Tony Fadell: iPhone, iPod, and Nest - Lex Fridman 知识图谱

Lex Fridman (01:22.800)

I first fell in love with computers and programming.

Tony Fadell (01:28.880)

Was it a summer school class in fifth grade

Lex Fridman (01:33.880)

in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan?

Tony Fadell (01:37.520)

It was a simple basic programming class,

Lex Fridman (01:39.960)

but the basic programming class

Tony Fadell (01:41.520)

was not like you might think it was.

Lex Fridman (01:44.080)

It was bubble cards.

Lex Fridman (01:45.480)

So literally it was the cards, the stack of cards,

Lex Fridman (01:50.280)

and you would use a number two pencil and you would put in

Tony Fadell (01:53.840)

your program line by line,

Lex Fridman (01:55.320)

and you'd have to make sure it was perfectly stacked

Lex Fridman (01:57.280)

and no errors and what have you.

Lex Fridman (01:58.760)

And you would take that set of cards

Lex Fridman (02:00.320)

and you'd put it on this reader and it would zzzt, zzzt, zzzt.

Lex Fridman (02:03.280)

And it would go off to an IBM microcomputer

Tony Fadell (02:06.080)

somewhere in the, back then the cloud.

Lex Fridman (02:09.080)

And then you would sit on a Texas Instruments paper terminal.

Lex Fridman (02:16.800)

And it would just, literally I was just,

Lex Fridman (02:19.200)

I could write things and it would,

Tony Fadell (02:21.160)

I could program this machine to do stuff.

Lex Fridman (02:23.000)

And it was, you know, it was nowhere near sexy.

Lex Fridman (02:25.200)

There was no graphics, right?

Lex Fridman (02:26.880)

Oregon Trail was all in text, right?

Tony Fadell (02:30.440)

The cards were so cumbersome that if you got one thing wrong

Lex Fridman (02:33.360)

or out of order, or a disaster, or you dropped one card,

Tony Fadell (02:37.240)

it would all fall apart.

Lex Fridman (02:38.800)

So just doing that, you know, print f,

Lex Fridman (02:42.520)

or what was it?

Lex Fridman (02:43.360)

I can only remember what it was.

Tony Fadell (02:44.760)

It was, you know, what the basic commands were, but.

Lex Fridman (02:48.240)

Oh, so when you say basic, you mean basic programming?

Tony Fadell (02:50.680)

Programming language.

Lex Fridman (02:51.680)

Okay.

Tony Fadell (02:52.520)

Basic programming.

Lex Fridman (02:53.360)

So you're writing basic programming language on paper.

Tony Fadell (02:57.440)

On paper.

Lex Fridman (02:58.520)

And you're calling it programming though.

Tony Fadell (03:00.040)

It's called programming.

Lex Fridman (03:01.160)

Yeah, you're programming this computer in, you know,

Tony Fadell (03:03.600)

in a remote location and it came back.

Lex Fridman (03:06.200)

So it was truly cloud computing in a way.

Lex Fridman (03:08.640)

So it was really terminal based computing.

Lex Fridman (03:11.280)

And the input and the program are separate.

Lex Fridman (03:14.040)

So the input to the program, or they could go together.

Lex Fridman (03:17.200)

Like, or there's no input to the program.

Tony Fadell (03:20.320)

It just runs and it gives you output.

Lex Fridman (03:22.280)

Yeah, it goes in and it says ready,

Lex Fridman (03:24.960)

and then you can say run, and then it would run.

Lex Fridman (03:27.680)

But to program it, you didn't type it

Tony Fadell (03:30.000)

because it was a printer terminal.

Lex Fridman (03:31.440)

You would make the stack of cards

Lex Fridman (03:32.760)

and that would get it into the computer's memory.

Lex Fridman (03:35.720)

Okay, so where was the magic?

Tony Fadell (03:37.920)

The magic was that you could create, you had a language

Lex Fridman (03:41.480)

and you could create what you wanted to create, right?

Tony Fadell (03:43.720)

You could create a world or what have you

Lex Fridman (03:46.040)

and have this interaction.

Lex Fridman (03:47.520)

And you could compute things, you could, you know,

Lex Fridman (03:50.080)

do numbers, you could, I was playing Oregon Trail, right?

Lex Fridman (03:53.960)

So you were less like.

Lex Fridman (03:54.800)

So you can play video games.

Tony Fadell (03:56.720)

Well, video.

Lex Fridman (03:58.040)

Right, without the video.

Tony Fadell (03:59.880)

You could play text games

Lex Fridman (04:01.200)

and then imagine them in your brain, right?

Tony Fadell (04:04.520)

Oregon Trail, there's this meme I saw recently.

Lex Fridman (04:08.080)

If you wanna feel bad about yourself as a programmer,

Tony Fadell (04:11.760)

realize that one person wrote Railroad Tycoon.

Lex Fridman (04:16.400)

I think that's the name of the game.

Tony Fadell (04:17.760)

It's this cool little builder game.

Lex Fridman (04:20.200)

One person wrote it in assembly.

Lex Fridman (04:22.920)

So like from scratch and for people who don't know,

Lex Fridman (04:29.320)

it kind of looks like a Sim City type game.

Tony Fadell (04:31.600)

It's a city builder, but obviously centered on railroads.

Lex Fridman (04:35.080)

And there's a nice graphics, it's three dimensional,

Tony Fadell (04:36.920)

all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (04:38.000)

All the things, all the rich colorful things

Tony Fadell (04:40.960)

you would imagine for a three dimensional video game,

Lex Fridman (04:43.800)

all written in assembly,

Tony Fadell (04:45.280)

meaning the lowest level code next to binary,

Lex Fridman (04:48.760)

which is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (04:50.120)

And that's the, you had to notice the magic

Lex Fridman (04:53.480)

at that low level at that time.

Tony Fadell (04:55.640)

You didn't have all the graphics.

Lex Fridman (04:57.120)

You didn't have all the like APIs and all the sample codes,

Tony Fadell (05:02.040)

no stack overflow, no internet, none of that.

Lex Fridman (05:04.440)

You just had, you had to know registers.

Tony Fadell (05:06.360)

You know, had to know the op codes

Lex Fridman (05:08.240)

and you had to imagine the world in your brain

Lex Fridman (05:10.200)

and the memory structures and everything else.

Lex Fridman (05:12.160)

There's no visualization.

Lex Fridman (05:13.240)

You visualized it all yourself, right?

Lex Fridman (05:15.440)

And so that was magic.

Lex Fridman (05:16.520)

But then the next part of the magic

Lex Fridman (05:18.000)

of where I got hooked even further

Tony Fadell (05:20.360)

was like I'm doing these little things.

Lex Fridman (05:22.400)

And then Electronic Arts came out for the Apple II.

Lex Fridman (05:25.520)

So I got an Apple II and Electronic Arts came out

Lex Fridman (05:28.240)

and I was programming and doing basic

Lex Fridman (05:29.920)

and making my own games.

Lex Fridman (05:31.760)

But then there were two games that really blew my mind.

Tony Fadell (05:34.400)

One was pinball construction set.

Lex Fridman (05:37.160)

And the other one was music construction set.

Lex Fridman (05:39.600)

And these were both places where I could create pinball games

Lex Fridman (05:42.800)

and I could create musical scores

Lex Fridman (05:45.040)

because I love music and I could then play them, right?

Lex Fridman (05:48.160)

And so when you had that, you were like,

Tony Fadell (05:50.560)

oh, this is something very different.

Lex Fridman (05:53.200)

So I could create myself,

Lex Fridman (05:54.960)

but then there was others that create tools

Lex Fridman (05:57.360)

so you could create at a visual level.

Lex Fridman (06:00.040)

And then you would read the backstories

Lex Fridman (06:01.560)

because Electronics Arts back in the day,

Tony Fadell (06:03.520)

it was one programmer who would program those games

Lex Fridman (06:06.520)

program those things, each of those things.

Lex Fridman (06:08.760)

And you could read their backstories.

Lex Fridman (06:10.200)

It was literally like a musician or someone else.

Tony Fadell (06:13.240)

Like you could read Rick Rubens, like here's the thing.

Lex Fridman (06:15.560)

They tell you all of that stuff.

Lex Fridman (06:16.800)

And there was one guy who wrote music construction set.

Lex Fridman (06:20.800)

He wrote it all in assembly and he was 16 years old.

Tony Fadell (06:24.360)

Wow.

Lex Fridman (06:25.200)

And I was probably 12 or 13 at the time.

Lex Fridman (06:28.920)

And I went, oh my, if he was able to do this

Lex Fridman (06:33.040)

and had published, right, and this amazing tool was created,

Lex Fridman (06:37.640)

I'm like, what could I do?

Lex Fridman (06:38.760)

And so then it just kept building off of that.

Lex Fridman (06:41.600)

But really it was those seminal things.

Lex Fridman (06:43.520)

First, the introduction and then the power

Tony Fadell (06:46.240)

through programming and turning these things

Lex Fridman (06:48.480)

into what you wanted to turn it into.

Lex Fridman (06:50.760)

And you didn't have to be 40, 50 years old

Lex Fridman (06:53.960)

and have PhDs.

Lex Fridman (06:55.480)

And then I was like, okay, this is really cool.

Lex Fridman (06:58.680)

I wish we did that with programmers

Tony Fadell (07:01.040)

where we treated them like artists.

Lex Fridman (07:02.560)

We would know the backstory these days today.

Tony Fadell (07:05.320)

Or not just programmers, engineers.

Lex Fridman (07:07.600)

Engineers, designers.

Tony Fadell (07:09.080)

Yeah, like all the things about a product

Lex Fridman (07:11.400)

that I think we love are the little details.

Lex Fridman (07:14.440)

And there's probably a human being

Lex Fridman (07:16.160)

behind each of those details

Tony Fadell (07:18.880)

that had their little inkling of genius that they put in.

Lex Fridman (07:22.520)

I wish we knew those stories.

Tony Fadell (07:24.080)

That's always sad to me when I,

Lex Fridman (07:25.760)

because obviously I love engineering

Lex Fridman (07:28.160)

and I interact with companies

Lex Fridman (07:29.640)

and they, you know, autonomous vehicles,

Tony Fadell (07:31.960)

something I'm really interested about.

Lex Fridman (07:33.200)

And I see that companies generally,

Lex Fridman (07:35.840)

and we'll probably talk about this,

Lex Fridman (07:37.160)

but they seem to want to hide their engineers.

Tony Fadell (07:39.560)

Like engineers hold the secrets.

Lex Fridman (07:42.840)

Like the great secret,

Tony Fadell (07:44.720)

we did not speak of the great secret.

Lex Fridman (07:47.160)

But then the result of that is you don't get

Tony Fadell (07:50.680)

to hear their stories.

Lex Fridman (07:52.440)

The passion that is there behind the engineers.

Tony Fadell (07:56.280)

Like, and also the genius, the little,

Lex Fridman (07:59.200)

there's a difference between the stuff that's patented,

Tony Fadell (08:01.680)

like the kernel of the idea

Lex Fridman (08:03.800)

and the beautiful sort of side effects of the idea.

Lex Fridman (08:06.600)

And I wish companies revealed the beautiful side effects

Lex Fridman (08:09.240)

a little bit more, but sorry for the distraction.

Lex Fridman (08:13.440)

So what, you mentioned Apple II.

Lex Fridman (08:15.760)

What was the first computer you fell in love with?

Tony Fadell (08:18.680)

Like the product, the thing before you

Lex Fridman (08:21.400)

that was a personal computer?

Tony Fadell (08:23.640)

It was the Apple II.

Lex Fridman (08:25.200)

So the Apple II was something I was just lusting over.

Tony Fadell (08:28.960)

You know, it was, I think it was at the time,

Lex Fridman (08:31.440)

it was the, you know, the person of the year.

Tony Fadell (08:34.000)

Maybe it was that year.

Lex Fridman (08:35.120)

I don't remember what, but.

Lex Fridman (08:36.960)

Well, Apple II was the person of the year?

Lex Fridman (08:38.880)

Yeah, for my magazine back in, I don't remember when,

Lex Fridman (08:41.720)

but it was around that same time.

Lex Fridman (08:43.000)

I was so young, but I had, there was the Apple II

Lex Fridman (08:46.680)

and I didn't know what it was, but I knew about tools

Lex Fridman (08:49.080)

because my grandfather taught me about tools

Lex Fridman (08:50.820)

and creating things, right?

Lex Fridman (08:53.840)

And I saw this thing and I had the, you know,

Tony Fadell (08:56.840)

that IBM experience, that terminal experience.

Lex Fridman (08:59.260)

And I'm like, oh, I could have that at home, right?

Lex Fridman (09:01.560)

And so I need to have that at home.

Lex Fridman (09:03.080)

And the only thing that was really talked about

Tony Fadell (09:04.880)

in our circles was the Apple II.

Lex Fridman (09:06.960)

And I was just like, that's it.

Lex Fridman (09:08.880)

So I went, jumped up and down.

Lex Fridman (09:11.260)

It was very expensive.

Tony Fadell (09:12.600)

I have to have this.

Lex Fridman (09:13.440)

My parents were like, what?

Tony Fadell (09:14.480)

You know, it was $2,500 back then in the 1981.

Lex Fridman (09:19.240)

It was like crazy, right?

Lex Fridman (09:20.980)

So I was like, I'm gonna make as much money

Lex Fridman (09:23.000)

as I can this summer.

Lex Fridman (09:23.920)

And my grandfather said,

Lex Fridman (09:25.240)

cause he helped me learn all about tools

Lex Fridman (09:27.600)

and build things together.

Lex Fridman (09:29.120)

I will match whatever you make

Lex Fridman (09:30.800)

so you can get this computer.

Lex Fridman (09:32.200)

So I worked very, very hard as a caddy, golf caddy.

Tony Fadell (09:36.620)

Caddying actually for the, you know,

Lex Fridman (09:38.640)

the families in, you know, at the country clubs

Tony Fadell (09:41.000)

in the town where we lived.

Lex Fridman (09:43.960)

And did whatever I could.

Lex Fridman (09:45.440)

And that end of that summer, we got my Apple II.

Lex Fridman (09:48.380)

And you couldn't tear it away from me.

Tony Fadell (09:50.240)

It was my friend.

Lex Fridman (09:51.620)

It was everything.

Tony Fadell (09:52.720)

From a product perspective,

Lex Fridman (09:54.640)

what do you remember that was brilliant?

Tony Fadell (09:56.960)

The design choices, the ideas behind it,

Lex Fridman (10:01.120)

or is it just that it exists?

Tony Fadell (10:02.760)

Or the very idea of a personal computer

Lex Fridman (10:05.160)

is the brilliant design choice.

Tony Fadell (10:07.160)

Yeah, it was that I could actually have this kind of tool

Lex Fridman (10:10.040)

in my house and I could use it anytime I wanted.

Tony Fadell (10:12.940)

I could program it anyways.

Lex Fridman (10:14.300)

There was no, you know, there was no internet connection.

Tony Fadell (10:16.680)

There was no, it was all just you.

Lex Fridman (10:18.820)

You either loaded software that you got from someone, right?

Tony Fadell (10:22.660)

Or you created it yourself.

Lex Fridman (10:24.200)

And then there was the whole other thing

Tony Fadell (10:25.740)

which was started happening, which we were doing.

Lex Fridman (10:28.380)

And this was kind of like MP3 and stuff.

Lex Fridman (10:30.340)

We were sharing software, right?

Lex Fridman (10:32.200)

So you built this community of sharing software.

Tony Fadell (10:34.280)

You would go and pirate.

Lex Fridman (10:35.720)

That was what it called, pirate all this software.

Tony Fadell (10:37.780)

You'd never use it all, but it was just that fun thing

Lex Fridman (10:39.920)

of like, I'm gonna get all this other stuff

Lex Fridman (10:41.800)

and then tear it apart and do disassembly on it

Lex Fridman (10:44.120)

and see behind the scenes.

Lex Fridman (10:45.640)

So you really had a sense this was your world

Lex Fridman (10:48.560)

and you owned it, right?

Lex Fridman (10:50.080)

And you could like literally go into every register.

Lex Fridman (10:52.560)

We didn't have all those security layers.

Tony Fadell (10:53.920)

Like we do not like,

Lex Fridman (10:55.160)

you could really touch bits and you could poke bits

Lex Fridman (10:57.560)

and you can make this light turn on.

Lex Fridman (10:59.200)

And the geek assignment just lit up.

Tony Fadell (11:01.760)

Now there's, it's so abstract.

Lex Fridman (11:05.260)

People don't even understand.

Tony Fadell (11:06.380)

Like usually some programs don't even understand memory.

Lex Fridman (11:09.100)

They just think it's unlimited, right?

Lex Fridman (11:11.320)

And security, it's like,

Lex Fridman (11:13.320)

now there's all this security you should have,

Lex Fridman (11:16.080)

but it's like the adults all showed up to the party

Lex Fridman (11:19.160)

and now you can't have all the fun, right?

Tony Fadell (11:21.440)

It's like, no, no.

Lex Fridman (11:23.180)

This was the thing where if you, if the power went out,

Tony Fadell (11:26.400)

you lost your whole program,

Lex Fridman (11:27.580)

you might've worked a whole day on it.

Lex Fridman (11:28.960)

And if you didn't press save at every other line

Lex Fridman (11:31.760)

and you were to save, save, save,

Lex Fridman (11:33.360)

and it would like, the disk drive or the tape drive.

Lex Fridman (11:38.080)

Like every single step was contemplated

Tony Fadell (11:41.640)

because if you didn't, you lost maybe a ton of work.

Lex Fridman (11:45.260)

So a lot of the magic was in the software.

Tony Fadell (11:47.520)

The fact that you could have software,

Lex Fridman (11:48.960)

the fact that you could share software,

Tony Fadell (11:51.000)

the community around the software,

Lex Fridman (11:53.880)

it wasn't necessarily the hardware.

Tony Fadell (11:55.520)

Well, that was the first step.

Lex Fridman (11:56.800)

The second step around the hardware

Tony Fadell (11:58.840)

was I got things like the mocking board,

Lex Fridman (12:01.240)

which the mocking board

Tony Fadell (12:02.680)

paired with the music construction set,

Lex Fridman (12:04.020)

you could now generate all kinds of tones and notes

Lex Fridman (12:06.360)

and it was a synthesizer in the Apple II.

Lex Fridman (12:09.120)

So you would plug in this card and you go,

Tony Fadell (12:11.040)

oh my God, look at this.

Lex Fridman (12:12.080)

And it would, you know,

Tony Fadell (12:13.300)

you could start generating cool sounds.

Lex Fridman (12:15.560)

You know, like it was a Moog, you know,

Tony Fadell (12:17.960)

like a Moog in a way, early Moog.

Lex Fridman (12:20.320)

What year are we talking about?

Tony Fadell (12:21.760)

This is 82, I think, 81, 82.

Lex Fridman (12:25.820)

And I bet you can make all the kind of synthetic sounds

Tony Fadell (12:28.520)

that are very cool in the 80s.

Lex Fridman (12:30.280)

Yeah, the 8 bit, you know, chip tunes, right?

Tony Fadell (12:32.660)

Chip tune, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Lex Fridman (12:34.320)

And then, you know, when you wanted to add a joystick,

Tony Fadell (12:38.000)

you had to pull a chip out

Lex Fridman (12:39.160)

and you had to like plug in a dip socket

Tony Fadell (12:41.200)

to put in a joystick.

Lex Fridman (12:42.600)

And then I was like, oh,

Lex Fridman (12:43.760)

and then I had to get more memory.

Lex Fridman (12:44.960)

How do we do that?

Lex Fridman (12:45.880)

And now I wanted to speed up progress.

Lex Fridman (12:47.400)

So then that turned into a company actually from that,

Lex Fridman (12:51.960)

but it was, and a hardware software went at that.

Lex Fridman (12:54.680)

But it was all about, you know,

Tony Fadell (12:55.960)

modifying this thing in every way, first with software.

Lex Fridman (12:58.560)

And then you started gaining confidence.

Lex Fridman (13:00.200)

And then I got a little bit more money and stuff.

Lex Fridman (13:01.920)

And then you could get into the hardware

Tony Fadell (13:03.400)

and, you know, wire things.

Lex Fridman (13:05.160)

And then the Apple II came with all the schematics, right?

Lex Fridman (13:09.280)

So in the back, in the early Apple IIs,

Lex Fridman (13:12.560)

you could open up and all the schematics were there.

Lex Fridman (13:14.920)

So you purchased the Apple II and the schematics come with it.

Lex Fridman (13:18.040)

Yeah, it came with it.

Tony Fadell (13:19.560)

That's an interesting choice.

Lex Fridman (13:21.360)

That's an interesting choice from a company perspective.

Tony Fadell (13:25.040)

Right, it was like a real maker kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (13:27.560)

Right.

Tony Fadell (13:29.680)

Ah, I wonder what they, so that was intentional.

Lex Fridman (13:32.720)

Like this is. Absolutely intentional.

Tony Fadell (13:34.160)

This is for the cutting edge folks too,

Lex Fridman (13:37.280)

or especially for the cutting edge.

Tony Fadell (13:38.120)

It was only the cutting edge.

Lex Fridman (13:39.160)

It was geeks for geeks.

Tony Fadell (13:41.040)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (13:41.880)

So we were like, oh, how did they make it?

Lex Fridman (13:43.120)

And then we got to learn through that.

Lex Fridman (13:44.440)

Apple I did the same thing, right?

Tony Fadell (13:46.280)

It just Apple II became more packaged up

Lex Fridman (13:48.600)

and had, you know, a little bit better software, right?

Tony Fadell (13:52.000)

Came with basic and then, you know,

Lex Fridman (13:53.720)

so it was really, it was what we might think of

Tony Fadell (13:57.280)

as a raspberry pie today or something like that,

Lex Fridman (14:00.040)

but not with so much software.

Tony Fadell (14:01.800)

It was literally, and all the chips were out there

Lex Fridman (14:03.880)

so you could inspect the buses and the, right?

Tony Fadell (14:06.040)

Cause everything was just broken out.

Lex Fridman (14:08.280)

So I guess that's the idea behind stable big projects

Lex Fridman (14:13.280)

and open source, like on GitHub,

Lex Fridman (14:15.840)

that you have the schematics there

Lex Fridman (14:18.160)

and it's kind of a product,

Lex Fridman (14:20.480)

but I wonder why more companies don't do that kind of thing.

Tony Fadell (14:23.600)

Like we're going to release this to a small set of people,

Lex Fridman (14:29.080)

self selected, perhaps that are kind of the makers,

Tony Fadell (14:33.840)

the cutting edge folks, the builders,

Lex Fridman (14:36.480)

the at home engineers, like in some way,

Lex Fridman (14:40.400)

what Tesla is doing with the beta for the full self driving

Lex Fridman (14:45.840)

is kind of like that.

Tony Fadell (14:47.440)

It's like selecting a group of people,

Lex Fridman (14:48.960)

but that has to do more with you,

Lex Fridman (14:51.640)

how safe of a driver you are

Lex Fridman (14:53.120)

versus how much of a tinkerer you are

Tony Fadell (14:55.400)

because you don't get to tinker.

Lex Fridman (14:56.840)

I wonder, is that a crazy idea to do

Tony Fadell (14:59.960)

for really cutting edge technologies,

Lex Fridman (15:01.960)

especially you're interested in like hardware stuff.

Lex Fridman (15:05.460)

Is that crazy?

Lex Fridman (15:06.840)

Why don't more companies do that kind of thing, you think?

Tony Fadell (15:10.200)

I think back then it was about a community

Lex Fridman (15:13.560)

and serving that community of builders.

