتاب هایی که تجربه زیسته آدم ها رو میگن همیشه تجربه خوبی رو رقم میزنن
کتاب هایی که تجربه زیسته آدم ها رو میگن همیشه تجربه خوبی رو رقم میزنن
August 17, 2022
If you need one book to help you start a company, all the way from a start up to a mature company and then to sell it, this is it. Fadell built the successful iPod, iPhone and Nest. But he started with a failed product called General Magic. He gave tons of useful advice about all the aspects of Building something useful and worthwhile. Some gems I remember:
1. Go work for someone else first and gain experience. Most successful entrepreneurs are in their late 30s.
2. The best products relieve the pain points of every day life. His Nest allowed users to control their thermostat at home, work as fire alarms which can be switched off from the phone, and ushered in the age of the Smart Home.
3. When building a new product, follow your gut. For versions 2 onwards, look at the data.
4. Be very careful who you take your money from. It’s like marriage so don’t rush into the first interested party.
5. Talk to people for advice always
6. Get the CEO to support your project.
7. Get a specialist legal advisor as a generalist will just refer everything out. Get an in house one.
8. Hiring: get a few people who are going to work with the new hire to decide.
9. When growing the company, prepare the team, promote individual contributors to become team leads etc.
10. It’s lonely at the top as CEO. Get a mentor.
11. Even when merging with the best company (e.g. Google), things may not work out and culture shock is evident.
12. Be prepared to walk when you no longer feel competent or excited about leading.
13. Dealing with difficult bosses: try to please them, reason with them, then walk.
There are lots of good advice. So just read it.
1. Go work for someone else first and gain experience. Most successful entrepreneurs are in their late 30s.
2. The best products relieve the pain points of every day life. His Nest allowed users to control their thermostat at home, work as fire alarms which can be switched off from the phone, and ushered in the age of the Smart Home.
3. When building a new product, follow your gut. For versions 2 onwards, look at the data.
4. Be very careful who you take your money from. It’s like marriage so don’t rush into the first interested party.
5. Talk to people for advice always
6. Get the CEO to support your project.
7. Get a specialist legal advisor as a generalist will just refer everything out. Get an in house one.
8. Hiring: get a few people who are going to work with the new hire to decide.
9. When growing the company, prepare the team, promote individual contributors to become team leads etc.
10. It’s lonely at the top as CEO. Get a mentor.
11. Even when merging with the best company (e.g. Google), things may not work out and culture shock is evident.
12. Be prepared to walk when you no longer feel competent or excited about leading.
13. Dealing with difficult bosses: try to please them, reason with them, then walk.
There are lots of good advice. So just read it.
December 23, 2023
If you want to learn startup thinking, Tony Fadell is one of the best people to learn from. Not only are his stories quite illuminating, from building the iPod to the iPhone to General Magic to Nest, but he’s also a great teacher, and good at taking his many many life lessons and generalizing them in an intelligent way and seeing how they fit into the bigger picture and how they can be made useful to the reader.
This book is at once an autobiography and a reference material of different topics for learning how to think like a startup founder and how to navigate through various situations: whether you’re trying to start up a new thing inside an existing company or you’re starting your own company from scratch or you’re trying to figure out how to scale your product/business up in each successive phase of its development, it’s all here. It’s just one man’s experience but it’s really insightful.
It’s longer than other startup books because it’s more comprehensive, so to anyone interested in this world I recommend starting with different books depending on who you are. This book is longer and narrative, Zero to One is of short-ish-to-moderate length but really excellent for laying the foundation of why startup thinking is so different from typical product design, and I also always recommend Start With Why, which is very short, supremely important to understanding how the world works in general, and will excite your visionary drive that we all have inside us.
Other excellent books about building new products include Hooked and The Mom Test. I have a whole shelf labeled “startups” for more.