Tony Fadell (15:15.760)

Now this is about people who want to take,

Lex Fridman (15:18.160)

get the experience and want it really simple and easy.

Lex Fridman (15:20.720)

And they're like, and so there's the audience

Lex Fridman (15:24.360)

or they believe the audience is small

Tony Fadell (15:26.160)

who would value those other things

Lex Fridman (15:27.700)

that we're just talking about.

Lex Fridman (15:29.040)

But if we look at things like Raspberry Pi

Lex Fridman (15:30.920)

and all of these other little boards, right?

Tony Fadell (15:33.720)

There's a whole world more than I've seen.

Lex Fridman (15:36.840)

Like it's amazing what you can do now

Tony Fadell (15:38.960)

with these little kits and the software that's created.

Lex Fridman (15:43.560)

And so there's a whole nother,

Tony Fadell (15:45.160)

I think another batch of makers and builders

Lex Fridman (15:47.520)

that are coming up through the ranks.

Lex Fridman (15:49.080)

And if you, we look at YouTube channels and stuff, right?

Lex Fridman (15:51.640)

They take these little boards, they hack them,

Tony Fadell (15:53.240)

then they print out parts on their 3D printer,

Lex Fridman (15:56.640)

assemble them and they create robots and what have you.

Lex Fridman (15:59.480)

So I think it's happening.

Lex Fridman (16:01.880)

It's just not as, you know, as,

Tony Fadell (16:03.920)

it's just not as, I guess, raw as it used to be,

Lex Fridman (16:09.080)

but it's there and it's really expanding around the world.

Lex Fridman (16:11.840)

And that's really nice to see

Lex Fridman (16:13.280)

cause you know, it's a whole new generation

Tony Fadell (16:15.880)

who can, who are empowered.

Lex Fridman (16:17.600)

I think there's a semi dormant genius amongst millions.

Lex Fridman (16:21.240)

So like Raspberry Pi is revealing that a little bit.

Lex Fridman (16:23.560)

It's probably, I wouldn't be surprised

Tony Fadell (16:26.080)

if it's several million Raspberry Pis

Lex Fridman (16:28.300)

that have been sold.

Tony Fadell (16:30.000)

I think more than that.

Lex Fridman (16:31.600)

And it's kind of this quiet storm of genius,

Tony Fadell (16:36.360)

brewing of engineers who don't get to hear

Lex Fridman (16:38.400)

because they're not organized.

Tony Fadell (16:40.000)

I mean, we get to hear their inklings here and there.

Lex Fridman (16:42.260)

Like I said, YouTube, there's little communities

Tony Fadell (16:44.720)

that are local and so on.

Lex Fridman (16:45.680)

But if they were organized,

Tony Fadell (16:49.880)

if a leader would emerge, no.

Lex Fridman (16:51.760)

Okay, so when did you first start to dream

Tony Fadell (16:55.000)

about building your own things,

Lex Fridman (16:58.560)

designing your own products,

Lex Fridman (17:01.320)

designing your own systems and software and hardware?

Lex Fridman (17:05.120)

Well, in high school, there was a company

Tony Fadell (17:09.080)

that a friend of mine founded

Lex Fridman (17:12.320)

and I was the second employee,

Tony Fadell (17:13.560)

it was called Quality Computers.

Lex Fridman (17:15.680)

And it was a mail order,

Tony Fadell (17:18.760)

mail order cause there's no eCommerce then,

Lex Fridman (17:20.400)

there was no internet again.

Tony Fadell (17:21.740)

You either mailed in your little coupon

Lex Fridman (17:23.560)

and you said, this is what I wanted to order

Tony Fadell (17:25.280)

or you wrote in to get a catalog and delivered to you.

Lex Fridman (17:28.780)

Turn around time and this stuff was like,

Tony Fadell (17:30.800)

from the time you wanted, the time you bought it

Lex Fridman (17:32.560)

was maybe eight to 12 weeks.

Tony Fadell (17:34.520)

That was just the normal way of getting things.

Lex Fridman (17:37.400)

So Quality Computers was a mail order for Apple too

Lex Fridman (17:42.440)

and it was software and all kinds of accessories.

Lex Fridman (17:46.560)

So hardware accessories, so hardware,

Tony Fadell (17:48.080)

plug in cards, joysticks, all this stuff.

Lex Fridman (17:50.600)

And what we noticed was there were accelerators

Tony Fadell (17:55.880)

or memory cards.

Lex Fridman (17:57.600)

And to be able to use those cards,

Tony Fadell (18:00.640)

you had to actually go and change the software you use

Lex Fridman (18:03.720)

to access this new memory.

Lex Fridman (18:05.440)

So you literally had to go and you took the program

Lex Fridman (18:07.960)

that you had, let's say it was Apple works,

Tony Fadell (18:09.320)

which was like an early Microsoft office

Lex Fridman (18:11.280)

or something like that.

Lex Fridman (18:12.480)

And you had to literally change the code

Lex Fridman (18:15.880)

and you would install all these patches

Tony Fadell (18:18.040)

to then take advantage of the hardware.

Lex Fridman (18:20.360)

So what we started creating was software on top of it

Tony Fadell (18:23.540)

to do the automatic installation of all of these patches.

Lex Fridman (18:27.760)

So we made it much easier to take new hardware

Lex Fridman (18:30.520)

and the existing software you have

Lex Fridman (18:33.360)

and expand it into this new world.

Lex Fridman (18:35.360)

So it was creating tools

Lex Fridman (18:36.520)

and the really great customer support.

Lex Fridman (18:38.280)

And we started getting a lot of orders

Lex Fridman (18:40.960)

because we had the software make it easier to install,

Tony Fadell (18:43.540)

to give them the superpower.

Lex Fridman (18:45.480)

And at the same time, they would be able

Tony Fadell (18:49.680)

to change their software and have a new world

Lex Fridman (18:52.120)

that wasn't existing from the companies

Tony Fadell (18:53.960)

that were creating the initial products.

Lex Fridman (18:56.440)

And so it was more of that.

Lex Fridman (18:58.000)

And then that happened with hard drives.

Lex Fridman (19:00.760)

So I wrote a hard drive optimizer for the Apple II

Tony Fadell (19:04.640)

to like read, because you could get really fragmented.

Lex Fridman (19:07.440)

So I wrote that piece of software

Lex Fridman (19:08.880)

and we sold that through the company

Lex Fridman (19:10.120)

along with the hard drives that we sold from third parties.

Lex Fridman (19:12.980)

So that all happened in 12th grade,

Lex Fridman (19:17.240)

freshman year of college.

Tony Fadell (19:20.080)

You wrote a hard drive optimizer in 12th grade

Lex Fridman (19:23.200)

for the Apple II.

Tony Fadell (19:24.560)

Between 12th and freshman year.

Lex Fridman (19:26.760)

What programming language do you remember?

Lex Fridman (19:28.440)

Is it assemblies?

Lex Fridman (19:29.280)

There were certain inner loops were assembly

Lex Fridman (19:32.080)

and other loops actually there were really early Pascal,

Lex Fridman (19:35.280)

no C compilers.

Lex Fridman (19:39.560)

What was the motivation behind these?

Lex Fridman (19:41.440)

Is it to make people's lives easier?

Tony Fadell (19:43.800)

Is it to create a thing experience

Lex Fridman (19:45.680)

that is simpler and simpler and simpler,

Lex Fridman (19:47.800)

thereby more accessible to a larger number of people?

Lex Fridman (19:51.080)

Or did you just like to tinker?

Tony Fadell (19:52.960)

No, no, no, it was two things really.

Lex Fridman (19:54.440)

Cause one, we wanted to sell more hardware and software.

Lex Fridman (19:57.680)

So it was like, oh, make it easier for the user.

Lex Fridman (19:59.920)

And then the other thing was,

Tony Fadell (1:00:01.300)

A shield.

Lex Fridman (1:00:02.140)

Yeah, we probably should not say this.

Tony Fadell (1:00:06.520)

Let's be careful, let's be careful.

Lex Fridman (1:00:09.180)

Now, that makes sense except in this modern world,

Tony Fadell (1:00:15.900)

authenticity is extremely valuable

Lex Fridman (1:00:20.900)

and revealing the beauty that is in the engineering,

Tony Fadell (1:00:24.980)

the beauty of the ideas, the chaos of the ideas,

Lex Fridman (1:00:29.920)

I think requires throwing caution to the wind to some degree.

Tony Fadell (1:00:34.700)

I agree.

Lex Fridman (1:00:35.540)

And I just find that, boy, to push back on myself,

Tony Fadell (1:00:43.020)

I think it's an extremely difficult job

Lex Fridman (1:00:45.420)

because people hold you responsible

Tony Fadell (1:00:47.500)

if you're doing communications when you take risks.

Lex Fridman (1:00:53.300)

And especially when they fail.

Lex Fridman (1:00:54.820)

So it's a difficult job,

Lex Fridman (1:00:57.540)

so I understand why people become cautious,

Lex Fridman (1:00:59.580)

but to me, communications is about taking big risks

Lex Fridman (1:01:03.540)

and throwing caution to the wind at its best

Tony Fadell (1:01:06.100)

because your job is to communicate in the long term,

Lex Fridman (1:01:12.500)

communicate the genius, the joy,

Tony Fadell (1:01:17.540)

the genius of the product.

Lex Fridman (1:01:19.740)

And that sometimes is a tension with caution.

Tony Fadell (1:01:23.160)

Sorry, so because I've gotten the chance

Lex Fridman (1:01:26.420)

to meet a lot of very interesting people

Lex Fridman (1:01:28.620)

and interesting engineering teams and so on,

Lex Fridman (1:01:31.300)

I look at what they're doing

Lex Fridman (1:01:33.340)

and I look at what's being communicated

Lex Fridman (1:01:35.780)

and it's just, there's a mismatch

Tony Fadell (1:01:37.660)

because the communication is a lot more boring.

Lex Fridman (1:01:40.100)

It's like, there's something very like,

Tony Fadell (1:01:44.100)

just straight up boring

Lex Fridman (1:01:45.900)

about the way they're communicating because of caution.

Lex Fridman (1:01:49.780)

Okay, you have just teed me up for another diatribe, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:01:54.700)

I'm gonna get on my podium here.

Tony Fadell (1:01:58.100)

Yes, please.

Lex Fridman (1:01:58.940)

Yeah, it all comes out of the leader.

Tony Fadell (1:02:04.380)

If the leader doesn't know how to storytell

Lex Fridman (1:02:06.380)

or the leader doesn't know how to do bold storytelling,

Tony Fadell (1:02:09.740)

then you get even more conservatism

Lex Fridman (1:02:14.300)

from the PR and communications folks

Tony Fadell (1:02:17.340)

because they're always,

Lex Fridman (1:02:18.300)

so if you have a, not a bold leader,

Lex Fridman (1:02:21.500)

they're always going to be a filter, right?

Lex Fridman (1:02:23.860)

They're always gonna try to smooth things out

Lex Fridman (1:02:25.860)

and take off the rough edges and try,

Lex Fridman (1:02:27.620)

so they're gonna be even more,

Tony Fadell (1:02:28.700)

if you have a conservative messaging leader,

Lex Fridman (1:02:31.500)

you're gonna have an even more

Tony Fadell (1:02:32.580)

conservative communications department.

Lex Fridman (1:02:35.260)

Why?

Tony Fadell (1:02:36.100)

Because they wanna keep their jobs.

Lex Fridman (1:02:37.740)

Okay, it's really simple.

Tony Fadell (1:02:40.100)

They gotta keep their jobs.

Lex Fridman (1:02:41.020)

If they say one wrong thing, it could be the end of it.

Lex Fridman (1:02:44.420)

So if you have very conservative leader,

Lex Fridman (1:02:46.760)

they're going to be even more conservative.

Tony Fadell (1:02:48.920)

If you have a bold leader,

Lex Fridman (1:02:50.380)

they'll always take a little more conservative bent,

Lex Fridman (1:02:54.240)

but you're still gonna have bold communications.

Lex Fridman (1:02:56.420)

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Tony Fadell (1:02:57.660)

Okay, so it starts with the leader.

Lex Fridman (1:03:00.180)

Now, that said,

Tony Fadell (1:03:03.660)

when you think about the messages

Lex Fridman (1:03:08.060)

and the joy and revealing things, right?

Tony Fadell (1:03:13.940)

Many of these leaders don't tell great stories.

Lex Fridman (1:03:18.560)

So what we do at FutureShape, our investment firm,

Tony Fadell (1:03:22.340)

is we take those scientists all of,

Lex Fridman (1:03:24.320)

and the great minds and everything,

Lex Fridman (1:03:25.780)

and what do we surround them with?

Lex Fridman (1:03:28.220)

Marketing and communication people

Lex Fridman (1:03:30.260)

and storytellers to give them the confidence

Lex Fridman (1:03:33.940)

to tell a much broader story

Tony Fadell (1:03:36.900)

about the impacts of what they're creating

Lex Fridman (1:03:39.100)

and how big the global change can be

Tony Fadell (1:03:42.260)

with those technologies.

Lex Fridman (1:03:43.700)

Because usually they don't,

Tony Fadell (1:03:45.340)

those leaders who created those technologies,

Lex Fridman (1:03:47.640)

they don't really know how to communicate really well

Lex Fridman (1:03:49.500)

and they don't feel very comfortable in how they speak.

Lex Fridman (1:03:52.760)

Yeah, so it's interesting

Tony Fadell (1:03:54.380)

because stories, I'm a huge fan of stories.

Lex Fridman (1:03:57.820)

Have you ever read the book, Story?

Tony Fadell (1:03:59.620)

No.

Lex Fridman (1:04:00.460)

By Robert McKee?

Tony Fadell (1:04:01.280)

Mm hmm.

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.120)

You should read this.

Lex Fridman (1:04:02.940)

And this is what I read when I was 26.

Lex Fridman (1:04:05.940)

Story by Robert McKee,

Lex Fridman (1:04:07.660)

and it's a book all about the ways to do script writing,

Lex Fridman (1:04:12.460)

the prototypical types of scripts, drama, comedy,

Lex Fridman (1:04:16.660)

and how it's been shown over millennia,

Lex Fridman (1:04:20.540)

how these stories are done.

Tony Fadell (1:04:21.700)

It's a fascinating thing

Lex Fridman (1:04:23.620)

and it gives you an insight to,

Lex Fridman (1:04:26.020)

and it's written for obviously Hollywood

Lex Fridman (1:04:28.700)

and movies and things like that,

Lex Fridman (1:04:30.600)

but it's incredibly useful for what we do

Lex Fridman (1:04:33.880)

as designers and engineers and technology leaders.

Tony Fadell (1:04:37.940)

There's some aspect in this modern day

Lex Fridman (1:04:40.260)

where this podcast and so on,

Lex Fridman (1:04:44.340)

what I love is the humans behind the story too.

Lex Fridman (1:04:47.260)

So some part of the story is the human beings.

Lex Fridman (1:04:49.560)

So humor, drama,

Lex Fridman (1:04:55.640)

heartbreak, hope.

Tony Fadell (1:04:57.360)

Emotions.

Lex Fridman (1:04:58.200)

Emotions.

Tony Fadell (1:04:59.540)

That's not just about painting a beautiful story

Lex Fridman (1:05:03.080)

that's flawless, it's...

Tony Fadell (1:05:05.720)

Vulnerability.

Lex Fridman (1:05:06.620)

Yep.

Tony Fadell (1:05:07.460)

It's being a dreamer, like overpromising,

Lex Fridman (1:05:11.600)

and then failing, so changing your mind,

Tony Fadell (1:05:16.240)

realizing sort of just the whole of it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:18.520)

And then also being like,

Tony Fadell (1:05:20.600)

depending of course where your personality is,

Lex Fridman (1:05:23.920)

embracing the full richness and the complexity

Tony Fadell (1:05:26.800)

of the personality of the leader

Lex Fridman (1:05:28.600)

or the different people involved.

Tony Fadell (1:05:30.300)

I mean, that's all part of it.

Lex Fridman (1:05:31.800)

Like you can't just present this beautiful,

Tony Fadell (1:05:34.740)

always pleasant view of a product.

Lex Fridman (1:05:37.840)

There has to be this humanity that's part of it,

Tony Fadell (1:05:43.440)

the full roller coaster of the humanity,

Lex Fridman (1:05:45.940)

which I think has been very difficult for companies

Tony Fadell (1:05:49.120)

to embrace, I'm not sure why.

Lex Fridman (1:05:52.440)

Maybe it's just an old school way of doing things

Tony Fadell (1:05:54.760)

that people think that we present a facade

Lex Fridman (1:05:59.280)

and we generate the story and we tell the story

Tony Fadell (1:06:02.880)

as opposed to sort of...

Lex Fridman (1:06:04.740)

Well, we learn, especially in the technical world,

Tony Fadell (1:06:07.520)

we present the story as it's faster, it's smaller,

Lex Fridman (1:06:11.320)

it's longer battery life, it's bits and numbers

Lex Fridman (1:06:14.600)

and metrics, that resonates sure with other geeks.

Lex Fridman (1:06:22.360)

What resonates with the planet?

Lex Fridman (1:06:26.720)

It's all emotions, right?

Lex Fridman (1:06:28.520)

And if you can bring a great emotional story,

Lex Fridman (1:06:31.200)

but with a great rational story at the same time,

Lex Fridman (1:06:33.800)

why you should do this, and it's like,

Tony Fadell (1:06:36.280)

oh my God, you bring that superpower, that joy,

Lex Fridman (1:06:39.540)

then it all hangs.

Lex Fridman (1:06:41.320)

And there's personal drama too, like the human.

Lex Fridman (1:06:45.040)

Right, here's the pain I had, remember that thing.

Lex Fridman (1:06:48.800)

And I mean, you're obviously this extremely well known

Lex Fridman (1:06:58.320)

human being that's behind a lot of these great inventions

Tony Fadell (1:07:02.440)

of the technology world, but you're also just

Lex Fridman (1:07:04.320)

a human being, you have clearly a distinct personality

Tony Fadell (1:07:09.320)

that comes through, like your eyes light up,

Lex Fridman (1:07:11.800)

just the way you communicate, it's you.

Tony Fadell (1:07:15.960)

Some people are more stoic, some people are,

Lex Fridman (1:07:18.660)

like Elon is all over the place, the chaos.

Tony Fadell (1:07:24.120)

Steve Jobs, I mean, it's hard to put into words,

Lex Fridman (1:07:28.200)

I can be poetic and so on, but there's a very distinct,

Tony Fadell (1:07:31.320)

comes on stage, you know, that personality is right there.

Lex Fridman (1:07:34.160)

That's not just the product, that's something else too.

Lex Fridman (1:07:37.600)

And like, you have to reveal that a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:07:40.160)

and allow people to reveal that a little bit,

Lex Fridman (1:07:43.160)

and just let them be themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:07:45.880)

Well, look, why do I think your podcast is so amazing?

Tony Fadell (1:07:51.240)

Because you are yourself.

Lex Fridman (1:07:53.060)

You talk about yourself, you bring your emotions into it,

Lex Fridman (1:07:55.600)

and you don't modulate it, you're you, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:00.520)

It comes through, it's true, it feels right.

Tony Fadell (1:08:03.960)

You are you, you dress the way you wanna dress,

Lex Fridman (1:08:07.520)

you say this is me, and this is all of me,

Lex Fridman (1:08:09.640)

and you become vulnerable, right?

Lex Fridman (1:08:11.560)

It's much easier to do a podcast like that

Tony Fadell (1:08:14.040)

than run a very large company,

Lex Fridman (1:08:16.200)

where a lot of people would feel the pain if you make,

Tony Fadell (1:08:18.780)

if you say something stupid.

Lex Fridman (1:08:20.800)

So it's much more easy to be afraid and be careful.

Lex Fridman (1:08:27.400)

But nevertheless, the same applies.

Lex Fridman (1:08:31.160)

Authenticity and risk taking is the only way, unfortunately,

Tony Fadell (1:08:36.160)

to be successful in the long term.

Lex Fridman (1:08:39.520)

Let me, just because we're jumping all over the place,

Tony Fadell (1:08:42.960)

just link on the iPod.

Lex Fridman (1:08:44.880)

One of the great designs, broadly speaking,

Tony Fadell (1:08:49.240)

in the word design of all time,

Lex Fridman (1:08:50.840)

what does it take to design a great product?

Tony Fadell (1:08:53.720)

If you look, we can jump around, we can look at Nest,

Lex Fridman (1:08:56.680)

we can look at iPod, we can look at iPhone,

Lex Fridman (1:08:59.640)

and many of the great things you design,

Lex Fridman (1:09:02.600)

but just looking at that one transformational thing,

Lex Fridman (1:09:08.220)

what can you say about what it takes to do a great design?

Lex Fridman (1:09:13.220)

Or maybe what makes a great design?

Tony Fadell (1:09:20.120)

Well, we talked about a painkiller,

Lex Fridman (1:09:22.900)

and we talked about the,

Tony Fadell (1:09:24.720)

we talked about that joy that comes from it.

Lex Fridman (1:09:28.920)

But then there's the behind the scenes,

Tony Fadell (1:09:31.320)

there's the team, there's everyone who brings it to life,

Lex Fridman (1:09:35.280)

brings that story to life.

Tony Fadell (1:09:38.560)

If you have a great story, and you know the why,

Lex Fridman (1:09:41.840)

then you can communicate it

Tony Fadell (1:09:43.440)

to those people who are working on it.

Lex Fridman (1:09:45.840)

And then they bring their own thing into it, right?

Tony Fadell (1:09:49.040)

It becomes emotional for them too.

Lex Fridman (1:09:51.180)

It's not just a job, it's a mission.

Lex Fridman (1:09:54.440)

And so many of the details that are born

Lex Fridman (1:09:58.400)

out of these early prototypes,

Tony Fadell (1:10:02.000)

these things that you still haven't given full form to,

Lex Fridman (1:10:04.840)

there may be 80% done, or maybe even 60% done,

Lex Fridman (1:10:08.880)

but you can see enough in there.

Lex Fridman (1:10:10.720)

Then you take those great ideas,

Lex Fridman (1:10:12.720)

and you give the whys to the team.

Lex Fridman (1:10:14.960)

And so that they feel it, they can understand it,

Tony Fadell (1:10:18.520)

then they bring their best and their ideas to the table,

Lex Fridman (1:10:22.600)

and then you can select from those,

Lex Fridman (1:10:24.600)

and you can then start to, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:10:27.680)

it could be just a pixel change.

Tony Fadell (1:10:29.840)

It could be a slight change on how you do the audio

Lex Fridman (1:10:32.380)

for the feedback, or maybe a curve on the mechanics,

Tony Fadell (1:10:35.800)

or something like that, of how it feels.

Lex Fridman (1:10:38.160)

Because everybody brings themselves

Tony Fadell (1:10:39.880)

trying to feel this thing.

Lex Fridman (1:10:41.680)

They're not just doing something

Tony Fadell (1:10:42.680)

that someone told them to do.

Lex Fridman (1:10:44.440)

If you can instill that mission and that why into that team,

Tony Fadell (1:10:48.160)

it doesn't have to be big, you get, I feel, a 10X.

Lex Fridman (1:10:52.480)

Everyone comes together in a special way,

Lex Fridman (1:10:54.920)

and the magic is created.

Lex Fridman (1:10:58.720)

You put the love into it,

Tony Fadell (1:11:00.660)

the customer feels the love on the other side.

Lex Fridman (1:11:02.640)

So the, making the team,

Tony Fadell (1:11:08.160)

like taking them in onto the vision, onto the why,

Lex Fridman (1:11:12.920)

now they feel, all the little details we think of,

Tony Fadell (1:11:16.160)

the original iPod, and all the many generations after,

Lex Fridman (1:11:21.160)

all those little details are,

Tony Fadell (1:11:24.360)

in them is the emotion of the engineers and the designers,

Lex Fridman (1:11:27.640)

that working nights, struggling, this isn't right.

Tony Fadell (1:11:33.280)

Like you said, changing little pixels here and there,

Lex Fridman (1:11:36.080)

changing the shape of things, changing the feel of things,

Tony Fadell (1:11:41.480)

like the materials, the, I don't know,

Lex Fridman (1:11:46.520)

just everything on the software part of the packaging.

Tony Fadell (1:11:48.640)

Then the words on the packaging.

Lex Fridman (1:11:51.480)

Just everything.

Tony Fadell (1:11:52.320)

The words on the website.

Lex Fridman (1:11:53.840)

And always jumping from the very specific detail problem

Tony Fadell (1:11:57.200)

to the big picture, how the thing feels, the overall.

Lex Fridman (1:12:00.200)

Always jumping back and forth.

Lex Fridman (1:12:01.600)

What does it look like to the customer?

Lex Fridman (1:12:02.920)

How are we gonna implement it in the most efficient way?

Tony Fadell (1:12:07.680)

Because a lot of the stuff you don't know is,

Lex Fridman (1:12:10.560)

some of that stuff is hacked in, maybe hacked in at the end.

Tony Fadell (1:12:13.600)

It may not be the most beautiful architecture

Lex Fridman (1:12:17.040)

that a geek would look at and go, oh my God,

Tony Fadell (1:12:18.480)

that's so beautiful, because we can look at it

Lex Fridman (1:12:20.760)

and visualize this incredible software stack

Tony Fadell (1:12:23.480)

or hardware stack.

Lex Fridman (1:12:24.480)

Some of it could just be hacked in.

Tony Fadell (1:12:26.640)

You make it better over time,

Lex Fridman (1:12:28.240)

but it was that brilliant thing and we gotta get that in,

Tony Fadell (1:12:30.560)

because that's the way you do it now,

Lex Fridman (1:12:32.240)

and we'll make it more efficient later.

Tony Fadell (1:12:35.280)

Maybe this is a good moment to draw a distinction

Lex Fridman (1:12:38.560)

between design and engineering,

Lex Fridman (1:12:40.200)

and does such a distinction even exist?

Lex Fridman (1:12:43.840)

Are these distinct disciplines or no?

Tony Fadell (1:12:46.380)

I don't think they're distinct.

Lex Fridman (1:12:47.840)

I think they're different types of design.

Tony Fadell (1:12:49.960)

I think there's always this idea of this,

Lex Fridman (1:12:54.960)

oh, on the mount, designer, and it all comes down

Lex Fridman (1:12:58.380)

and it all flows down like some magic.

Lex Fridman (1:13:02.400)

There are electrical designers, there's AI designers,

Tony Fadell (1:13:05.320)

there is data scientist designers.

Lex Fridman (1:13:07.720)

Everybody has design, and there's a chapter in the book

Tony Fadell (1:13:10.580)

all about that, actually.

Lex Fridman (1:13:12.420)

That it's not just you go to the mount

Lex Fridman (1:13:15.000)

and it comes down and you're enlightened.

Lex Fridman (1:13:17.480)

It's each person brings their form of design

Lex Fridman (1:13:20.720)

and their craft, because if they're really good,

Lex Fridman (1:13:24.100)

they're artists in their own right.

Tony Fadell (1:13:25.440)

They're not just engineers, they're not just designers,

Lex Fridman (1:13:27.640)

they're artists, they're empathetic,

Tony Fadell (1:13:29.540)

they really wanna bring their best.

Lex Fridman (1:13:30.900)

A lot of the best engineers I have

Tony Fadell (1:13:32.460)

are not the technical, or that I've worked with,

Lex Fridman (1:13:34.740)

are not the technical gotta get it exactly right.

Tony Fadell (1:13:38.160)

They're the artists, they came from music

Lex Fridman (1:13:39.800)

or they came from other things, and they see that.

Tony Fadell (1:13:43.360)

When you work with very rigid engineers,

Lex Fridman (1:13:46.960)

this is the way, the only way, la la la,

Tony Fadell (1:13:49.400)

those are not the engineers I wanna work with.

Lex Fridman (1:13:52.360)

They're all like a bit artists at heart.

Tony Fadell (1:13:54.720)

Right, they understand the practicalness.

Lex Fridman (1:13:59.000)

They don't have to have the rigidity of,

Tony Fadell (1:14:01.220)

this is the way it's done.

Lex Fridman (1:14:03.620)

Like, mm mm.

Tony Fadell (1:14:05.120)

If you're building something new,

Lex Fridman (1:14:07.160)

all new and revolutionary, none of us are experts at it.

Lex Fridman (1:14:11.920)

And if you come with that expert mindset, just tell me,

Lex Fridman (1:14:14.360)

and I can give you a story,

Tony Fadell (1:14:15.360)

I should probably give you that story,

Lex Fridman (1:14:18.440)

about that if you come with the expert and I'm the expert,

Tony Fadell (1:14:21.160)

when you're doing something no one's ever done before,

Lex Fridman (1:14:23.760)

I don't want you on the team.

Tony Fadell (1:14:25.480)

Because we all are learning about something

Lex Fridman (1:14:27.640)

that has never been in existence before.

Lex Fridman (1:14:30.800)

And we have to bring that level of vulnerability

Lex Fridman (1:14:33.480)

and openness to new ideas and new ways of doing things

Tony Fadell (1:14:37.640)

throughout the team.

Lex Fridman (1:14:39.480)

So you want people that are able to have like

Tony Fadell (1:14:42.880)

beginner's mind or whatever, like don't come in as an expert.

Lex Fridman (1:14:46.400)

What's the story?

Tony Fadell (1:14:47.320)

Okay, here's the story.

Lex Fridman (1:14:48.680)

No, I can tell it for sure.

Tony Fadell (1:14:50.880)

So, you know, you asked what were these risks,

Lex Fridman (1:14:54.880)

you know, like on the early iPod,

Lex Fridman (1:14:56.520)

and there was a few big risks.

Lex Fridman (1:14:58.680)

Like one, and this doesn't go in the story,

Lex Fridman (1:15:00.880)

but like putting rotating media in your pocket

Lex Fridman (1:15:03.920)

and it could drop at any time,

Lex Fridman (1:15:06.120)

what happens there?

Lex Fridman (1:15:07.040)

And like you can damage,

Tony Fadell (1:15:08.000)

because the heads and the hard drive media are so close,

Lex Fridman (1:15:11.000)

it smacks, it's dead, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:13.240)

So that was one big one, like, holy shit, right?

Lex Fridman (1:15:16.640)

So that was something we,

Lex Fridman (1:15:17.480)

and we had to design special tests and everything

Lex Fridman (1:15:19.320)

and special software on that.

Lex Fridman (1:15:21.040)

But then there was another one,

Lex Fridman (1:15:22.000)

which was at the early days,

Tony Fadell (1:15:24.560)

the way the first generations of iPods,

Lex Fridman (1:15:26.760)

I had to hack the IDE interface to the hard drives.

Lex Fridman (1:15:32.920)

So I was like, okay, what we're gonna use

Lex Fridman (1:15:34.320)

is we're gonna use this chip for hard drive,

Tony Fadell (1:15:38.200)

hard drive, to make a hard drive,

Lex Fridman (1:15:40.160)

you had to have a chip that did FireWire to a hard drive.

Tony Fadell (1:15:43.520)

Okay, and then that would become a portable hard drive.

Lex Fridman (1:15:46.760)

Well, then we had the MP3 player

Lex Fridman (1:15:50.680)

and the user interface and everything.

Lex Fridman (1:15:52.360)

So there was times when it was just this hard drive

Lex Fridman (1:15:54.480)

and there was times when it was a MP3 player

Lex Fridman (1:15:57.440)

and I had to hot switch between

Lex Fridman (1:16:00.640)

what the hard drive thinks it was talking to, right?

Lex Fridman (1:16:03.920)

So designed this thing, tore it apart,

Tony Fadell (1:16:05.800)

did all this stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:16:06.640)

And I was like, you know,

Tony Fadell (1:16:08.520)

maybe I'm gonna screw up IDE and there's something,

Lex Fridman (1:16:10.880)

there's some holes I'm gonna see.

Lex Fridman (1:16:13.040)

So I go, who's the expert at Apple

Lex Fridman (1:16:15.400)

who understands IDE and everything?

Lex Fridman (1:16:18.400)

So this person comes over,

Lex Fridman (1:16:21.160)

the mass storage specialist comes over

Lex Fridman (1:16:23.440)

and I put on the whiteboard and say,

Lex Fridman (1:16:24.960)

here's how we're gonna do this thing

Lex Fridman (1:16:25.880)

and here's the commands and da da,

Lex Fridman (1:16:27.040)

and this is how it hot switches and everything.

Tony Fadell (1:16:28.440)

He's like, that's never gonna work.

Lex Fridman (1:16:30.680)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:16:31.680)

And I was like, what?

Lex Fridman (1:16:32.960)

It was never gonna work.

Tony Fadell (1:16:33.880)

I said, well, let me go over here

Lex Fridman (1:16:35.120)

and show you this right here.

Tony Fadell (1:16:36.240)

I have it prototyped and it's been working for days.

Lex Fridman (1:16:38.760)

I just wanna see if you're gonna have it,

Tony Fadell (1:16:40.120)

find any holes in the thing.

Lex Fridman (1:16:41.960)

Didn't even, and he just stormed out of the room

Lex Fridman (1:16:44.280)

and never even, right?

Lex Fridman (1:16:46.800)

That's hilarious.

Tony Fadell (1:16:47.840)

I've had a lot of experience like this with experts.

Lex Fridman (1:16:50.760)

Like for example, this ridiculous room.

Tony Fadell (1:16:54.640)

I had a person and there's many people like this

Lex Fridman (1:16:59.200)

that I showed them, here's the situation, you know.

Lex Fridman (1:17:03.200)

For acoustics or something?

Lex Fridman (1:17:04.040)

For acoustics, yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:17:04.960)

They're like, no, no, no, no, this is horrible.

Lex Fridman (1:17:07.960)

This is not, this is not gonna work.

Tony Fadell (1:17:11.720)

The reflection, the curtains are not gonna stop.

Lex Fridman (1:17:15.840)

There's a bunch of terminology they're telling me.

Tony Fadell (1:17:19.440)

It's a similar kind of situation as the ID,

Lex Fridman (1:17:22.000)

which I was like, no, listen,

Tony Fadell (1:17:25.400)

I just need to see is there major issues

Lex Fridman (1:17:27.640)

and they're like a low hanging fruit that are fixable

Lex Fridman (1:17:30.200)

and major holes I should be aware of.

Lex Fridman (1:17:32.120)

Not like, let's.

Tony Fadell (1:17:33.640)

$100,000 to upgrade.

Lex Fridman (1:17:35.520)

To upgrade for what exact purpose?

Lex Fridman (1:17:38.320)

What, not why?

Lex Fridman (1:17:39.360)

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Tony Fadell (1:17:40.880)

The why, the focusing on the story, on the content,

Lex Fridman (1:17:44.680)

on the, the why, the why, the why.

Lex Fridman (1:17:46.760)

And that actually I've experienced that unfortunately

Lex Fridman (1:17:49.880)

in the artistic realms too, which is like photography

Lex Fridman (1:17:53.560)

and videography, cinematography.

Lex Fridman (1:17:56.320)

It's interesting, I talk to photographers

Tony Fadell (1:17:58.640)

that are quote unquote experts.

Lex Fridman (1:18:01.000)

And it's always about so much of the focus

Tony Fadell (1:18:04.360)

is on the equipment.

Lex Fridman (1:18:08.040)

The equipment behind the sensors and the lighting.

Lex Fridman (1:18:12.520)

And it's like, all right, all right.

Lex Fridman (1:18:16.200)

But what about, what about the feeling

Lex Fridman (1:18:22.680)

of the story you create visually?

Lex Fridman (1:18:26.120)

The difference between a movie that's really well told

Lex Fridman (1:18:30.920)

and it doesn't have all the effects and everything

Lex Fridman (1:18:33.040)

versus maybe some of the superhero movies

Tony Fadell (1:18:35.200)

we see all the time, which is good luck if there's a story

Lex Fridman (1:18:38.160)

but man, there's a lot of action and CGI, right?

Tony Fadell (1:18:41.680)

That's right.

Lex Fridman (1:18:42.520)

And there's also value to those, right?

Tony Fadell (1:18:46.160)

CGI, superhero.

Lex Fridman (1:18:48.240)

Can tell a better story

Lex Fridman (1:18:49.640)

but you have to have a good story to begin with.

Lex Fridman (1:18:51.840)

Sure, exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:18:53.040)

But if you're focused on the story,

Lex Fridman (1:18:55.560)

I guess you need to start with a story.

Tony Fadell (1:18:57.360)

You need to start with a story.

Lex Fridman (1:18:58.840)

And if you bring in experts,

Tony Fadell (1:19:01.560)

they can often be detrimental, I guess, to the why.

Lex Fridman (1:19:07.400)

They're too good at doing the what.

Tony Fadell (1:19:09.080)

Well, you can bring in experts for why.

Lex Fridman (1:19:11.560)

There's lots of experts for why.

Tony Fadell (1:19:13.840)

Too many times we get experts for what.

Lex Fridman (1:19:16.480)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:19:17.320)

And then they only focus on the what.

Lex Fridman (1:19:19.200)

And so they come with the specs and feeds

Lex Fridman (1:19:21.680)

and the numbers and all the other stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:19:24.120)

But what you're really asking for is I need somebody

Tony Fadell (1:19:25.960)

about the why and understanding

Lex Fridman (1:19:27.320)

what we're trying to get done here

Lex Fridman (1:19:29.320)

and fitting the what's into that why, right?

Lex Fridman (1:19:32.560)

That's why I do think that one of the qualities

Tony Fadell (1:19:37.720)

that I really enjoy for people to work with

Lex Fridman (1:19:39.800)

is like humility for a particular problem

Tony Fadell (1:19:41.880)

when you approach it.

Lex Fridman (1:19:43.120)

Basically, I don't know how to solve this

Lex Fridman (1:19:45.560)

but we're going to figure it out.

Lex Fridman (1:19:47.320)

As opposed to, oh, I've solved this thing many, many times

Tony Fadell (1:19:51.040)

before I know exactly what to do.

Lex Fridman (1:19:53.480)

Humility before the chaos.

Lex Fridman (1:19:55.760)

So having an open mind that this is going to require

Lex Fridman (1:19:59.240)

a totally new way of doing things.

Tony Fadell (1:20:01.760)

It's a really nice quality to see.

Lex Fridman (1:20:05.560)

You're one of the fascinating humans

Tony Fadell (1:20:07.320)

in the history of Silicon Valley.

Lex Fridman (1:20:09.600)

Steve is another one of those.

Lex Fridman (1:20:11.400)

So those two humans came together for a time

Lex Fridman (1:20:13.840)

to work together.

Lex Fridman (1:20:15.200)

What was it like working with Steve Jobs?

Lex Fridman (1:20:18.840)

What aspect of his behavior and personality,

Lex Fridman (1:20:22.480)

let's say, brought out the best in you?

Lex Fridman (1:20:25.800)

Pushing you, really pushing you,

Tony Fadell (1:20:28.560)

relentless on the details,

Lex Fridman (1:20:30.560)

challenging you for the right reasons.

Tony Fadell (1:20:33.840)

It wasn't bullying, it wasn't demeaning.

Lex Fridman (1:20:36.360)

He would critique the work, not judge the person,

Tony Fadell (1:20:39.080)

at least not in front of them.

Lex Fridman (1:20:41.320)

Or inside of a, you know, in front of a group

Tony Fadell (1:20:43.400)

or anything like that.

Lex Fridman (1:20:44.800)

I know it was really that attention to detail.

Lex Fridman (1:20:46.840)

And he, when he would make a decision, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:20:50.280)

there are, when you make the first version of anything,

Tony Fadell (1:20:52.680)

something revolutionary,

Lex Fridman (1:20:53.880)

there are a lot of opinion based decisions.

Lex Fridman (1:20:56.480)

And there's only one or two people, three people

Lex Fridman (1:20:59.160)

who hold those opinion based decisions

Lex Fridman (1:21:01.560)

and what they should be.

Lex Fridman (1:21:03.000)

And when you have those opinions

Lex Fridman (1:21:07.920)

and you're trying to work with the team

Lex Fridman (1:21:09.840)

to implement those decisions,

Tony Fadell (1:21:13.680)

you have to really tell the why of those decisions.

Lex Fridman (1:21:16.840)

Just don't go do it, but why it's there.

Lex Fridman (1:21:19.840)

So you can feel part of that decision.

Lex Fridman (1:21:23.720)

You can understand what were the trade offs

Lex Fridman (1:21:27.000)

of the different other answers to that opinion, right?

Lex Fridman (1:21:31.080)

And say, this is the reason why we picked the route we picked

Tony Fadell (1:21:35.200)

because it's this for the customer

Lex Fridman (1:21:36.640)

or this for the whole world story, what have you.

Lex Fridman (1:21:38.760)

So that you felt really good

Lex Fridman (1:21:40.920)

because a lot of times most people

Tony Fadell (1:21:42.600)

want a data driven decision,

Lex Fridman (1:21:45.120)

but with the ones you don't get data, right?

Tony Fadell (1:21:48.080)

Maybe in a B2B, you could a little bit

Lex Fridman (1:21:50.000)

cause you can talk to customers,

Lex Fridman (1:21:51.280)

but you can't do that with a consumer product.

Lex Fridman (1:21:52.960)

V1, version one, B2B, business to business

Lex Fridman (1:21:57.080)

versus what's the alternative?

Lex Fridman (1:21:59.280)

Business to consumer, V1.

Tony Fadell (1:22:01.160)

Okay, we're just defining some terms.

Lex Fridman (1:22:05.040)

Yes, you're absolutely.

Lex Fridman (1:22:06.360)

And when you say data driven decisions versus what?

Lex Fridman (1:22:09.720)

Opinion based decisions.

Lex Fridman (1:22:11.200)

So like gut, you have to use, you don't have any.

Lex Fridman (1:22:14.280)

You can't fall back on any data or any previous history

Lex Fridman (1:22:19.840)

to kind of inform you of what's going on, right?

Lex Fridman (1:22:23.040)

And so if you look at most companies who are paralyzed

Lex Fridman (1:22:27.720)

and cannot make new innovations and new products,

Lex Fridman (1:22:31.760)

it's because they're trying to turn,

Lex Fridman (1:22:33.520)

and this is what I saw at Phillips,

Lex Fridman (1:22:35.040)

they're trying to turn opinion based decisions

Tony Fadell (1:22:37.320)

into data driven decisions so they don't lose their jobs.

Lex Fridman (1:22:41.640)

So if you look at management consulting,

Tony Fadell (1:22:43.920)

management consulting is all about

Lex Fridman (1:22:46.160)

taking those opinion based decisions,

Tony Fadell (1:22:48.440)

giving them to someone else to turn into data

Lex Fridman (1:22:50.960)

that comes back to them and says,

Tony Fadell (1:22:52.840)

they can blame the management consultants

Lex Fridman (1:22:55.640)

when something goes wrong,

Lex Fridman (1:22:57.120)

as opposed to it wasn't me, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:01.080)

When you need to have to tell that story,

Tony Fadell (1:23:03.120)

you have to understand that, especially V1,

Lex Fridman (1:23:06.040)

you need to be able to articulate

Tony Fadell (1:23:09.640)

those opinion based decisions and you need to own them.

Lex Fridman (1:23:14.200)

And if you fail with some of them, you didn't get it right,

Lex Fridman (1:23:17.440)

you then own them and fix them and move on, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:21.840)

Version one of the iPod wasn't perfect.

Tony Fadell (1:23:23.920)

Version one of the iPhone wasn't perfect.

Lex Fridman (1:23:25.880)

We got a lot of opinion based decisions wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:23:29.240)

But as you go through that, because you got more data,

Lex Fridman (1:23:31.920)

because V2, you had data on those original opinions

Lex Fridman (1:23:34.880)

and then you were able to then modulate off of that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:23:37.400)

And you'll still have new opinions

Tony Fadell (1:23:38.720)

because those are differentiators

Lex Fridman (1:23:40.520)

that we call differentiators,

Tony Fadell (1:23:42.520)

the things that move the product forward in its evolution.

Lex Fridman (1:23:48.200)

But at the revolution stage,

Tony Fadell (1:23:49.800)

opinions, opinions, opinions, no data.

Lex Fridman (1:23:52.520)

And so you have this discussion, you and Steve

Tony Fadell (1:23:55.560)

in the stage and the whole team with opinions.

Lex Fridman (1:24:02.120)

And there you have to be harsh.

Lex Fridman (1:24:04.280)

And I wouldn't say harsh,

Lex Fridman (1:24:08.120)

but you have to be very determined, right?

Tony Fadell (1:24:10.320)

You know, there are two real opinion based decisions

Lex Fridman (1:24:13.240)

that happened on the iPhone.

Tony Fadell (1:24:15.280)

One was the keyboard.

Lex Fridman (1:24:18.000)

Should we have a hardboard keyboard

Lex Fridman (1:24:19.720)

or should we have a virtual keyboard?

Lex Fridman (1:24:21.400)

The Blackberry was the number one

Tony Fadell (1:24:23.640)

productivity messaging device of its time.

Lex Fridman (1:24:26.840)

It was called a Crackberry for a reason

Tony Fadell (1:24:29.200)

because people loved it because it was easy to type

Lex Fridman (1:24:31.920)

and they could get their work done.

Lex Fridman (1:24:34.840)

But when you're saying we're gonna move from that,

Lex Fridman (1:24:36.840)

everyone's talking about that in the market

Lex Fridman (1:24:38.680)

and you say we're gonna move to a virtual keyboard

Lex Fridman (1:24:41.280)

and it's not gonna work as well as the hardware keyboard,

Lex Fridman (1:24:44.720)

that's an opinion based decision, right?

Lex Fridman (1:24:46.880)

Because the data is telling you

Tony Fadell (1:24:49.800)

all the best sales are over here.

Lex Fridman (1:24:51.360)

God, that takes guts.

Tony Fadell (1:24:53.120)

It takes guts, but you have to look at it

Lex Fridman (1:24:54.720)

from a different point of view.

Lex Fridman (1:24:56.160)

And this is how I learned to come to understand this

Lex Fridman (1:24:59.320)

because I had been building virtual keyboards before

Lex Fridman (1:25:02.360)

and I knew the goodness and the badness in them, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:06.520)

But he was like, look, those are productivity devices.

Tony Fadell (1:25:09.160)

We're making it, ours is born out of an entertainment device

Lex Fridman (1:25:12.840)

and productivity, right?

Tony Fadell (1:25:14.840)

We need to show full screen videos.

Lex Fridman (1:25:16.960)

We are gonna have apps, not apps, but our apps,

Tony Fadell (1:25:19.960)

the Apple apps, cause there were no app store yet,

Lex Fridman (1:25:22.320)

are gonna take over the whole screen.

Tony Fadell (1:25:23.440)

You want a full screen web browser.

Lex Fridman (1:25:25.440)

You don't want one that's like half of the device

Tony Fadell (1:25:27.600)

is just a keyboard.

Lex Fridman (1:25:28.520)

Maybe you don't need that keyboard in every instance.