This book is at once an autobiography and a reference material of different topics for learning how to think like a startup founder and how to navigate through various situations: whether you’re trying to start up a new thing inside an existing company or you’re starting your own company from scratch or you’re trying to figure out how to scale your product/business up in each successive phase of its development, it’s all here. It’s just one man’s experience but it’s really insightful.
It’s longer than other startup books because it’s more comprehensive, so to anyone interested in this world I recommend starting with different books depending on who you are. This book is longer and narrative, Zero to One is of short-ish-to-moderate length but really excellent for laying the foundation of why startup thinking is so different from typical product design, and I also always recommend Start With Why, which is very short, supremely important to understanding how the world works in general, and will excite your visionary drive that we all have inside us.
Other excellent books about building new products include Hooked and The Mom Test. I have a whole shelf labeled “startups” for more.
November 6, 2022
In Build, Tony Fadell, who led the team that made the iPod and the iPhone and then founded the Nest thermostat company, uses his personal experiences in business and startups to provide an encyclopedia of best practices to manage a career and found and lead a business. Because of his own successful career, Fadell has a lot of credibility to provide this guidance, and the products he managed are themselves interesting and significant. Although I expect a certain level of arrogance in writing by someone this successful, Fadell strikes a pretty good balance of touting his successes and explaining his failures. What comes across consistently is his view that process and design and strategy are critical. He doesn't attribute success to genius insights and personal charisma. By sharing his thought processes he provides key insights into how to make a successful career or business. I was able to tie his stories to events I'd experienced and observed in my own career, and wish I'd had this book available to read before I started my career rather than having to learn the lessons in Build through experience alone.
August 30, 2022
There's nothing really ground-breaking in this book. Certainly nothing "Unorthodox". There's a ton of Americanisms and US work mentality: work as much as you can, sleep as little as you can, and when you dream - dream about work. Which are not the views I agree with. At all.
However, the book is interesting as a memoir - a look behind the curtains at General Magic, Philips, Apple, Nest, and Google. Especially the parts about iPod and iPhone development and extremely tight deadlines.
A nice overall view of what it means to be a founder, a CEO, and a leader in a successful or less successful startup.
However, the book is interesting as a memoir - a look behind the curtains at General Magic, Philips, Apple, Nest, and Google. Especially the parts about iPod and iPhone development and extremely tight deadlines.
A nice overall view of what it means to be a founder, a CEO, and a leader in a successful or less successful startup.
September 30, 2022
I love the products that Tony helped design. I really didn't love this book.
It tries to be a practical guide on how to build products, but it ends up being an experiment on how many feathers Tony can stick up his own butthole.
I guess the book is useful as a guide if you happen to walk the same career path as Tony did, which is of course not possible. So yeah, go read a different book.
It tries to be a practical guide on how to build products, but it ends up being an experiment on how many feathers Tony can stick up his own butthole.
I guess the book is useful as a guide if you happen to walk the same career path as Tony did, which is of course not possible. So yeah, go read a different book.
August 24, 2022
Should be mandatory reading for anyone building anything.
April 14, 2023
проскролила за один день, є декілька вартих уваги речень, але вони всі засипані нарцисичними історіями.
March 29, 2024
Confesso uma certa desilusão com o livro "Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making" (2022) dadas as expectativas. Tony Fadell foi responsável por conceptualizar a fisicalidade do iPod e do iPhone. A interface circular foi invenção sua, e a interface touch do iPhone surgiu a partir de uma melhoria de um conceito antigo, o Pocket Crystal (1989), em que tinha estado envolvido na General Magic. Talvez o melhor de tudo seja mesmo o seu relato sobre a General Magic, mas tudo o que ele aqui diz pode ser encontrado no muito mais interessante documentário de 2018. De resto, Fadell entrega muito pouco ou nada, além dos conhecidos chavões de seguir a paixão, de trabalhar arduamente para conseguir emergir da multidão, esquecendo uma quantidade de outras variáveis que garantem o sucesso de uns em detrimento de outros.