Lex Fridman (1:25:30.520)

So we want that part of the screen to change

Lex Fridman (1:25:32.360)

based on the tool you may need at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:25:34.680)

And maybe it's just full view, right?

Lex Fridman (1:25:36.880)

So you have to go and understand

Tony Fadell (1:25:38.080)

it's a different type of device,

Lex Fridman (1:25:39.360)

just cause that's that and it's successful for that reason,

Tony Fadell (1:25:42.200)

the crackberry for the keyboard.

Lex Fridman (1:25:43.880)

That's not the only thing you're gonna do with this device

Tony Fadell (1:25:46.080)

cause people only did messaging

Lex Fridman (1:25:47.920)

and maybe a few phone calls, right?

Tony Fadell (1:25:49.720)

This was gonna be so much more.

Lex Fridman (1:25:50.880)

It was gonna be an entertainment web browsing device.

Lex Fridman (1:25:53.400)

So you wanted those tools to go away,

Lex Fridman (1:25:55.560)

but it wouldn't be as good as the hardware keyboard.

Lex Fridman (1:25:58.760)

So that's an opinion.

Lex Fridman (1:25:59.680)

But let me give you another opinion based decision

Tony Fadell (1:26:01.840)

that got turned around before it shipped.

Lex Fridman (1:26:04.720)

Steve said, no SIM slot.

Tony Fadell (1:26:07.240)

I don't want any slots.

Lex Fridman (1:26:08.440)

We're gonna make it very pure.

Tony Fadell (1:26:10.400)

Johnny was like, of course, no slots.

Lex Fridman (1:26:13.120)

Johnny, hi.

Lex Fridman (1:26:14.760)

And we all looked around and go, that doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (1:26:18.600)

You can't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:26:19.440)

Well, why does Varite?

Lex Fridman (1:26:20.280)

And then he would always, and this was the magic of Steve,

Tony Fadell (1:26:22.440)

like when you said, no, that doesn't work,

Lex Fridman (1:26:24.040)

you'd go, well, why does Verizon not have any SIM slots?

Tony Fadell (1:26:27.520)

They showed that you can do a mobile phone

Lex Fridman (1:26:29.280)

with no SIM slots.

Lex Fridman (1:26:30.120)

And you're like, okay, here we go.

Lex Fridman (1:26:32.360)

And so a few days later, we come back with,

Lex Fridman (1:26:36.960)

so product marketing, voice of the customer, engineering,

Lex Fridman (1:26:40.080)

we all come back with all the data

Tony Fadell (1:26:41.480)

showing how many data networks and mobile networks

Lex Fridman (1:26:46.200)

required SIM cards versus did not and what the trends were.

Lex Fridman (1:26:50.560)

And so we showed the data and that killed the,

Lex Fridman (1:26:54.800)

or excuse me, brought back the SIM slot

Tony Fadell (1:26:56.960)

on the original iPhone.

Lex Fridman (1:26:58.440)

Because we're like, because he was just like,

Lex Fridman (1:27:01.320)

we're gonna tell AT&T to not use a SIM, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:04.400)

We're gonna just tell them to do it differently, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:06.880)

But we were like,

Lex Fridman (1:27:07.720)

if we want this thing to go anywhere around the world,

Tony Fadell (1:27:09.560)

you wanna put that friction in.

Lex Fridman (1:27:11.240)

People are gonna move from place to place.

Tony Fadell (1:27:13.120)

They have different SIMs

Lex Fridman (1:27:14.440)

because of the prices and all that stuff.

Tony Fadell (1:27:16.080)

We had to show all of that data.

Lex Fridman (1:27:17.800)

And then that opinion based decision got turned

Tony Fadell (1:27:20.960)

into a data driven decision.

Lex Fridman (1:27:22.800)

And the SIM slot obviously showed up.

Lex Fridman (1:27:25.480)

So those are two very, at the very same time, right?

Lex Fridman (1:27:29.880)

Opinion can hold and so can data overrule opinion

Tony Fadell (1:27:33.640)

when data does exist for a V1.

Lex Fridman (1:27:36.120)

But at the end of the day,

Tony Fadell (1:27:37.600)

you don't know what the right answer is.

Lex Fridman (1:27:40.480)

So doing no SIM card slot

Tony Fadell (1:27:45.480)

may have been the right decision.

Lex Fridman (1:27:47.720)

We won't know.

Tony Fadell (1:27:49.240)

Because maybe if that was the decision,

Lex Fridman (1:27:53.520)

then like many times throughout Apple's history,

Tony Fadell (1:27:56.120)

you basically changed the tide of how technology is done.

Lex Fridman (1:28:01.280)

Absolutely, you never know.

Tony Fadell (1:28:03.520)

Apple started WiFi.

Lex Fridman (1:28:05.160)

People don't understand WiFi came out of there.

Tony Fadell (1:28:06.840)

There was no WiFi in 2001.

Lex Fridman (1:28:08.760)

Apple started WiFi.

Lex Fridman (1:28:10.360)

And then everyone else got on board.

Lex Fridman (1:28:13.520)

If you look at now where we're going,

Tony Fadell (1:28:15.160)

we're going to phones without SIM slots.

Lex Fridman (1:28:17.560)

Cause we have eSIMs, right?

Lex Fridman (1:28:18.880)

And now the SIM slots becoming legacy, legacy.

Lex Fridman (1:28:21.320)

It's a legacy port.

Tony Fadell (1:28:23.040)

That legacy port will probably be gone

Lex Fridman (1:28:24.720)

by six, maybe 10 years.

Tony Fadell (1:28:28.480)

It'll be gone.

Lex Fridman (1:28:29.480)

I'm pretty sure of that.

Tony Fadell (1:28:31.400)

Because it's so much easier for carriers.

Lex Fridman (1:28:32.640)

They don't have to have physical things to go out and right.

Lex Fridman (1:28:35.880)

So right now it's just the early days,

Lex Fridman (1:28:38.640)

but it will happen and it will go its way.

Tony Fadell (1:28:41.080)

It'll fall away, but it will take time.

Lex Fridman (1:28:43.120)

You just couldn't do it back then.

Lex Fridman (1:28:44.920)

So timing is essential here, but at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (1:28:47.960)

it's opinions and that's where the genius is.

Tony Fadell (1:28:49.920)

Sometimes the data tells you one thing,

Lex Fridman (1:28:52.080)

but the data at the end of the day does represent the past.

Tony Fadell (1:28:55.880)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:28:56.720)

And the future may be different than the past.

Tony Fadell (1:28:59.040)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:29:00.560)

Sometimes there's wisdom in the past

Lex Fridman (1:29:03.560)

and sometimes it's actually representative

Lex Fridman (1:29:06.600)

of something that should be overcome

Lex Fridman (1:29:09.120)

and progress looks like leaving that stuff behind.

Lex Fridman (1:29:12.400)

Like the headphone jack.

Tony Fadell (1:29:15.400)

Right.

Lex Fridman (1:29:16.560)

I mean that when different folks were getting rid

Tony Fadell (1:29:20.160)

of the headphone jack, boy, I would love to be a fly

Lex Fridman (1:29:25.600)

in the wall of those discussions.

Tony Fadell (1:29:27.960)

We had that, oh, that was a discussion

Lex Fridman (1:29:31.600)

that happened almost every year.

Tony Fadell (1:29:34.280)

That was an every year,

Lex Fridman (1:29:35.400)

should we get rid of headphone jacks on the iPod, right?

Lex Fridman (1:29:38.760)

When are wireless headsets gonna happen, right?

Lex Fridman (1:29:41.360)

And it took years to build all the right protocols,

Tony Fadell (1:29:44.480)

the chips, all those things to make the experience

Lex Fridman (1:29:47.240)

that is the iPods today, right?

Tony Fadell (1:29:50.880)

To say, have the confidence,

Lex Fridman (1:29:52.480)

cause Bluetooth was good, but it wasn't Apple like.

Lex Fridman (1:29:55.640)

So that is like, we gotta make our own chips,

Lex Fridman (1:29:57.440)

we gotta make our own software stacks.

Tony Fadell (1:29:59.000)

Now we have the confidence to remove the headphone jack

Lex Fridman (1:30:01.920)

and actually make you pay $200 more for your iPhone

Tony Fadell (1:30:04.840)

that you were just paying because of the headphone jack.

Lex Fridman (1:30:07.320)

Now we've grown our revenue,

Lex Fridman (1:30:09.200)

we've given a new experience to the user, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:11.880)

And ta da, you know, and it's just, it's magic.

Lex Fridman (1:30:15.640)

And now the world's transformed to everyone,

Lex Fridman (1:30:17.960)

you know, moving to that, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:19.920)

But it took years to understand the problem,

Lex Fridman (1:30:22.840)

develop the technology and not just rush it to market

Tony Fadell (1:30:26.720)

to get a half experience, but to get it right

Lex Fridman (1:30:28.880)

and refine it, then ship it.

Lex Fridman (1:30:31.000)

And only then after it was probably four

Lex Fridman (1:30:33.240)

or five years in development,

Lex Fridman (1:30:34.800)

just like the M1 processor, right?

Lex Fridman (1:30:37.960)

That was a work from 2008, right?

Tony Fadell (1:30:43.200)

Grinding away, grinding away, grinding away,

Lex Fridman (1:30:45.320)

then saying, okay, now we have the confidence

Tony Fadell (1:30:47.040)

we're doing our own silicon for all the iPhones

Lex Fridman (1:30:49.600)

and iPads and such.

Tony Fadell (1:30:54.680)

Now we're gonna turn to the Mac

Lex Fridman (1:30:56.120)

and make sure we have the best processor, right?

Tony Fadell (1:30:58.200)

Not just that we have the best integrated design team.

Lex Fridman (1:31:01.600)

And then saying we're gonna, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:31:03.600)

and then besting everyone, making sure the softwares

Lex Fridman (1:31:06.960)

and the hardware is designed at the same time,

Tony Fadell (1:31:09.440)

making sure the kernels, all those things

Lex Fridman (1:31:11.120)

are gonna use the best efficiency and then popping it out.

Lex Fridman (1:31:16.600)

And then it feels seamless.

Lex Fridman (1:31:18.560)

It's magic.

Tony Fadell (1:31:19.400)

There were no, as far as I could tell,

Lex Fridman (1:31:21.920)

unless you were in real esoteric drivers

Tony Fadell (1:31:23.680)

or something like that, it just worked.

Lex Fridman (1:31:25.960)

It was magic.

Tony Fadell (1:31:27.080)

Like the transition, it was not even a speed bump.

Lex Fridman (1:31:29.520)

It was not even a crack in the road.

Lex Fridman (1:31:32.200)

So perhaps famously Steve had a bit of a temper.

Lex Fridman (1:31:36.480)

Steve Jobs, would you say his particular personality

Tony Fadell (1:31:41.480)

in this aspect was constructive or destructive

Lex Fridman (1:31:46.120)

in the process of shaping these opinion based ideas?

Lex Fridman (1:31:55.360)

So in Build, I write a chapter called Assholes.

Lex Fridman (1:32:00.920)

Yes, and you lay out beautifully the types of assholes

Lex Fridman (1:32:05.840)

and maybe you could speak to the constructive

Lex Fridman (1:32:09.480)

and the destructive types of assholes.

Lex Fridman (1:32:13.600)

So there's really two delineations that I've found

Lex Fridman (1:32:18.640)

of real fundamental ones.

Lex Fridman (1:32:20.600)

And that is again, the why.

Lex Fridman (1:32:24.560)

Why do I feel this person is an asshole?

Tony Fadell (1:32:27.840)

They might not be.

Lex Fridman (1:32:30.160)

I feel this is a person who's an asshole.

Tony Fadell (1:32:32.640)

Are they motivated by their ego

Lex Fridman (1:32:35.680)

or are they motivated by their mission?

Tony Fadell (1:32:38.280)

Something they're trying to do

Lex Fridman (1:32:39.640)

and doing in service of something else, right?

Tony Fadell (1:32:43.200)

Sometimes those lines can be blurry,

Lex Fridman (1:32:44.800)

but it's usually pretty clear.

Tony Fadell (1:32:48.960)

When it's ego motivated, it's clear they're just trying

Lex Fridman (1:32:52.960)

to get up in the ranks, push people down,

Tony Fadell (1:32:55.760)

shove people aside.

Lex Fridman (1:32:57.400)

I think we saw a president do that on a stage once.

Lex Fridman (1:33:00.560)

I'm me and I'm the guy, right?

Lex Fridman (1:33:06.960)

And I'm gonna prove it by pushing everyone away

Lex Fridman (1:33:09.280)

and being nefarious or what have you.

Lex Fridman (1:33:11.640)

Either passively aggressive or aggressively aggressive,

Lex Fridman (1:33:16.360)

but they're doing about themselves.

Lex Fridman (1:33:18.360)

There's another one, which is someone who's so attentive

Tony Fadell (1:33:21.760)

to detail and unrelenting that they're trying to get

Lex Fridman (1:33:26.480)

the right things for the country.

Tony Fadell (1:33:28.600)

They're trying to get the right things for the customer

Lex Fridman (1:33:31.960)

or in service of their mission.

Lex Fridman (1:33:33.920)

And they wanna make sure we fulfill those things, right?

Lex Fridman (1:33:37.920)

And they really care.

Tony Fadell (1:33:39.280)

They don't micromanage all the details,

Lex Fridman (1:33:41.480)

but they micromanage the details where the customer,

Tony Fadell (1:33:44.480)

it touches the customer in some way.

Lex Fridman (1:33:48.520)

People who work with those types of people

Tony Fadell (1:33:51.240)

who are unrelenting and push you and might make you upset.

Lex Fridman (1:33:55.040)

A lot of times it's a knee jerk reaction to go,

Tony Fadell (1:33:58.200)

they are an asshole.

Lex Fridman (1:34:01.920)

Get off my back, you're an ass, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Tony Fadell (1:34:05.800)

Right, and you're protecting your ego

Lex Fridman (1:34:09.320)

because what's happening is that person

Tony Fadell (1:34:11.160)

is usually pushing you beyond your boundaries.

Lex Fridman (1:34:13.800)

They see something that we can do or you can do

Tony Fadell (1:34:18.360)

that you're just either not wanting to do

Lex Fridman (1:34:20.600)

for whatever reason, you're not confident in that.

Tony Fadell (1:34:23.600)

You're like, I don't wanna take the extra time

Lex Fridman (1:34:26.240)

and saying, no, we need to get that done and pushing you.

Tony Fadell (1:34:28.880)

Okay, and so when we came to those areas,

Lex Fridman (1:34:35.520)

it wasn't just a one on one,

Tony Fadell (1:34:36.880)

it could be Steve against the team going,

Lex Fridman (1:34:39.000)

we need glass instead of plastic

Tony Fadell (1:34:41.320)

on the front face of the iPhone,

Lex Fridman (1:34:43.120)

and we're going to do this.

Lex Fridman (1:34:45.480)

And we're like, God, you know, and so we did it.

Lex Fridman (1:34:49.520)

And he pushed us because he didn't know all the details,

Lex Fridman (1:34:52.520)

but he could see in our minds that we're like,

Lex Fridman (1:34:55.000)

yeah, we could probably, yeah, we could probably,

Lex Fridman (1:34:57.560)

but man, it's really putting us in risk.

Lex Fridman (1:34:59.600)

And we laid out the risks for him.

Lex Fridman (1:35:01.560)

And he's like, I'm willing to take those risks.

Lex Fridman (1:35:03.640)

We'll do that.

Tony Fadell (1:35:04.480)

We're like, we might be three months late.

Lex Fridman (1:35:06.480)

He's like, this is so important.

Tony Fadell (1:35:08.480)

We need to stay on time.

Lex Fridman (1:35:11.480)

You know, but it would be all the time, push, push, push.

Tony Fadell (1:35:14.840)

It reminds me of like kids growing up and me as growing up,

Lex Fridman (1:35:18.280)

you know, when your parents push you

Tony Fadell (1:35:20.760)

to make you grow beyond your boundaries,

Lex Fridman (1:35:22.760)

your personal boundaries.

Lex Fridman (1:35:23.720)

And you're like, God damn it, I'm so, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:35:27.360)

but they do it for the right reasons.

Tony Fadell (1:35:28.600)

Now let's see, it's not bullying.

Lex Fridman (1:35:30.960)

It's not about bullying.

Tony Fadell (1:35:31.880)

It's not about demeaning.

Lex Fridman (1:35:33.480)

It's about either pushing you to another part of the mission

Tony Fadell (1:35:36.680)

that needs to get done, or it's about critiquing your work,

Lex Fridman (1:35:39.560)

but not judging you.

Tony Fadell (1:35:40.960)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:35:41.800)

Well, there's a lot to say there.

Lex Fridman (1:35:43.800)

So one, it's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:35:46.680)

It really is fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:35:48.120)

And you laid out a very nice picture,

Lex Fridman (1:35:49.880)

but it does feel like there's sometimes gray areas,

Tony Fadell (1:35:55.080)

which is why it makes all of this very complicated.

Lex Fridman (1:35:57.120)

So one question I have for you

Tony Fadell (1:35:58.480)

in terms of glass on the iPhone.

Lex Fridman (1:36:03.040)

How important is it that like Steve in that case is right?

Tony Fadell (1:36:09.600)

Because I could argue each side.

Lex Fridman (1:36:12.640)

It seems like in one sense,

Tony Fadell (1:36:14.840)

just having a strong vision and opinion

Lex Fridman (1:36:18.160)

is already going to make everybody grow,

Tony Fadell (1:36:20.760)

even if it turns out to be the wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:36:22.920)

As long as you are sort of standing your ground,

Tony Fadell (1:36:28.640)

you know, Napoleon invading Russia or something

Lex Fridman (1:36:30.680)

in the winter, like it's just not gonna be a good idea.

Tony Fadell (1:36:35.360)

It's not a good idea, but I'm gonna hold to that.

Lex Fridman (1:36:39.080)

And then once you decide, you go all in.

Lex Fridman (1:36:41.680)

And then from that, even if the whole team knows

Lex Fridman (1:36:44.080)

it's the wrong decision, just sticking by it,

Tony Fadell (1:36:46.840)

powering through, you will learn through the pain of it.

Lex Fridman (1:36:50.040)

Like everybody will learn.

Lex Fridman (1:36:51.520)

So that's one side.

Lex Fridman (1:36:53.000)

The other is maybe the asshole, the vision driven asshole

Tony Fadell (1:36:59.600)

gets to be more and more of an asshole

Lex Fridman (1:37:02.600)

if they have a track record of through that process,

Tony Fadell (1:37:06.800)

having built people up, having made the correct decisions.

Lex Fridman (1:37:10.480)

They can't, they're not allowed to be an asshole.

Tony Fadell (1:37:13.000)

They're in rare air and no one can challenge them.

Lex Fridman (1:37:15.120)

Right, right.

Tony Fadell (1:37:16.560)

Steve was never that.

Lex Fridman (1:37:18.680)

That's the great thing.

Tony Fadell (1:37:19.760)

He was never unchallengeable.

Lex Fridman (1:37:22.680)

You could challenge him.

Tony Fadell (1:37:23.520)

Now the plastic to glass story is a perfect example of this.

Lex Fridman (1:37:31.160)

So at the beginning of the project,

Tony Fadell (1:37:33.160)

well before we were going,

Lex Fridman (1:37:35.080)

we had always had these things about plastic front iPods,

Tony Fadell (1:37:38.680)

these kinds of things, scratches and all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:37:41.320)

So we said, oh, we're gonna have a glass or a plastic,

Tony Fadell (1:37:46.320)

a cover for the display.

Lex Fridman (1:37:47.800)

Cause the display was glass underneath it.

Tony Fadell (1:37:51.200)

We argued back and forth about glass versus plastic.

Lex Fridman (1:37:54.720)

And then we all landed together on plastic.

Tony Fadell (1:38:00.080)

Okay, the original decision was plastic.

Lex Fridman (1:38:03.240)

And the reasons were, okay, we don't wanna make a mistake.

Tony Fadell (1:38:06.320)

Glass can break, you know,

Lex Fridman (1:38:08.960)

people drop them all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:38:11.400)

So we don't wanna have a fragile device

Lex Fridman (1:38:14.200)

because you're gonna be using even more

Lex Fridman (1:38:17.120)

than a music player, right?

Lex Fridman (1:38:20.520)

And you're gonna be holding your head

Lex Fridman (1:38:21.760)

and putting it in your pocket and misses and all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:38:24.880)

So we went down the road with plastic.

Tony Fadell (1:38:27.320)

When it was shown, when the product was shown

Lex Fridman (1:38:30.720)

at Mac World in 2007, the first time, that was plastic.

Tony Fadell (1:38:35.720)

We had just enough of them in the field at the time.

Lex Fridman (1:38:39.640)

We started to start seeing light scratches on the plastic.

Tony Fadell (1:38:45.840)

Reviewers who didn't have the device yet,

Lex Fridman (1:38:48.120)

cause it was behind glass.

Tony Fadell (1:38:49.560)

If you remember 2007, the Jesus phone comes up

Lex Fridman (1:38:52.960)

and no one could even touch them.

Tony Fadell (1:38:54.280)

You could just look at it

Lex Fridman (1:38:55.280)

in this beautiful museum quality box.

Tony Fadell (1:38:57.800)

Like it came from the future or whatever, the past.

Lex Fridman (1:39:00.560)

And it was just plastic.

Lex Fridman (1:39:02.040)

And it was like, oh, and you just looked

Lex Fridman (1:39:06.080)

and that was all you got.

Lex Fridman (1:39:07.400)

But then people said, well, what screen is,

Lex Fridman (1:39:10.560)

what covers on that, you know, reviewers who knew better,

Tony Fadell (1:39:13.200)

you know, it's plastic.

Lex Fridman (1:39:15.440)

And they were like, really?

Lex Fridman (1:39:17.840)

And so there was enough of a doubt there.

Lex Fridman (1:39:20.000)

And then when we started to do it,

Lex Fridman (1:39:21.440)

and then Steve changed the frame of reference

Lex Fridman (1:39:24.080)

of the question or of the result

Tony Fadell (1:39:26.560)

of what the customer would think.

Lex Fridman (1:39:28.200)

And he was like, if we designed it with plastic,

Tony Fadell (1:39:31.360)

with plastic and it's in their pocket all the time

Lex Fridman (1:39:34.360)

and it gets scratched by coins, slightly scratched

Tony Fadell (1:39:36.920)

or by keys or something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:39:39.400)

That is a design problem.

Tony Fadell (1:39:41.600)

We need to fix the problem.

Lex Fridman (1:39:42.520)

That was our bad.

Tony Fadell (1:39:45.480)

If they go off and drop it or even slightly drop it

Lex Fridman (1:39:51.040)

and it cracks, it's the customer's fault.

Lex Fridman (1:39:54.440)

And they have much lower,

Lex Fridman (1:39:56.200)

they have less likelihood to complain.

Tony Fadell (1:39:58.920)

Yes, they'll complain,

Lex Fridman (1:40:00.240)

but they're part of that, of that failure.

Tony Fadell (1:40:04.480)

Yes.

Lex Fridman (1:40:05.320)

Oh, that's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (1:40:06.640)

And then.

Lex Fridman (1:40:07.600)

There's truth to that.

Lex Fridman (1:40:08.600)

Right?

Lex Fridman (1:40:09.600)

Because then they were part of why it failed.

Tony Fadell (1:40:11.840)

Whereas the design, they didn't do anything wrong.

Lex Fridman (1:40:13.680)

It was just sitting in their pocket and it's scratching

Lex Fridman (1:40:16.800)

and that's normal use.

Lex Fridman (1:40:18.440)

Abnormal use has been dropped.

Lex Fridman (1:40:19.920)

And we're like, oh, now we get it.

Lex Fridman (1:40:23.120)

And so we all moved to that mindset

Tony Fadell (1:40:25.960)

when you framed the problem and the solution in that way

Lex Fridman (1:40:30.320)

versus the original framing

Tony Fadell (1:40:32.160)

where we all landed on plastic.

Lex Fridman (1:40:34.120)

So, and then he was unrelenting on that,

Lex Fridman (1:40:37.120)

but we all had moved and we had moved mindset

Lex Fridman (1:40:41.080)

and we understood the why and we marshaled together.

Lex Fridman (1:40:45.560)

And then by the end of June, and it was crazy,

Lex Fridman (1:40:48.760)

the mechanical product design teams sourcing,

Tony Fadell (1:40:52.640)

all of us, the partner Corning pulled together

Lex Fridman (1:40:56.080)

to make that happen because it was the right reason.

Lex Fridman (1:40:59.440)

Right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:00.280)

So this, you look at these stories

Lex Fridman (1:41:03.240)

and you hear just the top line rumors of the takeaways,

Lex Fridman (1:41:06.960)

but that's not usually how it all happened

Tony Fadell (1:41:08.960)

of like one leader was, that's not how Steve was.

Lex Fridman (1:41:12.160)

Now I've seen leaders who are just pounding

Lex Fridman (1:41:14.960)

and just had no real empathy for the team

Lex Fridman (1:41:18.080)

and understanding the why.

Lex Fridman (1:41:19.120)

And it's just, it is the way I want it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:41:21.040)

I am the supreme leader.

Tony Fadell (1:41:23.600)

That wasn't like that when.

Lex Fridman (1:41:25.680)

He just had a very strong opinion.

Tony Fadell (1:41:27.640)

Very strong opinion.

Lex Fridman (1:41:29.280)

But it was challengeable.

Tony Fadell (1:41:30.840)

It was challengeable and if you came with the right thing,

Lex Fridman (1:41:33.360)

you know, it was, you could modulate that,

Lex Fridman (1:41:35.640)

but you had to come with a team.

Lex Fridman (1:41:37.080)

It couldn't just be you.

Tony Fadell (1:41:38.240)

It had to become a team and data and to overcome

Lex Fridman (1:41:41.560)

because it was a very strong opinion.

Lex Fridman (1:41:43.200)

And there's personal quirks of character, like you said.

Lex Fridman (1:41:46.480)

Bad days and good days.

Tony Fadell (1:41:47.760)

Bad days and good days.

Lex Fridman (1:41:48.600)

So there's also the three options you said.

Tony Fadell (1:41:51.320)

You noticed that the third option is always going

Lex Fridman (1:41:53.880)

to be the one that's picked.

Tony Fadell (1:41:56.400)

Those kinds of.

Lex Fridman (1:41:57.240)

Idiosyncrasies.

Tony Fadell (1:41:58.080)

Idiosyncrasies.

Lex Fridman (1:41:59.480)

And that, so that brings up another thing.

Tony Fadell (1:42:04.600)

You said challenge the idea, not the person.

Lex Fridman (1:42:10.200)

I'm somebody who has a, you know, I have a temper.

Tony Fadell (1:42:13.480)

I use colorful language and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:42:16.000)

On teams I work.

Tony Fadell (1:42:17.240)

In my private life I'm much calmer and so on.

Lex Fridman (1:42:19.400)

But I get, when I get really passionate

Tony Fadell (1:42:21.200)

with engineering teams.

Lex Fridman (1:42:23.560)

I've been called an asshole.

Lex Fridman (1:42:24.960)

And you get, I mean, I am distinctly aware

Lex Fridman (1:42:29.320)

that you cross lines often.

Lex Fridman (1:42:34.000)

There's like levels, right?

Lex Fridman (1:42:35.760)

Sure.

Tony Fadell (1:42:36.680)

You know, you could, it has to do with language

Lex Fridman (1:42:39.280)

and how language is heard.

Lex Fridman (1:42:41.120)

So for example, you could say a lot of stuff to me.

Lex Fridman (1:42:43.480)

You could swear.

Tony Fadell (1:42:44.520)

You could say stuff that sounds, like, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:42:49.720)

Lex, sometimes I think you're the dumbest human

Tony Fadell (1:42:53.400)

on the face of the earth or something.

Lex Fridman (1:42:54.640)

I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:42:55.720)

That sounds very personal, right?

Lex Fridman (1:42:57.360)

But I'm not gonna take that personally.

Tony Fadell (1:42:58.840)

I understand what's being said.

Lex Fridman (1:43:00.360)

And then I also notice that there's other people

Tony Fadell (1:43:02.480)

that take stuff more personally.

Lex Fridman (1:43:04.520)

This has to do with teams and figuring out like,

Tony Fadell (1:43:07.160)

okay, who's going to take certain words personally

Lex Fridman (1:43:09.640)

and not, and you have to know.

Tony Fadell (1:43:10.920)

That's what makes a great coach, a great leader,

Lex Fridman (1:43:13.600)

a mentor, you have to like factor all that in.

Lex Fridman (1:43:16.960)

But it just, there's something about just being an asshole

Lex Fridman (1:43:19.800)

and being passionate and really driven

Tony Fadell (1:43:23.800)

that sometimes you do cross lines.

Lex Fridman (1:43:26.920)

And that's, I don't know what to do with that

Tony Fadell (1:43:30.280)

because it feels like it comes with the territory.

Lex Fridman (1:43:32.640)

Like you have, it seems like you can't just have

Tony Fadell (1:43:36.240)

a perfectly optimized.

Lex Fridman (1:43:38.840)

No, no, absolutely not.

Tony Fadell (1:43:41.120)

We're humans.

Lex Fridman (1:43:41.960)

Yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:43:42.800)

We're humans, we don't have a program.

Lex Fridman (1:43:43.840)

Everyone's programmed the same way to react the same way

Lex Fridman (1:43:46.320)

to given stimulus, right?

Lex Fridman (1:43:48.080)

Yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:43:48.920)

So, you know, you said, I don't know

Lex Fridman (1:43:52.480)

if this was a real example, but you said,

Tony Fadell (1:43:53.800)

oh, you're the dumbest human on earth or whatever.

Lex Fridman (1:43:56.560)

I would never say that.

Tony Fadell (1:43:58.560)

Absolutely never.

Lex Fridman (1:44:00.000)

And if someone said that to me or I saw someone else say

Tony Fadell (1:44:02.800)

that to another person on the team, absolutely not.

Lex Fridman (1:44:06.160)

That is not allowed because that's judging someone.

Tony Fadell (1:44:08.640)

You may be heated and you can get heated

Lex Fridman (1:44:10.680)

and you can say it in your intonation,

Lex Fridman (1:44:12.760)

but to then try to put a label on it

Lex Fridman (1:44:15.240)

and put a label on a person, that is not allowed.

Lex Fridman (1:44:17.920)

So if you let that kind of culture happen

Lex Fridman (1:44:20.560)

and it becomes somewhat, you know, sometimes it's ingest,

Tony Fadell (1:44:26.240)

you know, it has to be very much ingest

Lex Fridman (1:44:28.000)

and those two people have to have

Tony Fadell (1:44:29.040)

a really good working relationship.

Lex Fridman (1:44:31.640)

But other than that, I'm sorry,

Tony Fadell (1:44:33.280)

it's gonna be a lot more, you could say a septic

Lex Fridman (1:44:37.480)

in that way that you're not gonna add that stuff in,

Lex Fridman (1:44:39.720)

but you can do it with all other types of ways

Lex Fridman (1:44:42.280)

without saying that because then people who do react

Tony Fadell (1:44:45.480)

to that kind of language and don't have those shields

Lex Fridman (1:44:48.480)

because they might not have that stream confidence level

Tony Fadell (1:44:51.720)

that you do and you can just brush it off,

Lex Fridman (1:44:54.360)

that can be very cancerous in a team

Tony Fadell (1:44:56.960)

because people then mean that and then they see,

Lex Fridman (1:44:59.680)

oh, that's the right way to be.

Tony Fadell (1:45:01.240)

You gotta snuff that out and you gotta be that,

Lex Fridman (1:45:04.240)

you gotta be that change or that model

Tony Fadell (1:45:06.200)

that you wanna show the team.

Lex Fridman (1:45:08.000)

Yes, it's too, even if it doesn't affect me,

Tony Fadell (1:45:10.680)

it's going to affect a significant enough fraction

Lex Fridman (1:45:14.200)

of brilliant people where that shouldn't be part

Tony Fadell (1:45:17.480)

of the culture.

Lex Fridman (1:45:18.320)

Exactly, and other people see that happen

Lex Fridman (1:45:20.200)

and then, oh, I guess that's acceptable, right?

Lex Fridman (1:45:22.720)

Just like politics in the workplace,

Lex Fridman (1:45:24.600)

is that acceptable or not?

Lex Fridman (1:45:26.120)

I call it out exactly when I see it in front of everyone,

Tony Fadell (1:45:29.160)

right, because it's just another ego driven thing.

Lex Fridman (1:45:32.800)

You have to set the tone as a leader

Tony Fadell (1:45:35.640)

for what you want your organization to be

Lex Fridman (1:45:37.600)

and how it gets reflected in the world

Lex Fridman (1:45:39.800)

and you have to uphold that and you can't,

Lex Fridman (1:45:42.000)

sure, you can have an excursion outside of that,

Lex Fridman (1:45:44.840)

but you have to go back and say, I'm sorry.

Lex Fridman (1:45:47.080)

Yeah, yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:45:49.040)

You have to go and apologize, heal and said,

Lex Fridman (1:45:51.320)

I was not the person I wanted to be that day,

Tony Fadell (1:45:53.640)

I'm really sorry.

Lex Fridman (1:45:55.160)

Yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:45:56.000)

This is, and even in front of the team

Lex Fridman (1:45:58.200)

and have that humility and say, we're all human here

Lex Fridman (1:46:00.720)

and just cause I'm the leader

Lex Fridman (1:46:01.680)

doesn't mean I don't make mistakes.

Lex Fridman (1:46:03.400)

So have the self awareness, apologize.

Lex Fridman (1:46:06.560)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (1:46:07.720)

And that's also part of the culture.

Lex Fridman (1:46:11.480)

Oh yeah.

Lex Fridman (1:46:12.320)

How are you different from Steve as a leader and designer?

Lex Fridman (1:46:16.840)

So you've spoken about sort of what made you strong,

Tony Fadell (1:46:20.320)

which is he was able to challenge,

Lex Fridman (1:46:22.120)

he was able to push you to bring out the best.

Lex Fridman (1:46:26.040)

Well, I come from the technical angle, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:28.640)

Deep technology, software, hardware, systems thinking,

Tony Fadell (1:46:33.200)

implementation, all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:46:34.520)

So I have a different bent.

Tony Fadell (1:46:36.240)

He wanted to be an engineer, started,

Lex Fridman (1:46:38.720)

but really he was much better at all the other things,

Tony Fadell (1:46:40.880)

the storytelling, the interfacing

Lex Fridman (1:46:43.440)

and being the voice of the customer

Lex Fridman (1:46:45.680)

and being that product marketer in a way, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:47.920)

That we talked about.

Tony Fadell (1:46:49.120)

I grew into being the product marketing, then marketing.

Lex Fridman (1:46:51.480)

He came really out the other way, right?

Lex Fridman (1:46:53.880)

And never got really deep technically.

Lex Fridman (1:46:55.520)

So that's two different mindsets.

Tony Fadell (1:46:57.560)

One's not better or worse.

Lex Fridman (1:46:58.760)

It's just, that's how it is.

Lex Fridman (1:47:00.120)

And it takes all kinds and all kinds can do great designs.

Lex Fridman (1:47:05.000)

Did it manifest itself differently?

Tony Fadell (1:47:06.640)

Just the fact that you came from those different places.

Lex Fridman (1:47:09.960)

Absolutely.

Tony Fadell (1:47:10.800)

Like what, so like the discussion about glass on the iPhone

Lex Fridman (1:47:15.000)

was probably had a different flavor to it.

Tony Fadell (1:47:17.160)

Sure.

Lex Fridman (1:47:18.000)

When you started getting into the technical details,

Tony Fadell (1:47:20.320)

enough so you're getting the third order technical details

Lex Fridman (1:47:23.280)

and he can't argue with that anymore.

Tony Fadell (1:47:25.680)

Then with somebody he's like, okay.

Lex Fridman (1:47:27.960)

At some point he's like, I can't win this war.

Lex Fridman (1:47:30.880)

And he learned that very early on

Lex Fridman (1:47:32.760)

because he didn't like the way the look of the Macintosh

Tony Fadell (1:47:36.960)

board, the PCB was laid out.

Lex Fridman (1:47:39.480)

He wanted it to be beautiful on the outside

Lex Fridman (1:47:41.520)

and on the inside.

Lex Fridman (1:47:42.480)

He's like, why are all these wires running this way?

Lex Fridman (1:47:44.920)

Why doesn't it have all this symmetry?

Lex Fridman (1:47:47.240)

And we have to make it beautiful on the inside.

Lex Fridman (1:47:49.520)

And even the traces on the boards

Lex Fridman (1:47:52.120)

have to look a certain way.

Lex Fridman (1:47:53.560)

So the teams made the board they knew that would work.

Lex Fridman (1:47:56.560)

And then they made the board that the way Steve wanted it.

Lex Fridman (1:47:59.680)

And that didn't work.

Lex Fridman (1:48:01.000)

And then Steve instantly figured out like at some point

Tony Fadell (1:48:03.880)

don't micromanage every single detail.

Lex Fridman (1:48:05.960)

There's some things he doesn't know enough about.

Lex Fridman (1:48:07.760)

And so he would get out of that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:09.040)

But that was one of those instances

Tony Fadell (1:48:11.200)

where he pushed really hard and that's his opinion.

Lex Fridman (1:48:13.320)

So they said, okay, we're gonna make it

Tony Fadell (1:48:14.480)

a data driven decision and we're gonna make both.

Lex Fridman (1:48:16.680)

I'm gonna show you the results, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:18.960)

And then from there, he didn't get into those details.

Lex Fridman (1:48:21.440)

So from that, you could have a great challenge, right?

Tony Fadell (1:48:25.160)

Cause then you could get those data and say,

Lex Fridman (1:48:26.680)

we can't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:27.560)

And let me show you why, or we can do that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:29.560)

And then Steve would go, you can't do that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:31.080)

And you're like, oh, we can do that.

Lex Fridman (1:48:32.000)

Let me show you, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:33.120)

So there's certain times when you were like

Lex Fridman (1:48:34.800)

bringing something to reality

Lex Fridman (1:48:36.400)

that he didn't think could exist, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:39.280)

So it was always that creative tension,

Lex Fridman (1:48:42.760)

that interaction that was so successful, right?

Lex Fridman (1:48:46.240)

I think, but there was one other fundamental thing

Tony Fadell (1:48:48.440)

that was different and that it graded on the team

Lex Fridman (1:48:52.920)

and that I made sure and I learned from to not do.

Lex Fridman (1:48:56.480)

And I maybe overdue now in the opposite direction,

Lex Fridman (1:49:00.640)

which is when there's a great idea that comes from the team,

Tony Fadell (1:49:04.640)

acknowledge that person and go, that is a great idea.

Lex Fridman (1:49:07.840)

As the leader, the opinion driven, that's a great idea.

Tony Fadell (1:49:11.040)

Let's build on that.

Lex Fridman (1:49:11.920)

Let's see if that can do that.

Tony Fadell (1:49:13.160)

Or it's a great idea, but not for now, put it aside.

Lex Fridman (1:49:15.480)

But call out when people have great ideas

Tony Fadell (1:49:17.880)

because it's infectious.

Lex Fridman (1:49:19.360)

And that means maybe not ideas that come bubble up

Tony Fadell (1:49:21.800)

to the customer level, but inside the organization.

Lex Fridman (1:49:24.440)

People like they get rewarded for their ideas

Lex Fridman (1:49:26.320)

and say, that's a great one.

Lex Fridman (1:49:29.040)

Steve was always like, you give an idea

Lex Fridman (1:49:32.880)

and he would go, okay, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (1:49:37.400)

The next day, 24 hours later,

Tony Fadell (1:49:38.960)

it would come back with slight modifications.

Lex Fridman (1:49:40.840)

I've had this genius idea, right?

Lex Fridman (1:49:43.840)

And it's sooner or later we'd look around the table

Lex Fridman (1:49:46.760)

and we'd like roll our eyes and go, here we go again.

Lex Fridman (1:49:49.280)

So it demotivates you from generating ideas a little bit.

Lex Fridman (1:49:53.360)

Well, we got used to it,

Lex Fridman (1:49:55.080)

but later on in the team, it was just not,

Lex Fridman (1:49:59.640)

it doesn't want to bring the best, right?

Tony Fadell (1:50:02.160)

Cause if you're always like, the reaction is never,

Lex Fridman (1:50:05.760)

that's a genius idea.

Tony Fadell (1:50:07.600)

It was always like, it was either negative or neutral.

Lex Fridman (1:50:12.360)

Right?

Tony Fadell (1:50:13.200)

Then it doesn't have that same emotional effect

Lex Fridman (1:50:15.840)

that you want you to bring your best.

Tony Fadell (1:50:17.840)

Yeah, sometimes it's fun when people get excited

Lex Fridman (1:50:19.880)

by just, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Fadell (1:50:21.040)

You kind of build on top excitement.

Lex Fridman (1:50:23.240)

It could be, but coupled with sort of harshness

Tony Fadell (1:50:25.880)

when the idea is bad and you call out the bad ideas too.

Lex Fridman (1:50:28.840)

So it's the good and the bad.

Tony Fadell (1:50:30.760)

Oh, you could say, you don't have to say bad idea.

Lex Fridman (1:50:33.920)

You say, maybe not now.

Tony Fadell (1:50:35.560)

Let's table that for later.

Lex Fridman (1:50:37.000)

Let's discuss it or say, that's a decent idea.

Lex Fridman (1:50:40.520)

But did you think about that idea this way?

Lex Fridman (1:50:42.120)

Not just no or yes,

Lex Fridman (1:50:43.840)

but let's talk about why that might not be applicable

Lex Fridman (1:50:46.880)

in this case so that they can learn.

Lex Fridman (1:50:48.920)

So the next time they bring the next idea,

Lex Fridman (1:50:50.760)

they can modulate and understand

Tony Fadell (1:50:52.440)

to start seeing through the opinion based decision makers

Lex Fridman (1:50:55.040)

or the databases to bring it

Lex Fridman (1:50:56.160)

and bring better formatted arguments or ideas

Lex Fridman (1:50:59.480)

so that you have better chance of success the next time.

Lex Fridman (1:51:02.320)

Yeah. Right?

Lex Fridman (1:51:03.160)

You got to train through those moments.

Tony Fadell (1:51:04.880)

You got to teach, those are teaching moments.

Lex Fridman (1:51:07.360)

Teaching moments.

Tony Fadell (1:51:08.800)

I aspire to be that kind of person.

Lex Fridman (1:51:10.760)

I'll usually just say that idea is shit.

Tony Fadell (1:51:14.480)

That is the like, and then you,

Lex Fridman (1:51:18.320)

I remember that this brilliant person

Tony Fadell (1:51:21.080)

just gave that really shitty idea.

Lex Fridman (1:51:23.080)

So I remember to make sure the next time

Tony Fadell (1:51:24.640)

they give a good idea, I really compliment that good idea.

Lex Fridman (1:51:27.360)

But I personally, I mean, it's emotion,

Lex Fridman (1:51:32.080)

but I call out the really shitty ideas.

Lex Fridman (1:51:34.680)

But you should call it the really great ones.

Tony Fadell (1:51:36.520)

If you let the pendulum swing both ways,

Lex Fridman (1:51:38.200)

then everybody goes, he's balanced.

Tony Fadell (1:51:40.080)

It's always one way.

Lex Fridman (1:51:42.000)

Why bring any idea?

Tony Fadell (1:51:43.680)

I'm all about the pendulum.

Lex Fridman (1:51:45.120)

Right?

Tony Fadell (1:51:46.320)

You got to have both, the joy and the pain.

Lex Fridman (1:51:51.240)

Don't you give me pain all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:51:53.880)

So you mentioned the glass and the iPhone.

Lex Fridman (1:51:55.840)

So you wanted to, not just the iPod, not just Nest.

Tony Fadell (1:51:59.000)

You were one of the key figures

Lex Fridman (1:52:00.480)

in the creation of the iPhone.

Lex Fridman (1:52:02.000)

What's the interesting aspects?

Lex Fridman (1:52:03.720)

What's the good, the bad, and the ugly

Lex Fridman (1:52:05.520)

of the origin story of the iPhone?

Lex Fridman (1:52:08.560)

Again, this is a Netflix series

Tony Fadell (1:52:10.640)

that spans multiple seasons.

Lex Fridman (1:52:13.480)

Change my flight, please.

Tony Fadell (1:52:14.480)

Yeah, what was the, what interesting memories

Lex Fridman (1:52:18.320)

you have from the finding?

Lex Fridman (1:52:19.440)

So the pain and the joy that was foundational

Lex Fridman (1:52:25.840)

to the iPod, all the CDs you had to lug around.

Lex Fridman (1:52:33.160)

What was the pain and the joy and the vision

Lex Fridman (1:52:36.320)

of the iPhone in your mind, in the mind of the team,

Lex Fridman (1:52:39.880)

in Steve's mind, and so on?

Lex Fridman (1:52:42.080)

Well, you know, there's multiple pains.

Tony Fadell (1:52:44.360)

You have to also look, there's not just customer pain,

Lex Fridman (1:52:46.440)

but there's business pain, okay?

Lex Fridman (1:52:48.720)

And it's about the, so Apple now is getting out

Lex Fridman (1:52:52.520)

of that place where it was in 2001.

Tony Fadell (1:52:54.440)

Now people are starting to pay attention.

Lex Fridman (1:52:56.480)

Apple's starting to get in the culture again.

Tony Fadell (1:52:58.440)

It's becoming relevant.

Lex Fridman (1:53:00.160)

Cash is starting to flow.

Tony Fadell (1:53:01.760)

iPod is 60% of that, of the revenue,

Lex Fridman (1:53:06.560)

total revenue of Apple doing an 85% market share.

Tony Fadell (1:53:10.560)

You're starting to get a wind at your back.

Lex Fridman (1:53:11.960)

You got confidence.

Tony Fadell (1:53:13.080)

Like Apple had been beaten down since probably

Lex Fridman (1:53:15.920)

the first time the Mac was, since the Mac,

Tony Fadell (1:53:18.720)

it was a beaten company ever since the Mac.

Lex Fridman (1:53:21.520)

So we're talking 15 years at that point, right?

Tony Fadell (1:53:25.320)

This is the first time you're seeing like,

Lex Fridman (1:53:27.840)

and Steve would proudly came in front of us and said,

Tony Fadell (1:53:31.880)

today I can tell you all of the employees,

Lex Fridman (1:53:34.520)

we are now out of debt.

Tony Fadell (1:53:36.000)

We paid off our debt.

Lex Fridman (1:53:38.200)

It was a joyous moment for him, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:42.360)

And then ultimately for our team

Lex Fridman (1:53:43.680)

because no more debt, wonderful, right?

Lex Fridman (1:53:47.720)

So now what you have is you have this successful thing

Lex Fridman (1:53:50.520)

changing the face of Apple and you hear these

Tony Fadell (1:53:55.160)

heavy stomping footsteps of the mobile phone industry.

Lex Fridman (1:53:59.880)

Boom.