Aliás, nesse sentido esperava maior transparência sobre o que foi invenção de Fadell, de Yve e Jobs. Pois, lendo este livro, no meio dos outros sobre cada um deles, todos os três se apresentam como inventores de tudo, mas no final, nem o antigo Macintosh, nem o iPod ou iPhone teriam existido sem equipas imensamente alargadas de pessoas a pensar, a conceber, a prototipar, a implementar e a produzir. Neste sentido, pouco ou nada é dito sobre o trabalho de Yve, assim como de Jobs, passando a ideia de que sem Fadell nada disto existiria. É um livro de memórias, ou melhor um longo discurso do tipo podcast, desenhado para criar uma impressão idílica de quem foi Fadell, e pouco mais.
Texto com links no Narrativa X
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...
Aliás, nesse sentido esperava maior transparência sobre o que foi invenção de Fadell, de Yve e Jobs. Pois, lendo este livro, no meio dos outros sobre cada um deles, todos os três se apresentam como inventores de tudo, mas no final, nem o antigo Macintosh, nem o iPod ou iPhone teriam existido sem equipas imensamente alargadas de pessoas a pensar, a conceber, a prototipar, a implementar e a produzir. Neste sentido, pouco ou nada é dito sobre o trabalho de Yve, assim como de Jobs, passando a ideia de que sem Fadell nada disto existiria. É um livro de memórias, ou melhor um longo discurso do tipo podcast, desenhado para criar uma impressão idílica de quem foi Fadell, e pouco mais.
Texto com links no Narrativa X
https://narrativax.blogspot.com/2024/...
March 21, 2023
This was an amazing book for those who have interests in such topics.
Many anecdotes from his days at Apple and before that in his first company, additionally his story with founding of Nest Thermostats and later selling it to Google.
Each chapter title is a lesson, each lesson he puts in bullet points, then emphasize it with a story or 2.
Anyone who have read Steve Jobs would remember the genious Tony Fadell.
Also, I was surprised to see Bill Campbell mentioned here. You can read more about Bill Campbell on Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
I really enjoyed this book, I always admired Tony Fadell, I always wanted to know more about him.
I wouldn't have known about this book if not for a discount sale in Audible. I would have missed a gem.
Many anecdotes from his days at Apple and before that in his first company, additionally his story with founding of Nest Thermostats and later selling it to Google.
Each chapter title is a lesson, each lesson he puts in bullet points, then emphasize it with a story or 2.
Anyone who have read Steve Jobs would remember the genious Tony Fadell.
Also, I was surprised to see Bill Campbell mentioned here. You can read more about Bill Campbell on Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
I really enjoyed this book, I always admired Tony Fadell, I always wanted to know more about him.
I wouldn't have known about this book if not for a discount sale in Audible. I would have missed a gem.
November 18, 2022
Between 4 and 5 stars. This books is pretty good at:
* covering history behind ipods & iphone and that period of Apple
* biography of building nest company
* laying out key aspects of product design
* mapping out how to build career in IT: starting from junior dev ending on being CEO or having chair at a board of directors.
I wish I read something like this when I was starting as a software developer. The books has a lot of common sense advice, inspiring ideas and in general fun to read/listen to. I'll be recommending this book to junior folks around me.
* covering history behind ipods & iphone and that period of Apple
* biography of building nest company
* laying out key aspects of product design
* mapping out how to build career in IT: starting from junior dev ending on being CEO or having chair at a board of directors.
I wish I read something like this when I was starting as a software developer. The books has a lot of common sense advice, inspiring ideas and in general fun to read/listen to. I'll be recommending this book to junior folks around me.
May 29, 2023
"Build" resonates as a refreshing and insightful guide to building a successful company. Personally, I found the author's approach to product development and the emphasis on a mission-driven organization truly captivating. Through engaging personal stories, the book provides practical advice that speaks directly to the challenges we face in our professional lives. I appreciated the author's unorthodox yet effective perspective, highlighting the value of learning from industry icons.
August 27, 2022
The best business book I have read so far.
January 14, 2023
Great book. I learned a lot
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