Lex Fridman (1:54:01.040)

And it's the feature phones at that time.

Lex Fridman (1:54:03.360)

They're adding cameras.

Tony Fadell (1:54:04.520)

They're adding color displays.

Lex Fridman (1:54:06.240)

They're seeing the success of the iPod and going,

Tony Fadell (1:54:08.800)

that's just music, we have some storage.

Lex Fridman (1:54:12.840)

We can load music on our phones

Lex Fridman (1:54:15.160)

and we can do what the iPod does plus more.

Lex Fridman (1:54:19.000)

Boom, boom, boom, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:22.400)

And you're like, and how many hundreds of millions

Lex Fridman (1:54:25.520)

of them are being sold at that point?

Tony Fadell (1:54:27.160)

It wasn't billions yet, but it was still,

Lex Fridman (1:54:29.080)

a hundred million, 200 million a year.

Tony Fadell (1:54:31.400)

iPod hadn't gotten there.

Lex Fridman (1:54:32.400)

It was for 20, 40, 50 million, something like that.

Lex Fridman (1:54:36.680)

So now you're like, okay,

Lex Fridman (1:54:37.760)

what are we gonna do about this Goliath

Lex Fridman (1:54:41.240)

who wants to take our lunch, right?

Lex Fridman (1:54:44.600)

The schoolyard bully.

Lex Fridman (1:54:46.520)

And so there was one, let's partner with them.

Lex Fridman (1:54:51.480)

So iTunes music store was there.

Tony Fadell (1:54:54.320)

All of these phones are gonna need music

Lex Fridman (1:54:57.000)

so they can come to the iTunes music store

Lex Fridman (1:55:00.760)

and get that music for those phones

Lex Fridman (1:55:02.200)

because it wasn't just about the hardware player

Tony Fadell (1:55:04.400)

at that point.

Lex Fridman (1:55:05.360)

It was about the software that you need on the desktop

Lex Fridman (1:55:07.600)

and the content that you needed to download.

Lex Fridman (1:55:10.080)

So now Apple had multiple legs of the stool

Tony Fadell (1:55:12.640)

as Steve would always refer to it.

Lex Fridman (1:55:14.720)

So now the mobile phone industry,

Tony Fadell (1:55:16.680)

okay, we're gonna work with them.

Lex Fridman (1:55:18.920)

They are going to make an iPod shuffle basically

Tony Fadell (1:55:24.000)

inside of a phone, can have 99 songs total.

Lex Fridman (1:55:27.120)

And they're gonna come to our store and you're gonna,

Tony Fadell (1:55:29.560)

I was like, okay, great.

Lex Fridman (1:55:31.200)

It's all gonna be well and good.

Lex Fridman (1:55:32.240)

And that became the Motorola rocker project.

Lex Fridman (1:55:35.040)

It was Apple and Motorola getting together.

Tony Fadell (1:55:38.400)

There's gonna be software on this smartphone

Lex Fridman (1:55:41.280)

or not smartphone, but feature phone

Tony Fadell (1:55:43.080)

to hook to iTunes to get your music.

Lex Fridman (1:55:45.480)

It wasn't even downloadable over a cloud or anything

Tony Fadell (1:55:47.760)

because that wasn't available yet.

Lex Fridman (1:55:49.160)

There wasn't data networks yet.

Tony Fadell (1:55:54.320)

It was a disaster from the beginning.

Lex Fridman (1:55:56.520)

Two different cultures,

Tony Fadell (1:55:58.120)

two different types of leadership styles,

Lex Fridman (1:56:01.200)

not necessarily the most competent engineers

Tony Fadell (1:56:03.080)

on the other side.

Lex Fridman (1:56:06.080)

And it turned out to be an absolute horrible disaster.

Tony Fadell (1:56:10.360)

I watched the pains,

Lex Fridman (1:56:11.400)

cause luckily I didn't have to be part of it.

Tony Fadell (1:56:12.800)

I watched the pains on Jeff Robbins face

Lex Fridman (1:56:14.600)

each time we would meet.

Lex Fridman (1:56:15.520)

And he would be like, these guys are just like, really?

Lex Fridman (1:56:20.640)

Do we have to do this, Steve?

Lex Fridman (1:56:21.960)

And he's like, we're contractually obligated.

Lex Fridman (1:56:24.120)

And when it came out on stage and Steve showed it,

Tony Fadell (1:56:26.720)

it was maybe a one minute,

Lex Fridman (1:56:28.760)

Steve loves those extended, like drawn up.

Tony Fadell (1:56:31.560)

It might've been a one minute, two minute kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (1:56:33.560)

And he literally threw that phone out of his hand

Lex Fridman (1:56:35.600)

as fast as he could, right?

Lex Fridman (1:56:37.400)

Cause it was horrible.

Lex Fridman (1:56:38.240)

So there was the pain of we're not gonna partner.

Lex Fridman (1:56:41.480)

So if we can't partner with these guys,

Tony Fadell (1:56:43.400)

we have to become one of them to actually compete,

Lex Fridman (1:56:47.400)

to save the thing that is bringing Apple

Lex Fridman (1:56:49.840)

from that 15 years of malaise, right?

Lex Fridman (1:56:54.760)

So then from that, we were made a prototype

Tony Fadell (1:56:59.760)

of an iPod plus phone, a classic with it was an iPod,

Lex Fridman (1:57:04.600)

but it had a phone inside with all the music

Lex Fridman (1:57:06.760)

and all the other stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:57:07.600)

And you use your headset,

Lex Fridman (1:57:09.280)

wired headset to do the audio, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:12.800)

There was another project at the same time

Tony Fadell (1:57:15.600)

cause we were doing videos in the iTunes music store,

Lex Fridman (1:57:19.760)

iTunes video store for music videos and movies.

Lex Fridman (1:57:24.400)

And it would be a full screen iPod.

Lex Fridman (1:57:26.760)

So instead of the classic, the way you know it,

Lex Fridman (1:57:29.200)

but it would be full screen

Lex Fridman (1:57:31.720)

and it would have a virtual click wheel.

Tony Fadell (1:57:34.160)

You'd have a virtual, like single touch touchscreen

Lex Fridman (1:57:36.760)

that you could scroll, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:38.760)

Think of maybe an iPhone, like you knew it, right?

Lex Fridman (1:57:41.960)

And then there was a third project going on,

Tony Fadell (1:57:44.360)

not in, those two were going on in my team,

Lex Fridman (1:57:46.440)

but the third project going on

Tony Fadell (1:57:48.360)

was the multi touchscreen technology

Lex Fridman (1:57:52.160)

to drive a Mac tablet.

Lex Fridman (1:57:55.920)

And so that Mac tablet, that touchscreen technology,

Lex Fridman (1:58:00.920)

there was just way too much you had to change

Tony Fadell (1:58:02.560)

on the software and everything

Lex Fridman (1:58:04.520)

to be able to use a tablet, right?

Tony Fadell (1:58:06.480)

We see this all the time.

Lex Fridman (1:58:07.320)

Like people are like, there's not enough tablet apps today

Tony Fadell (1:58:09.320)

that are modified for tablet.

Lex Fridman (1:58:10.640)

They're just phone apps that are grown up, right?

Lex Fridman (1:58:12.920)

So then they would just be Mac touch stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:58:15.560)

So you'd have to have a whole developer community.

Tony Fadell (1:58:17.960)

That probably wasn't the best place

Lex Fridman (1:58:19.720)

to take that technology first.

Lex Fridman (1:58:21.560)

So you take that technology,

Lex Fridman (1:58:23.120)

marry it with the full screen,

Tony Fadell (1:58:24.360)

that technology, marry it with the full screen iPod

Lex Fridman (1:58:26.920)

and the phone stuff we were working

Tony Fadell (1:58:28.360)

because the iPod phone with a rotary dial

Lex Fridman (1:58:31.040)

was just like a rotary phone.

Tony Fadell (1:58:32.600)

We couldn't make that interface work well for data input.

Lex Fridman (1:58:37.440)

You put those three together.

Lex Fridman (1:58:38.720)

And now is where those three things

Lex Fridman (1:58:41.080)

that then created the form or the technology

Lex Fridman (1:58:44.840)

and the form inside what would become the iPhone,

Lex Fridman (1:58:48.480)

married with a bunch of low level software

Tony Fadell (1:58:51.840)

from the iPod and manufacturing software

Lex Fridman (1:58:54.560)

and drivers and communication stuff,

Tony Fadell (1:58:57.440)

combined with a very reduced Frankenstein Mac OS.

Lex Fridman (1:59:03.440)

And I mean that in the best way.

Tony Fadell (1:59:06.000)

It means it wasn't Mac OS just changed a little.

Lex Fridman (1:59:09.040)

It was totally, things were hacked out and changed

Lex Fridman (1:59:11.480)

and new code was inserted.

Lex Fridman (1:59:13.280)

And it really was a whole set of things

Tony Fadell (1:59:16.560)

from all different places to make that first iPhone OS.

Lex Fridman (1:59:20.480)

And then there was another team working on the apps

Lex Fridman (1:59:23.360)

and then another team working on the design

Lex Fridman (1:59:25.000)

of how it looked overall between all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (1:59:27.600)

So all of those things came together

Lex Fridman (1:59:29.400)

to create what we know as the first generation iPhone.

Lex Fridman (1:59:32.840)

And those are all probably fascinating

Lex Fridman (1:59:34.800)

engineering challenges.

Tony Fadell (1:59:36.160)

Correct.

Lex Fridman (1:59:37.000)

And great teams like creating the Frankenstein OS.

Tony Fadell (1:59:42.480)

That's fascinating because you're simplifying and simplifying

Lex Fridman (1:59:45.200)

but then you're just pulling different stuff from,

Lex Fridman (1:59:47.200)

and you're basically inventing,

Lex Fridman (1:59:49.520)

I mean, they're probably not thinking of it that way,

Lex Fridman (1:59:51.280)

but a new era of computing, a new kind of computer.

Lex Fridman (1:59:56.040)

It really is Frankenstein.

Tony Fadell (1:59:57.280)

Right, and you didn't have to run Mac software.

Lex Fridman (1:59:59.640)

If you look at some of the other smartphones of the time,

Tony Fadell (20:01.040)

because I was also manning the customer support line,

Lex Fridman (20:04.760)

people would call in and go, this doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (20:06.600)

And I'm like, oh, I gotta go fix the hardware and software.

Lex Fridman (20:09.120)

Or I gotta fix the software to make the hardware

Lex Fridman (20:10.880)

and the installation process better.

Lex Fridman (20:12.440)

So my whole world was out of box experience

Tony Fadell (20:16.000)

from when I was in high school.

Lex Fridman (20:18.520)

Cause I had to man the customer support line,

Tony Fadell (20:20.640)

pack the boxes and write some of the code

Lex Fridman (20:23.000)

while we were doing, while Joe, Joe Gleason,

Tony Fadell (20:25.280)

who was the founder of Quality Computers,

Lex Fridman (20:27.120)

he was off doing the mark, the ads,

Tony Fadell (20:30.160)

placing the ads for the mail order,

Lex Fridman (20:32.360)

making sure we were running the credit cards, right?

Tony Fadell (20:35.920)

It was two of us.

Lex Fridman (20:36.880)

And then it turned into a third,

Lex Fridman (20:38.360)

and then we hired another person from high school

Lex Fridman (20:40.000)

to like pack boxes so I could stay

Lex Fridman (20:41.760)

on the customer support line or doing the software, right?

Lex Fridman (20:44.560)

And it was all in his parents basement, right?

Tony Fadell (20:47.680)

As you were scaling exponentially.

Lex Fridman (20:50.320)

Scaling, right, exactly, bootstrapping.

Lex Fridman (20:52.720)

So we'll jump around a little bit,

Lex Fridman (20:54.400)

but what were the, you said you love music.

Lex Fridman (20:56.480)

What were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod

Lex Fridman (20:59.720)

if we jump forward and how far back do those ideas stretch?

Tony Fadell (21:07.440)

If you look at the history of technology,

Lex Fridman (21:11.280)

there's, I mean, not just the product,

Lex Fridman (21:14.600)

but the idea is truly revolutionary.

Lex Fridman (21:17.960)

Maybe it's time has come,

Lex Fridman (21:21.240)

but just if you look at the arc of history,

Lex Fridman (21:25.760)

sort of music is so fundamental to who we are as a humanity.

Lex Fridman (21:30.760)

And to be able to put that in your pocket,

Lex Fridman (21:34.160)

make it truly portable is fascinating

Tony Fadell (21:36.560)

in a way that's truly portable.

Lex Fridman (21:40.200)

So it's digital as opposed to sort of like a Walkman

Tony Fadell (21:44.040)

or something like that.

Lex Fridman (21:45.160)

So what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod?

Tony Fadell (21:49.760)

You know, I was in love with music since I was a kid.

Lex Fridman (21:53.040)

Just loved music from, I think, second grade

Tony Fadell (21:55.760)

when I got my first albums and stuff like that.

Lex Fridman (21:58.160)

What kind of music are we talking about?

Lex Fridman (21:59.680)

So this was Led Zeppelin.

Lex Fridman (22:04.000)

This was the Stones, Hendrix, Aerosmith,

Tony Fadell (22:10.720)

Cheap Trick, Stix, Ted Nugent,

Lex Fridman (22:14.120)

just the real American and British rock and roll, right?

Tony Fadell (22:19.120)

There's a bunch of people listening right now.

Lex Fridman (22:20.560)

Who's that?

Lex Fridman (22:22.040)

Who's that?

Lex Fridman (22:22.880)

Led Zeppelin?

Lex Fridman (22:23.720)

What is that?

Lex Fridman (22:24.540)

Is that some kind?

Tony Fadell (22:25.380)

Oh, yeah.

Lex Fridman (22:26.220)

It drove my parents crazy.

Tony Fadell (22:29.400)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (22:30.240)

You just blasted loud.

Tony Fadell (22:31.640)

Loud, just brr.

Lex Fridman (22:32.880)

And this was second, third grade, fourth grade.

Tony Fadell (22:35.080)

I just fell in love.

Lex Fridman (22:36.120)

And then we moved back to Detroit

Lex Fridman (22:40.520)

and I loved listening to the radio station

Lex Fridman (22:43.000)

because there was all kinds of crazy music

Tony Fadell (22:44.960)

because you'd have an amalgam of rock and then funk

Lex Fridman (22:48.200)

and R&B and I loved to listen at night.

Lex Fridman (22:50.320)

So I had a clock radio.

Lex Fridman (22:52.680)

But if I had the clock radio on,

Tony Fadell (22:54.660)

everyone, parents would go, go to sleep.

Lex Fridman (22:57.240)

Stop that.

Tony Fadell (22:58.080)

Turn that stuff off.

Lex Fridman (22:58.900)

So I hacked the clock radio and put a headphone jack in it.

Tony Fadell (23:02.240)

Nice.

Lex Fridman (23:03.720)

Right?

Lex Fridman (23:04.560)

So I said, oh, they're like, okay.

Lex Fridman (23:07.080)

And then I could listen to it all night

Lex Fridman (23:09.160)

and no one could hear me, right?

Lex Fridman (23:10.360)

And I could just sit there and, you know.

Tony Fadell (23:12.240)

Just huddling around the radio.

Lex Fridman (23:13.840)

Groove out.

Tony Fadell (23:14.680)

Just listening to Zeppelin.

Lex Fridman (23:15.920)

Stairway to Heaven, what would you say

Lex Fridman (23:19.200)

is the greatest classic rock song of all time?

Lex Fridman (23:23.040)

Greatest classic rock song of all time?

Lex Fridman (23:25.500)

What pops into mind?

Lex Fridman (23:26.520)

Well, no, you know what?

Tony Fadell (23:27.720)

I mean, this has to be objectively number one.

Lex Fridman (23:29.760)

That's really hard, dude.

Tony Fadell (23:30.600)

This is so hard.

Lex Fridman (23:31.420)

No, you have to.

Tony Fadell (23:32.260)

This is a serious journalistic interview.

Lex Fridman (23:34.580)

You're not going to back down from these kinds of questions.

Tony Fadell (23:37.040)

Oh my God.

Lex Fridman (23:37.880)

No, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (23:38.720)

What a challenge.

Lex Fridman (23:39.540)

Yeah, it's hard to pick.

Lex Fridman (23:40.860)

But to me, Stairway to Heaven is a safe fall.

Lex Fridman (23:45.640)

It's like, it's so often considered

Tony Fadell (23:47.840)

to be one of the greatest songs of all time

Lex Fridman (23:49.640)

that you almost don't want to pick it.

Tony Fadell (23:51.680)

Right, exactly.

Lex Fridman (23:52.560)

But you've returned to it time and time again.

Tony Fadell (23:54.480)

It's like, yeah, this is something pretty special.

Lex Fridman (23:58.120)

This is a rock opera of sorts.

Tony Fadell (24:00.720)

Well, the rock opera that really blew me away

Lex Fridman (24:03.160)

and still continues to blow me away

Tony Fadell (24:04.720)

is all of Dark Side of the Moon.

Lex Fridman (24:07.240)

Like that, I love Zeppelin.

Tony Fadell (24:10.000)

I can't say which one's better.

Lex Fridman (24:12.120)

But Dark Side of the Moon for me was,

Lex Fridman (24:13.900)

it was a, you know, audio experience, right?

Lex Fridman (24:16.800)

The whole thing from soup to nuts,

Tony Fadell (24:18.200)

plus all the synthesizers, all of those things.

Lex Fridman (24:21.320)

Okay, so back to the iPod.

Lex Fridman (24:23.760)

So that's, from the early age, you loved music.

Lex Fridman (24:26.520)

Loved it.

Tony Fadell (24:27.540)

Absolutely loved it.

Lex Fridman (24:28.380)

And, you know, always was just around it

Lex Fridman (24:30.500)

and always, I just, it was always playing, you know.

Lex Fridman (24:34.440)

I played it so loud that I actually hurt the earring

Tony Fadell (24:37.800)

in my right ear.

Lex Fridman (24:39.640)

And I still suffer from that today.

Lex Fridman (24:41.600)

And then.

Lex Fridman (24:42.920)

No regrets.

Tony Fadell (24:43.760)

No regrets whatsoever.

Lex Fridman (24:44.880)

Going to concerts in downtown Detroit

Lex Fridman (24:47.480)

and all the crazy stuff.

Lex Fridman (24:48.320)

So moving forward.

Lex Fridman (24:50.920)

So in college, I was a DJ.

Lex Fridman (24:54.960)

So I would DJ and hang out and play all the tunes I love

Lex Fridman (24:58.640)

and whatever for the crowd.

Lex Fridman (25:01.040)

And then I continued to do that in Silicon Valley

Tony Fadell (25:03.640)

when I moved right after school.

Lex Fridman (25:06.760)

And so I was be lugging all of these CDs around with me.

Lex Fridman (25:10.240)

A thousand CDs to, right?

Lex Fridman (25:12.320)

And at the same time, and so those were heavy.

Lex Fridman (25:16.740)

And at the same time I was doing the Philips Nino and Velo.

Lex Fridman (25:20.320)

Those were Windows CE based mobile computing products.

Tony Fadell (25:25.640)

Nino was the first device

Lex Fridman (25:28.000)

to actually put Audible books on tape.

Lex Fridman (25:30.440)

So I worked with Audible.

Lex Fridman (25:32.200)

We met in a conference and they were like,

Tony Fadell (25:34.280)

we don't want to do hardware.

Lex Fridman (25:35.120)

We just want to do content.

Tony Fadell (25:36.160)

I was like, well, we have this device.

Lex Fridman (25:37.900)

Let's get it together.

Lex Fridman (25:39.560)

And we got Audible on that.

Lex Fridman (25:41.080)

And this was in 96 or seven, first Audible books.

Lex Fridman (25:46.200)

And it, you know, I was like, oh my God, that's audio.

Lex Fridman (25:49.400)

Well, what if we put music on it, right?

Lex Fridman (25:52.360)

And so I, and the memory was very small at the time, right?

Lex Fridman (25:56.180)

There was almost no flash.

Tony Fadell (25:57.800)

It was all DRAM.

Lex Fridman (25:58.640)

When you did Audible, you stored it in DRAM, right?

Tony Fadell (26:03.080)

Which was okay probably

Lex Fridman (26:04.760)

because how much books do you need is the idea.

Tony Fadell (26:09.760)

By the way, brilliant, I mean, just putting books.

Lex Fridman (26:12.940)

I know it's probably not the sexiest of things,

Lex Fridman (26:15.620)

but putting books on a mobile device is a brilliant step.

Lex Fridman (26:21.940)

I don't know.

Tony Fadell (26:23.160)

Sometimes can't measure how much human progress occurred

Lex Fridman (26:27.540)

because of an invention.

Tony Fadell (26:29.140)

Like there's the sexy big products, but you never know.

Lex Fridman (26:32.060)

Like, like Wikipedia is one of those things

Tony Fadell (26:34.380)

that doesn't get enough, I think, credit

Lex Fridman (26:37.340)

for the transformational effects it has.

Tony Fadell (26:39.700)

It's not seen as the sexiest of products, but maybe it is.

Lex Fridman (26:43.180)

When you look at human history, Wikipedia arguably

Tony Fadell (26:47.460)

is one of the big things

Lex Fridman (26:48.660)

that basically unlocked human knowledge.

Tony Fadell (26:52.660)

Human knowledge and human editing and human, you know,

Lex Fridman (26:55.420)

just the human nature of building something together.

Tony Fadell (26:59.480)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (27:00.320)

So it's fascinating.

Tony Fadell (27:01.540)

Sometimes you can't measure those things,

Lex Fridman (27:02.960)

maybe until many, many decades later.

Tony Fadell (27:04.940)

Anyway, sorry.

Lex Fridman (27:05.900)

So that was, that was, you know, that was, so that was there.

Lex Fridman (27:09.220)

And then there was Audible,

Lex Fridman (27:10.580)

that you put books, why not put music?

Tony Fadell (27:13.380)

Music, and I'm carrying around the music for the DJ gigs.

Lex Fridman (27:16.600)

And you're like, wait a second, two and two together, right?

Tony Fadell (27:19.380)

Like, let's get rid of this.

Lex Fridman (27:20.640)

And so, and then MP3 show up.

Lex Fridman (27:23.140)

The actual, like in COVID?

Lex Fridman (27:24.460)

The format, the format, MP3 showed up around 97, 98.

Lex Fridman (27:29.220)

So MP3 is compressed so you can have,

Lex Fridman (27:34.080)

like the storage is reduced significantly.

Tony Fadell (27:35.820)

Right, so you could go from a, you know,

Lex Fridman (27:37.780)

a large full lossless, you know,

Tony Fadell (27:42.020)

digital track into something that can be stored

Lex Fridman (27:45.580)

in four to eight megabytes,

Tony Fadell (27:47.700)

something like that for the audio.

Lex Fridman (27:49.140)

Now, you know, that's a reduced quality,

Lex Fridman (27:51.260)

but you could get it down there and you're like, oh, okay.

Lex Fridman (27:54.140)

And now if we have enough flash or DRAM,

Tony Fadell (27:56.500)

we can put 10, 15, what have you all in that same memory.

Lex Fridman (28:00.460)

And it starts to replicate a CD.

Lex Fridman (28:02.780)

And then ultimately, if you put it on a hard drive,

Lex Fridman (28:05.060)

you could start to put, you know, thousands of songs.

Tony Fadell (28:07.720)

Yeah, that's also another brilliant invention.

Lex Fridman (28:10.180)

But like, people don't realize,

Tony Fadell (28:11.780)

I think people would be surprised how big

Lex Fridman (28:14.940)

in terms of storage raw audio is.

Lex Fridman (28:17.740)

And the fact that you can compress it,

Lex Fridman (28:19.980)

like, I don't know what the compression is,

Lex Fridman (28:24.020)

but it's like 10X, it's very significant compression.

Lex Fridman (28:26.820)

And still it sounds almost lossless.

Tony Fadell (28:29.700)

Much to the chagrin of Neil Young,

Lex Fridman (28:31.700)

who does not like that.

Lex Fridman (28:33.860)

But even Neil Young, even the stuff he talks about

Lex Fridman (28:37.380)

is still tiny files relative to the raw.

Lex Fridman (28:40.700)

So he wants us to increase it just a little bit more,

Lex Fridman (28:43.700)

a little bit more.

Lex Fridman (28:44.780)

But it's still, that's an invention.

Lex Fridman (28:46.860)

That's a thing that unlocks your ability

Tony Fadell (28:49.420)

to carry around a device like a Nino and listen to music.

Lex Fridman (28:52.340)

Because without that, there's no way

Tony Fadell (28:53.900)

you can carry on a gigantic hard drive.

Lex Fridman (28:56.300)

Right, exactly.

Lex Fridman (28:57.420)

And so then that, so it was MP3s, the Nino,

Lex Fridman (29:01.300)

and my, you know, my hatred of carrying around

Tony Fadell (29:04.580)

all this heavy stuff that then spawned, you know,

Lex Fridman (29:08.460)

fuse and then ultimately, you know,

Tony Fadell (29:11.460)

became a lot of that, the ideas and things of that nature

Lex Fridman (29:15.020)

were, and my passions were born into then the iPod.

Tony Fadell (29:19.060)

You know, it was too, Apple needed something

Lex Fridman (29:21.500)

and I wanted to fix something and it all kind of,

Tony Fadell (29:24.700)

you know, came together at the right place, right time,

Lex Fridman (29:27.160)

plus the right technology came at this.

Tony Fadell (29:29.060)

It was just like the stars aligned.

Lex Fridman (29:31.420)

So how did it come to life?

Tony Fadell (29:33.500)

The details of the stars aligning, but the actual design,

Lex Fridman (29:39.220)

the actual engineering of getting a device to be small,

Tony Fadell (29:42.900)

the storage of the, you know, the interface, how it looks,

Lex Fridman (29:49.140)

the storage, the details of the software,

Tony Fadell (29:51.420)

all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (29:52.480)

What are some interesting memories from that design process?

Lex Fridman (29:57.020)

What are some wisdoms you can impart from that process?

Lex Fridman (2:00:02.280)

like Windows and stuff, they were like,

Tony Fadell (2:00:04.960)

we need to make sure it runs Excel

Lex Fridman (2:00:06.880)

and it runs Word or something like that

Tony Fadell (2:00:08.760)

in some reduced thing.

Lex Fridman (2:00:09.920)

This was like, no, no, no, no.

Tony Fadell (2:00:11.040)

This was born out of entertainment.

Lex Fridman (2:00:12.760)

So we didn't have to go and take all the same application,

Tony Fadell (2:00:15.840)

you know, all those other ones was about compatibility.

Lex Fridman (2:00:19.240)

This was about a whole new way of being.

Lex Fridman (2:00:21.760)

What did you think about the Steve Jobs presentation

Lex Fridman (2:00:26.560)

of the iPhone, the sort of, the first iPhone, you know.

Tony Fadell (2:00:31.760)

Phone, internet communicator, and the iPod in your pocket.

Lex Fridman (2:00:34.480)

Yeah, that you're going to sort of present,

Tony Fadell (2:00:38.040)

announcing three new products kind of thing

Lex Fridman (2:00:41.320)

and then saying that it's all in one.

Tony Fadell (2:00:43.280)

Just, this is a good example,

Lex Fridman (2:00:44.920)

one of the sort of historic presentations of a product.

Tony Fadell (2:00:52.520)

Clearly there's like some showmanship that works,

Lex Fridman (2:00:55.040)

some reason it works.

Tony Fadell (2:00:56.760)

It doesn't always work, it often doesn't work,

Lex Fridman (2:00:59.560)

but it did in this case, it often did for Steve.

Lex Fridman (2:01:02.800)

What, like, how did that feel?

Lex Fridman (2:01:06.200)

What part of the actually the design process

Lex Fridman (2:01:11.680)

was that presentation?

Lex Fridman (2:01:13.440)

You know what I mean?

Tony Fadell (2:01:14.280)

In the early, because you said,

Lex Fridman (2:01:15.800)

should consider the why, the press release

Tony Fadell (2:01:17.960)

at the very beginning.

Lex Fridman (2:01:19.400)

Steve was doing that the entire time.

Tony Fadell (2:01:21.240)

He was working on that story from day one.

Lex Fridman (2:01:24.560)

He was pitching us this, this, this, and then this.

Lex Fridman (2:01:27.320)

And then he would look at our faces

Lex Fridman (2:01:29.240)

because you wouldn't, most people wouldn't,

Tony Fadell (2:01:31.320)

at least if you're working for him,

Lex Fridman (2:01:32.720)

wouldn't tell him what you really thought

Tony Fadell (2:01:34.200)

of what he was saying, but he would look at your faces.

Lex Fridman (2:01:36.920)

And then he would talk to a few real trusted confidence

Tony Fadell (2:01:39.760)

outside of the organization.

Lex Fridman (2:01:44.120)

And see what they thought, right?

Lex Fridman (2:01:45.880)

And they could give him feedback on it

Lex Fridman (2:01:47.560)

and they could really challenge him,

Lex Fridman (2:01:49.200)

but he would also look at their faces and go, hmm.

Lex Fridman (2:01:51.440)

And so when you see that, hmm,

Tony Fadell (2:01:53.800)

then he would modulate it and change it slightly

Lex Fridman (2:01:56.160)

and change it.

Lex Fridman (2:01:57.000)

So he was working during all of that time

Lex Fridman (2:01:59.000)

on the story and the storytelling, right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:01.440)

And the whys, while we're working on that

Lex Fridman (2:02:03.920)

and helping us refine it,

Lex Fridman (2:02:04.840)

just like the switch from plastic to glass, right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:08.520)

All the time working on that.

Lex Fridman (2:02:10.160)

So when he comes out on stage,

Lex Fridman (2:02:12.080)

he does something that every marketer is told not to do.

Tony Fadell (2:02:15.680)

Say these three things are now combined in one.

Lex Fridman (2:02:19.120)

That is like the, they say that that is the laziest form

Lex Fridman (2:02:23.000)

of storytelling possible for marketing, right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:26.760)

Yeah. Right?

Lex Fridman (2:02:28.000)

But it was the best one because it was all those pains.

Lex Fridman (2:02:31.240)

It was like, I want my iPod, but I want my communications

Lex Fridman (2:02:35.280)

and I want my internet browsing because I want it on the go

Lex Fridman (2:02:37.840)

so I can look up things because it was information.

Lex Fridman (2:02:40.720)

And when you were on the road, you had a laptop,

Lex Fridman (2:02:42.800)

you had an iPod and you had a phone that,

Lex Fridman (2:02:45.680)

and you had to carry all of these things with you at once.

Lex Fridman (2:02:49.040)

Now we're gonna solve that pain for you

Lex Fridman (2:02:51.640)

and put it all together.

Lex Fridman (2:02:52.960)

So he was just showing you the pain

Lex Fridman (2:02:54.400)

and beating that virus of doubt and going,

Lex Fridman (2:02:55.840)

it's now in this one magical thing.

Lex Fridman (2:02:57.800)

And he could come up and masterfully tell that story

Lex Fridman (2:03:00.800)

because he told it almost every day

Tony Fadell (2:03:03.640)

to all of these people inside very quietly.

Lex Fridman (2:03:06.680)

And then it was just, right?

Tony Fadell (2:03:09.320)

It was like a Tony award winning play

Lex Fridman (2:03:12.400)

that had been worked on for 10 years.

Lex Fridman (2:03:14.640)

But also the human came through, the timing.

Lex Fridman (2:03:17.000)

It was all that, it was all of it.

Lex Fridman (2:03:18.520)

And of course he was dramatic at certain points

Lex Fridman (2:03:20.640)

and he would raise his voice and a wry smile

Tony Fadell (2:03:23.840)

or whatever it was.

Lex Fridman (2:03:24.680)

Right, that wry smile was magic.

Tony Fadell (2:03:25.520)

It was all those touches.

Lex Fridman (2:03:26.560)

He was an actor as well as a storyteller.

Tony Fadell (2:03:29.120)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:03:29.960)

But it was the truth, right?

Tony Fadell (2:03:32.640)

The truth came through.

Lex Fridman (2:03:33.960)

It was a nonfiction story.

Lex Fridman (2:03:36.440)

And then he added those personal flourishes on top of it

Lex Fridman (2:03:39.800)

for dramatic effect.

Tony Fadell (2:03:42.880)

It's amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:03:45.280)

So there's a designer you mentioned, Johnny Ave.

Tony Fadell (2:03:51.840)

You both are brilliant designers, great human beings.

Lex Fridman (2:03:55.560)

There were some battles fought in the distant past

Tony Fadell (2:03:59.160)

between the two of you.

Lex Fridman (2:04:01.440)

Looking back, what is the positive characteristics

Tony Fadell (2:04:04.040)

of Johnny that made you a better person and designer

Lex Fridman (2:04:07.120)

having worked with him?

Tony Fadell (2:04:13.600)

Watching the process that the design team that Johnny led.

Lex Fridman (2:04:20.160)

I don't know where, cause that was over years.

Tony Fadell (2:04:22.080)

I didn't see all of those things.

Lex Fridman (2:04:23.440)

But watching the design process of really,

Tony Fadell (2:04:26.200)

cause it was really a team that was about materials.

Lex Fridman (2:04:29.880)

It was about form.

Tony Fadell (2:04:31.360)

It was about colors.

Lex Fridman (2:04:32.680)

It was about these physical characteristics.

Tony Fadell (2:04:36.760)

When we talked about this earlier was design.

Lex Fridman (2:04:38.800)

What is design?

Lex Fridman (2:04:39.640)

Design's everywhere, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:04:41.040)

So what they were really focused on was form,

Lex Fridman (2:04:44.560)

how the feel was, how it looked, the aesthetics,

Lex Fridman (2:04:47.720)

the physical aesthetics.

Lex Fridman (2:04:50.240)

And watching, going through that process,

Lex Fridman (2:04:53.200)

I learned so much in that process about how to do colors,

Lex Fridman (2:04:58.200)

how to do materials, how to think deeply about curves,

Lex Fridman (2:05:05.960)

and shadows, and how it would look, not just in your hand,

Lex Fridman (2:05:10.040)

but how it would look in the photograph

Lex Fridman (2:05:12.120)

you were gonna take for marketing, right?

Lex Fridman (2:05:14.840)

So how it would look, how you would feel, all of it.

Lex Fridman (2:05:19.240)

It was all of those physical things around that

Lex Fridman (2:05:23.640)

and watching the process to get there,

Lex Fridman (2:05:28.480)

that was enlightening for me, right?

Tony Fadell (2:05:31.240)

It opened my mind to go, oh, okay.

Lex Fridman (2:05:35.040)

Just like there's a process for all these other things,

Tony Fadell (2:05:37.240)

it wasn't just magic and you say,

Lex Fridman (2:05:41.400)

ha, ha, ha, there it is.

Tony Fadell (2:05:42.680)

It was really a process of refinement,

Lex Fridman (2:05:44.800)

you know, of opening the funnel at the beginning

Lex Fridman (2:05:46.760)

and refining down over time to get to that final,

Lex Fridman (2:05:51.040)

the final and selecting and doing the selection.

Lex Fridman (2:05:53.760)

And certain types you could,

Lex Fridman (2:05:55.120)

certain times there were opinion based design details.

Lex Fridman (2:05:58.920)

But a lot of data, a lot of data driven designs

Lex Fridman (2:06:02.040)

of what can we deliver in volume?

Lex Fridman (2:06:05.400)

What can we do different things?

Lex Fridman (2:06:06.600)

So you always had these constraints

Tony Fadell (2:06:08.680)

that you had to work with under.

Lex Fridman (2:06:09.640)

And sometimes they, and the team,

Tony Fadell (2:06:13.040)

not just I, would say, we need this.

Lex Fridman (2:06:14.840)

And we're like, we can't deliver that.

Lex Fridman (2:06:16.920)

But maybe we were able to work together

Lex Fridman (2:06:18.760)

to find different design characteristics

Lex Fridman (2:06:20.840)

and different implementation characteristics

Lex Fridman (2:06:23.320)

that could get to that point

Tony Fadell (2:06:25.520)

without what they were describing.

Lex Fridman (2:06:27.520)

And instead of yes, yes, yes, no, no, no,

Tony Fadell (2:06:30.840)

let's find some other way to solve the problem together.

Lex Fridman (2:06:34.520)

Yeah, is, and I've seen this in several companies

Tony Fadell (2:06:40.080)

I've more closely interacted with, like Tesla is an example.

Lex Fridman (2:06:43.480)

Sometimes, you know, talking about curves,

Tony Fadell (2:06:46.400)

sometimes it's very painful on the engineering side

Lex Fridman (2:06:51.160)

to deliver a very specific kind of thing.

Lex Fridman (2:06:55.400)

And one question that comes up in my mind is like,

Lex Fridman (2:06:59.120)

well, how far should we go to try to deliver

Tony Fadell (2:07:02.920)

a tiny adjustment in a curve, in the curvature,

Lex Fridman (2:07:06.920)

or in like whatever the form factor is,

Tony Fadell (2:07:10.400)

or the color of the material,

Lex Fridman (2:07:12.440)

when the cost is like 10X to deliver,

Tony Fadell (2:07:15.560)

not financially, but just like in effort,

Lex Fridman (2:07:17.760)

like how many problems to have to solve.

Tony Fadell (2:07:22.720)

I don't know if you can say any wisdom to that,

Lex Fridman (2:07:26.400)

because when you're thinking about curves,

Tony Fadell (2:07:29.200)

you're designing in the space of ideas,

Lex Fridman (2:07:31.280)

you're like platonic forms kind of thing,

Tony Fadell (2:07:34.320)

not always grounded to like how much this is,

Lex Fridman (2:07:38.480)

how much pain is gonna be involved in delivering this,

Lex Fridman (2:07:40.960)

but that's as you should perhaps,

Lex Fridman (2:07:44.200)

because then if you're always thinking about the pain

Tony Fadell (2:07:47.400)

required to deliver this thing, you'll be too conservative,

Lex Fridman (2:07:51.240)

you wouldn't do the wild ideas.

Tony Fadell (2:07:54.160)

Right, exactly, but you have to understand again

Lex Fridman (2:07:57.080)

the why behind it.

Lex Fridman (2:07:58.320)

And at Nest, when we had limited resources,

Lex Fridman (2:08:02.840)

you know, putting a screwdriver in the box,

Tony Fadell (2:08:04.680)

a custom designed screwdriver in the box,

Lex Fridman (2:08:07.520)

was born out of those experiences I had at Apple,

Lex Fridman (2:08:10.040)

and seeing how you can create something

Lex Fridman (2:08:12.440)

that's emotional, it's part of marketing,

Lex Fridman (2:08:15.200)

and it's part of the product experience overall,

Lex Fridman (2:08:17.800)

even though it seems extraneous.

Tony Fadell (2:08:20.360)

I went back and made the design team,

Lex Fridman (2:08:23.320)

and the mechanical team change some curves

Tony Fadell (2:08:25.720)

on the Nest Protect, the smoke and CO detector

Lex Fridman (2:08:28.240)

we did at Nest, after they had already tooled it.

Lex Fridman (2:08:32.000)

And I said, they're saying these cost more,

Lex Fridman (2:08:33.240)

I said, it doesn't look right.

Tony Fadell (2:08:35.360)

There is a, but they're like, oh, well we had,

Lex Fridman (2:08:37.680)

I said, no, you're gonna go back,

Lex Fridman (2:08:39.280)

and you're gonna make that change,

Lex Fridman (2:08:40.440)

I told you we needed to do it,

Tony Fadell (2:08:43.000)

we had a better looking model, that is gonna get done,

Lex Fridman (2:08:45.520)

I know it's gonna be a terrible cost to you,

Lex Fridman (2:08:48.720)

but we already had this discussion,

Lex Fridman (2:08:50.560)

and that's the way it's gonna have to be,

Lex Fridman (2:08:52.200)

and I'm sorry, but it is what it is.

Lex Fridman (2:08:56.640)

And you know, because it's better for the customer,

Lex Fridman (2:08:58.880)

and it looks better in the pictures,

Lex Fridman (2:09:00.040)

and all the other stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:09:00.880)

And then we did it, and it was great,

Lex Fridman (2:09:02.200)

and everyone agreed it was great at the end,

Lex Fridman (2:09:04.320)

but it was pain to get there.

Lex Fridman (2:09:07.000)

Those are where, those little details

Lex Fridman (2:09:09.120)

are where the magic comes out, right?

Lex Fridman (2:09:11.080)

And if you don't do, if you don't take those pains

Lex Fridman (2:09:15.640)

and put in the love, the customer's gonna feel,

Lex Fridman (2:09:18.960)

it's gonna, they're either gonna feel the pain,

Tony Fadell (2:09:20.760)

or they're gonna feel the love,

Lex Fridman (2:09:22.520)

if you put it in, right?

Lex Fridman (2:09:23.800)

So it depends on how much time and effort

Lex Fridman (2:09:26.960)

you wanna put into something,

Lex Fridman (2:09:28.360)

and what really matters to you,

Lex Fridman (2:09:30.120)

and so how you communicate what you do.

Tony Fadell (2:09:32.480)

We're human beings after all,

Lex Fridman (2:09:34.120)

is there something you've learned

Tony Fadell (2:09:36.920)

from sort of the tensions that are natural,

Lex Fridman (2:09:40.520)

or that happen in teams when they're passionate,

Lex Fridman (2:09:43.120)

and they're trying to solve these problems?

Lex Fridman (2:09:45.440)

Is that the way of life?

Lex Fridman (2:09:47.200)

And there's the human drama.

Lex Fridman (2:09:49.800)

Is that just, is that always going,

Lex Fridman (2:09:51.800)

is that, it is what it is?

Lex Fridman (2:09:54.280)

Is that make you better?

Tony Fadell (2:09:55.520)

Actually, the drama, the tension between personalities,

Lex Fridman (2:09:58.880)

and all that kind of stuff.

Tony Fadell (2:10:01.240)

Look, a rollercoaster ride without ups and downs

Lex Fridman (2:10:04.440)

is no fun.

Tony Fadell (2:10:05.440)

It's the journey, it's the journey that brings,

Lex Fridman (2:10:10.000)

it brings out the best in everyone.

Tony Fadell (2:10:12.240)

We're forged, we're tempered by those experiences,

Lex Fridman (2:10:17.160)

not all the ups, but also the downs,

Lex Fridman (2:10:19.720)

and that's when you get the humanity and the connection,

Lex Fridman (2:10:22.040)

and we can tell these stories till we're blue in the face,

Lex Fridman (2:10:25.120)

and smile every time, because we did something together

Lex Fridman (2:10:28.760)

that each of us couldn't do apart,

Lex Fridman (2:10:30.640)

but when it comes together,

Lex Fridman (2:10:32.120)

that's where all the emotions happen,

Lex Fridman (2:10:34.000)

and that's where, if it's born out of the right reasons,

Lex Fridman (2:10:36.640)

and the right story, and the right way,

Tony Fadell (2:10:38.520)

that's where the magic happens,

Lex Fridman (2:10:40.120)

not just for the customer,

Lex Fridman (2:10:41.560)

but for how it transforms each person

Lex Fridman (2:10:43.960)

who is working on it,

Lex Fridman (2:10:45.240)

and they will never forget those experiences in their life,

Lex Fridman (2:10:48.400)

positively and negatively, that happened at the time,

Lex Fridman (2:10:51.240)

but they look back, and it's only positive,

Lex Fridman (2:10:53.680)

because they did something that mattered.

Tony Fadell (2:10:56.600)

Yet another brilliant idea that you brought to life

Lex Fridman (2:11:00.360)

is Nest, Nest thermostats, and the big umbrella of Nest.

Tony Fadell (2:11:08.960)

Again, as part of this Netflix series, season three,

Lex Fridman (2:11:14.400)

what was the most memorable, the most painful,

Tony Fadell (2:11:17.760)

the most insight leading challenge

Lex Fridman (2:11:22.680)

you had to overcome to bring Nest to life?

Tony Fadell (2:11:24.720)

Well, the first thing for me was making someone care

Lex Fridman (2:11:33.760)

about their thermostat.

Tony Fadell (2:11:37.920)

No one considers it.

Lex Fridman (2:11:39.560)

They never had any customer choice.

Tony Fadell (2:11:41.640)

They didn't install it.

Lex Fridman (2:11:43.160)

They usually don't even use it,

Tony Fadell (2:11:44.440)

because it's so complicated, or what have you,

Lex Fridman (2:11:46.520)

they just, they bitch at it, they hide it in the corner,

Lex Fridman (2:11:50.480)

and then they just pay the bill, right,

Lex Fridman (2:11:52.400)

of whatever it is, right?

Lex Fridman (2:11:54.240)

It's totally unloved, unconsidered, right?

Lex Fridman (2:11:58.120)

So how do you wake up, like I said, the virus of doubt,

Lex Fridman (2:12:00.680)

how do you wake that up and get people going,

Lex Fridman (2:12:03.400)

remember every day when you go in and it's like,

Tony Fadell (2:12:05.440)

you're just frustrated, and then you get the bill

Lex Fridman (2:12:07.240)

and you pay the bill, so you have to do that.

Lex Fridman (2:12:08.800)

So that was one thing.

Lex Fridman (2:12:10.000)

I think the other big one was not delivering,

Lex Fridman (2:12:12.960)

all of it was hard, right?

Lex Fridman (2:12:14.040)

It was constrained, we had only so much stuff,

Tony Fadell (2:12:16.280)

we were bootstrapped, we didn't have massive funding,

Lex Fridman (2:12:19.080)

we didn't get hundreds of millions of dollars,

Lex Fridman (2:12:21.200)

but we did it for the right reasons.

Lex Fridman (2:12:22.360)

But I think the other big part of it was

Tony Fadell (2:12:25.440)

not just building a disruptive product,

Lex Fridman (2:12:27.720)

because a lot of the people on the team had done that,

Tony Fadell (2:12:29.680)

we knew what we were doing, and that was,

Lex Fridman (2:12:32.920)

if we got the design right, we could deliver it

Tony Fadell (2:12:36.640)

with enough time.

Lex Fridman (2:12:40.560)

It was getting the disruptive go to market,

Tony Fadell (2:12:42.960)

in other words, how to take that product

Lex Fridman (2:12:44.880)

from the end of the production line

Lex Fridman (2:12:46.760)

and get it into the customer's hands,

Lex Fridman (2:12:49.400)

because there was no retail or customer choice

Tony Fadell (2:12:53.760)

in thermostats.

Lex Fridman (2:12:54.960)

No one even, it was never considered purchase.

Tony Fadell (2:12:57.760)

They never thought they had choice.

Lex Fridman (2:13:00.040)

Some guy, usually in suspenders and a butt crack,

Tony Fadell (2:13:03.400)

told them, looked around, looked at their house

Lex Fridman (2:13:05.920)

and said, this looks like somebody who's got,

Tony Fadell (2:13:08.680)

is well to do.

Lex Fridman (2:13:09.920)

This thermostat is now gonna cost you $350,

Tony Fadell (2:13:13.080)

thank you very much.

Lex Fridman (2:13:14.560)

And you're like, I'll take whatever you give me, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:17.120)

And then it goes into another house,

Lex Fridman (2:13:18.800)

it's worth $100, it was the same damn thing, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:21.720)

So there was no price transparency,

Lex Fridman (2:13:23.320)

there was no choice, you just got what you were given.

Lex Fridman (2:13:26.640)

So how do you go, and this was an entrenched industry,

Lex Fridman (2:13:30.760)

that's why there was no innovation in it,

Tony Fadell (2:13:34.280)

because it was doing just fine

Lex Fridman (2:13:35.600)

because every house needed them.

Tony Fadell (2:13:37.840)

All the installers were programmed by the product deliverers,

Lex Fridman (2:13:42.840)

by bonuses to say, you're gonna only carry our product,

Lex Fridman (2:13:49.040)

and if you sell this many,

Lex Fridman (2:13:50.200)

you're gonna get a free trip to Hawaii, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:53.280)

And for these guys who install,

Lex Fridman (2:13:54.440)

I get a free trip to Hawaii, that's dream for them, right?

Lex Fridman (2:13:57.840)

So this whole channel was fully controlled

Lex Fridman (2:14:00.320)

by the product guys,

Lex Fridman (2:14:01.560)

and it was almost monopolistic in a way.

Lex Fridman (2:14:04.800)

So how do you go around that?

Lex Fridman (2:14:06.760)

So creating a disruptive go to market channel,

Lex Fridman (2:14:10.840)

one was direct to consumer, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:13.000)

And all the marketing that was necessary

Lex Fridman (2:14:15.600)

to get that message across.

Tony Fadell (2:14:17.800)

Another one was getting the installation right.

Lex Fridman (2:14:21.800)

No one was self installing thermostats.

Lex Fridman (2:14:24.440)

So how do we get enough people who are early adopters

Lex Fridman (2:14:27.280)

to be able to self install them confidently?

Lex Fridman (2:14:30.600)

So they didn't still have to call the guy

Lex Fridman (2:14:32.880)

to come and install it,

Tony Fadell (2:14:34.360)

because then he would say, this is a crap product.

Lex Fridman (2:14:36.280)

No, I got the most better product, right?

Lex Fridman (2:14:38.360)

So you had to get rid of that friction.

Lex Fridman (2:14:40.680)

And then ultimately, how do you get the people

Tony Fadell (2:14:42.760)

who were not just early adopters,

Lex Fridman (2:14:44.360)

but people who needed to see it

Lex Fridman (2:14:45.760)

and touch it before they bought it?

Lex Fridman (2:14:47.480)

How do you get that into retail

Tony Fadell (2:14:49.480)

when the large brands of the time of thermostats

Lex Fridman (2:14:53.120)

and Home Depot and Lowe's had contracts

Lex Fridman (2:14:55.640)

that they couldn't bring in any other brands?

Lex Fridman (2:14:58.440)

They were owning the channel all the way

Tony Fadell (2:15:00.320)

to where there was any sort of slight customer choice.

Lex Fridman (2:15:04.200)

And it was really contractor choice

Tony Fadell (2:15:06.680)

more than it was in consumer choice.

Lex Fridman (2:15:09.280)

So all of that had to be innovated along with the product.

Lex Fridman (2:15:13.520)

And so to me, that was a huge challenge

Lex Fridman (2:15:15.440)

and something I had never done,

Tony Fadell (2:15:17.280)

most of us had never done.

Lex Fridman (2:15:18.440)

And we had to create, that was as much as a project

Tony Fadell (2:15:21.920)

as actually delivering the product itself.

Lex Fridman (2:15:25.960)

So it turned out to be a giant hit.

Lex Fridman (2:15:28.520)

And it was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion.

Lex Fridman (2:15:33.520)

$3.2 billion.

Tony Fadell (2:15:36.640)

As a founder and leader, just out of curiosity,

Lex Fridman (2:15:39.640)

in these cases of acquisition, is it always a good thing?

Tony Fadell (2:15:44.680)

Is there any part of you and the team

Lex Fridman (2:15:47.560)

that considered saying no?

Tony Fadell (2:15:49.920)

Oh, we considered saying no

Lex Fridman (2:15:51.960)

all the way along the process, right?

Tony Fadell (2:15:54.680)

We'd all been in big companies before.

Lex Fridman (2:15:58.000)

We knew what it was like and the politics

Lex Fridman (2:16:01.040)

and all the other stuff and what I came to learn,

Lex Fridman (2:16:04.520)

especially from Phillips,

Tony Fadell (2:16:06.480)

because Phillips was a very, it was 375,000 people.

Lex Fridman (2:16:08.920)

It was a big, it was massive company, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:11.840)

And tons of politics.

Lex Fridman (2:16:13.360)

And I was like, do we wanna go back into that world?

Tony Fadell (2:16:15.360)

Because I had so many negative experiences from that.

Lex Fridman (2:16:19.520)

But then going to Apple, which was not big,

Lex Fridman (2:16:22.320)

but it was big enough that it could have all these dynamics.

Lex Fridman (2:16:24.680)

But then when you saw a leader rise up

Lex Fridman (2:16:26.640)

and get rid of those dynamics or not,

Lex Fridman (2:16:28.760)

allow many of them to flourish,

Tony Fadell (2:16:32.880)

then you're like, oh, with the right leadership,

Lex Fridman (2:16:35.000)

this can be a beautiful marriage, right?

Lex Fridman (2:16:37.880)

And so for four months, we were working together with them,

Lex Fridman (2:16:41.000)

with Google, to make sure that we had the right leadership

Lex Fridman (2:16:43.960)

and we were gonna be in the right environment

Lex Fridman (2:16:45.640)

that it felt right.

Lex Fridman (2:16:47.800)

So that happened.

Lex Fridman (2:16:49.120)

It absolutely happened.

Tony Fadell (2:16:50.080)

We worked on all the details.

Lex Fridman (2:16:51.320)

We didn't even talk about price.

Lex Fridman (2:16:53.200)

We were talking about how's the brand gonna work?

Lex Fridman (2:16:55.600)

Who's the team gonna work with?

Lex Fridman (2:16:56.760)

How are we gonna get IP?

Lex Fridman (2:16:58.400)

How are we gonna do exchanges?

Lex Fridman (2:16:59.520)

How are we gonna get budgets and all that stuff done?

Lex Fridman (2:17:01.520)

So we worked through all of that

Tony Fadell (2:17:02.520)

before we actually sealed any kind of deal

Lex Fridman (2:17:04.360)

because they were already an investor in the company.

Lex Fridman (2:17:05.840)

So we already knew,

Lex Fridman (2:17:07.400)

they knew relatively where the end point was for the price.

Lex Fridman (2:17:12.040)

So working through all of those prerequisites,

Lex Fridman (2:17:15.760)

I knew that as a individual product company

Tony Fadell (2:17:20.160)

that was trying to create a platform,

Lex Fridman (2:17:22.840)

no investors were gonna invest in a platform

Tony Fadell (2:17:25.160)

that could take three, four years

Lex Fridman (2:17:27.480)

and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars to build

Tony Fadell (2:17:30.360)

without all kinds of new products at the same time.

Lex Fridman (2:17:33.720)

And products that we were having, which were successes,

Lex Fridman (2:17:35.960)

but they weren't even break even yet, right?

Lex Fridman (2:17:37.600)

We were still developing them.

Lex Fridman (2:17:39.440)

So how are we gonna get more people to fund

Lex Fridman (2:17:42.000)

all of these things and this platform

Lex Fridman (2:17:44.120)

that I really wanna create?

Lex Fridman (2:17:46.080)

Because my worry, and I had seen this many times

Tony Fadell (2:17:48.200)

in Silicon Valley, is these small startups have bravado

Lex Fridman (2:17:51.200)

and they said, I'm gonna take on the big guys, right?

Tony Fadell (2:17:54.600)

With a platform.

Lex Fridman (2:17:55.720)

But when those platform guys show up

Lex Fridman (2:17:57.960)

and Apple says they're gonna get in the,

Lex Fridman (2:17:59.840)

at the time, nobody cared.

Lex Fridman (2:18:01.680)

They were curious, what's next?

Lex Fridman (2:18:04.880)

But Apple wasn't in the market,

Tony Fadell (2:18:07.040)

Google wasn't in the market yet,

Lex Fridman (2:18:09.080)

Amazon wasn't there, Microsoft, Samsung,

Lex Fridman (2:18:12.080)

they were all just, that's curious, right?

Lex Fridman (2:18:16.000)

And I had watched, if you said,

Tony Fadell (2:18:19.000)

I'm gonna go challenge them

Lex Fridman (2:18:20.720)

and I'm gonna build a platform,

Lex Fridman (2:18:22.520)

and then they all of a sudden one by one go,

Lex Fridman (2:18:24.400)

oh, well, we're building a platform now,

Tony Fadell (2:18:26.200)

we're building a platform.

Lex Fridman (2:18:27.120)

They flooded you to death, fear, uncertainty, doubt,

Lex Fridman (2:18:29.920)

and the developers run away

Lex Fridman (2:18:31.320)

and you can't make that platform.

Lex Fridman (2:18:32.360)

So I'm like, before the landscape gets changed on us,

Lex Fridman (2:18:35.720)

because we've tracked so much attention,

Tony Fadell (2:18:37.240)

they announced something,

Lex Fridman (2:18:38.280)

we need to change the landscape on them.

Tony Fadell (2:18:42.920)

Let's go to the best place

Lex Fridman (2:18:44.400)

where we can build out the platform,

Tony Fadell (2:18:46.400)

have the right leadership behind us

Lex Fridman (2:18:48.680)

to help us grow this thing into what the vision it should be.

Lex Fridman (2:18:51.760)

And that's what we believed we were doing

Lex Fridman (2:18:53.480)

with the Google acquisition.

Lex Fridman (2:18:55.920)

Is it possible to take on the platforms?

Lex Fridman (2:19:00.040)

So you said there's a lot of startups

Tony Fadell (2:19:01.920)

with bravado and all that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:19:04.200)

It doesn't mean, James Joyce, when he was 20,

Tony Fadell (2:19:07.240)

he said, I'm gonna be the greatest writer

Lex Fridman (2:19:09.360)

of the 20th century before he wrote anything of value.

Tony Fadell (2:19:15.120)

One of them might be actually right.

Lex Fridman (2:19:17.040)

Yeah, in this modern world,

Tony Fadell (2:19:21.400)

when you, so first of all, people should definitely

Lex Fridman (2:19:25.440)

get your book built as just this giant number of advice

Tony Fadell (2:19:31.320)

on this exact question of how to build cool things,

Lex Fridman (2:19:36.720)

how to build a startup,

Lex Fridman (2:19:37.800)

how to all the different stages of that team and hiring.

Lex Fridman (2:19:41.720)

It's mostly human nature.

Tony Fadell (2:19:43.080)

It's not technical.

Lex Fridman (2:19:44.080)

It's mostly human nature behind it.

Lex Fridman (2:19:46.360)

And it turns out it's,

Lex Fridman (2:19:48.440)

turtles all the way down this human at the bottom.

Tony Fadell (2:19:51.160)

Yes, so is it possible to build startups

Lex Fridman (2:19:56.240)

that take on the big guys,

Lex Fridman (2:19:58.760)

whatever that is of the modern era?

Lex Fridman (2:20:01.160)

So for now, it's these platforms of Apple, Google, Twitter,

Tony Fadell (2:20:05.440)

I don't even know, Meta I guess called now.

Lex Fridman (2:20:09.560)

Is it possible to take them on?

Tony Fadell (2:20:11.360)

Absolutely, but you don't take them on on their same turf.

Lex Fridman (2:20:15.240)

You take them on on the turf

Lex Fridman (2:20:16.400)

they're gonna want to have in the future, right?

Lex Fridman (2:20:20.040)

Spotify is a platform.

Lex Fridman (2:20:21.560)

It started as an application, is now a platform, right?

Lex Fridman (2:20:26.000)

Think of WeChat.

Tony Fadell (2:20:28.600)

Think of all the super apps out there

Lex Fridman (2:20:30.320)

that are now wallets and delivery services

Lex Fridman (2:20:33.560)

and travel services and transportation services

Lex Fridman (2:20:37.240)

all within an app.

Tony Fadell (2:20:39.320)

They've innovated in a different level,

Lex Fridman (2:20:40.880)

in a different space that the platform companies weren't.

Tony Fadell (2:20:46.040)

Google was an app company.

Lex Fridman (2:20:49.440)

It was solving search.

Lex Fridman (2:20:51.120)

And then it became a platform company.

Lex Fridman (2:20:52.960)

Apple was solving personal computing.

Lex Fridman (2:20:55.200)

And then iPhone was solving internet browsing,

Lex Fridman (2:21:00.840)

all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (2:21:01.680)

And then it became a platform company

Lex Fridman (2:21:03.120)

when the app store was at it.

Tony Fadell (2:21:04.400)

If you look at it,

Lex Fridman (2:21:05.720)

there's no such thing as building a platform company.

Tony Fadell (2:21:07.640)

You build a great app first,

Lex Fridman (2:21:09.880)

and then you can expand it

Lex Fridman (2:21:11.160)

and have the right to become a platform.

Lex Fridman (2:21:14.840)

Your whole book is just a bunch of advice for young people.

Lex Fridman (2:21:19.200)

But let me ask.

Lex Fridman (2:21:20.040)

And older people.

Lex Fridman (2:21:20.920)

And old, well, everyone is young at heart.

Lex Fridman (2:21:23.200)

And if you're not, you should be.

Lex Fridman (2:21:25.280)

So what, in terms of picking a career,

Lex Fridman (2:21:28.120)

you have advice on this point.

Lex Fridman (2:21:29.720)

What advice would you give to a person

Lex Fridman (2:21:32.400)

on how to pick a career?

Lex Fridman (2:21:35.120)

What is it you want to learn?

Lex Fridman (2:21:37.320)

And who is it you want to learn from?

Tony Fadell (2:21:39.360)

Just like you pick a university.

Lex Fridman (2:21:42.880)

You're like, I wanna go here for this expertise.

Tony Fadell (2:21:44.840)

I've heard about these programs, especially graduate,

Lex Fridman (2:21:47.720)

graduate studies, you go for a certain program

Tony Fadell (2:21:51.080)

with a certain set of people.

Lex Fridman (2:21:52.640)

Why don't you do that when it comes to a job?

Tony Fadell (2:21:56.440)

You just don't go, or in a career,

Lex Fridman (2:21:58.400)

you just don't go and say,

Tony Fadell (2:21:59.280)

I just wanna go work at Google,

Lex Fridman (2:22:00.880)

or I just wanna work at Apple.

Tony Fadell (2:22:02.440)

You wanna go to a certain team

Lex Fridman (2:22:04.240)

with a certain set of people

Lex Fridman (2:22:05.720)

and work with them on something

Lex Fridman (2:22:07.240)

that you're really curious about

Lex Fridman (2:22:08.920)

and you wanna learn about.

Lex Fridman (2:22:10.440)

That's such, I just wanted to comment that,

Tony Fadell (2:22:12.960)

that's such a, it's a subtle but a brilliant framing

Lex Fridman (2:22:17.080)

of just ask the question, what do I want to learn?

Lex Fridman (2:22:22.240)

And then see what career path is going to maximize that.

Lex Fridman (2:22:29.440)

That's so interesting.

Tony Fadell (2:22:31.000)

It's the first question I ask anyone who interviews with me.

Lex Fridman (2:22:35.000)

When I say I'm gonna bring somebody on the team,

Lex Fridman (2:22:36.680)

first question is, what do you wanna learn?

Lex Fridman (2:22:39.560)

I don't want the expert, like we talked about earlier,

Tony Fadell (2:22:41.840)

says, I'm the expert in this.

Lex Fridman (2:22:43.560)

You're gonna hire me as the expert.

Tony Fadell (2:22:46.040)

We're doing something new.

Lex Fridman (2:22:47.600)

You're not an expert,

Tony Fadell (2:22:48.440)

cause we're not an expert either.

Lex Fridman (2:22:50.120)

What is it you wanna learn?

Lex Fridman (2:22:53.640)

And on the topic of learning,

Lex Fridman (2:22:58.520)

what is the best way to learn?

Tony Fadell (2:23:02.000)

What, starting, you go into this new place,

Lex Fridman (2:23:06.840)

into this new world, into maybe V1,

Tony Fadell (2:23:10.640)

you said you're building V1.

Lex Fridman (2:23:12.200)

I mean, the whole world is late, is full of V1s

Tony Fadell (2:23:17.000)

or V0s waiting for the V1 to come along.

Lex Fridman (2:23:20.320)

Zero to one.

Tony Fadell (2:23:21.160)

Zero to one.

Lex Fridman (2:23:22.120)

What's the process of that look like?

Lex Fridman (2:23:25.520)

What's the process of learning?

Lex Fridman (2:23:27.960)

How do you learn?

Tony Fadell (2:23:29.840)

Well, let me put a framing

Lex Fridman (2:23:31.680)

and then we'll talk about that last piece.

Tony Fadell (2:23:34.480)

I have now looking back, especially writing this book,

Lex Fridman (2:23:37.960)

I have a version one of myself, a version two,

Tony Fadell (2:23:40.880)

a version three, a version four.

Lex Fridman (2:23:43.320)

I had a lot of opinions about myself

Lex Fridman (2:23:46.640)

and what I wanted to do.

Lex Fridman (2:23:47.480)

Sometimes those opinions for certain people,

Tony Fadell (2:23:50.240)

those opinions are formed

Lex Fridman (2:23:52.080)

and they get the data from their parents

Lex Fridman (2:23:54.080)

and they go do what their parents told them to do

Lex Fridman (2:23:55.800)

or their surroundings.

Tony Fadell (2:23:57.400)

My opinions was like, I wanna go and learn this.

Lex Fridman (2:23:59.600)

I'm curious about that.

Tony Fadell (2:24:00.520)

I made the zero to one move.

Lex Fridman (2:24:02.440)

And then over time by doing,

Tony Fadell (2:24:05.280)

I was refining those things

Lex Fridman (2:24:06.920)

and learning what I was really curious about

Lex Fridman (2:24:08.520)

and what I was really good about

Lex Fridman (2:24:10.240)

because I was getting data.

Lex Fridman (2:24:11.760)

And then I was like, then I had another set of opinions

Lex Fridman (2:24:14.240)

to create version two of me.

Lex Fridman (2:24:16.480)

And then I would go and do it.

Lex Fridman (2:24:17.520)

So I was learning by doing,

Tony Fadell (2:24:19.800)

starting with the opinion,

Lex Fridman (2:24:21.040)

you're not gonna get any facts.

Tony Fadell (2:24:22.560)

Most people are like,

Lex Fridman (2:24:24.160)

where do I make the most money for my position?

Tony Fadell (2:24:27.200)

They're trying to start with data.

Lex Fridman (2:24:30.360)

Start with the why, what's your curiosity?

Lex Fridman (2:24:33.760)

What do you wanna learn?

Lex Fridman (2:24:35.440)

And then follow that.

Tony Fadell (2:24:37.320)

I took the lowest job on the totem pole at General Magic

Lex Fridman (2:24:42.600)

because I wanted to get in there

Tony Fadell (2:24:43.520)

to work with the right team.

Lex Fridman (2:24:44.840)

I didn't even know what they were doing, right?

Lex Fridman (2:24:47.600)

But I thought that it felt right, right?

Lex Fridman (2:24:51.480)

I was barely living above the poverty line working there,

Tony Fadell (2:24:54.080)

working 80 hours a week

Lex Fridman (2:24:55.640)

because it was so amazing to learn

Lex Fridman (2:24:57.840)

just like a college student, right?

Lex Fridman (2:24:59.280)

That's what I was doing.

Lex Fridman (2:25:00.800)

And then I learned more from that

Lex Fridman (2:25:03.720)

and then changed those opinions into data.

Lex Fridman (2:25:06.120)

And then I found other opinions.

Lex Fridman (2:25:07.800)

So it's the same thing, but it was by doing, right?

Tony Fadell (2:25:11.760)

The way you find out what you wanna do in life

Lex Fridman (2:25:13.720)

is by figuring out what you don't wanna do.

Lex Fridman (2:25:16.480)

And the only way you find that out

Lex Fridman (2:25:17.960)

is by doing a bunch of stuff.

Tony Fadell (2:25:19.320)

Doing a bunch of stuff and refining it.

Lex Fridman (2:25:21.760)

That's hilarious.

Tony Fadell (2:25:22.720)

Yeah, that's brilliant.

Lex Fridman (2:25:24.800)

So in terms of the career path

Tony Fadell (2:25:27.200)

of leaping into the startup world and launching a startup,

Lex Fridman (2:25:31.520)

what does it take to successfully found a startup,

Lex Fridman (2:25:35.280)

to have a chance to succeed?

Lex Fridman (2:25:37.760)

And maybe how do you decide to take that leap?

Tony Fadell (2:25:46.760)

Is there sort of having founded,

Lex Fridman (2:25:49.200)

having been part of many V1s,

Tony Fadell (2:25:52.640)

many of some of the most successful V1s ever,

Lex Fridman (2:25:57.080)

what's it take to take that leap?

Tony Fadell (2:25:58.880)

Maybe leave your job, cushy job at a company

Lex Fridman (2:26:03.880)

and do the startup.

Lex Fridman (2:26:06.400)

What does it take?

Lex Fridman (2:26:08.680)

It takes belief in yourself.

Tony Fadell (2:26:10.800)

That's the first thing.

Lex Fridman (2:26:12.320)

Belief that you can do it.

Tony Fadell (2:26:13.560)

Not, but hopefully with mirrors or mentors around you

Lex Fridman (2:26:17.520)

or coaches around you to make sure you know

Tony Fadell (2:26:19.480)

you're not crazy.

Lex Fridman (2:26:21.280)

It's a crazy smart idea, but you're not crazy

Lex Fridman (2:26:24.000)

and you're just working on something

Lex Fridman (2:26:26.040)

as like a lone mad man or woman.

Tony Fadell (2:26:31.280)

You have a great idea.

Lex Fridman (2:26:32.840)

And like I said, great ideas chase you.

Tony Fadell (2:26:36.680)

In this world, there are so many people who have more ideas

Lex Fridman (2:26:39.520)

than they have time to implement.

Tony Fadell (2:26:41.680)

I used to be like that.

Lex Fridman (2:26:42.920)

I would like, oh my God, if this idea, this idea,

Lex Fridman (2:26:44.800)

and you try to do all of them,

Lex Fridman (2:26:47.360)

but the best ideas are the ones that you can really focus on

Lex Fridman (2:26:50.240)

and you shut out all those other things

Lex Fridman (2:26:52.240)

and you bring them other ideas

Tony Fadell (2:26:53.360)

into the thing you're trying to do.

Lex Fridman (2:26:54.920)

So I try to run away from a great idea

Lex Fridman (2:26:58.040)

and then it stalks me.

Lex Fridman (2:26:59.920)

It hunts you down because you're like,

Tony Fadell (2:27:01.840)

ah, that's gonna have this problem.

Lex Fridman (2:27:03.520)

I'm gonna put it aside.

Lex Fridman (2:27:05.280)

And then all of a sudden, you know, a few days later,

Lex Fridman (2:27:08.720)

oh, I think I know how to solve that problem.

Tony Fadell (2:27:10.480)

Or I talk to somebody and you're just always kind of

Lex Fridman (2:27:13.520)

niggling around the edges of it.

Lex Fridman (2:27:15.440)

And then at some point it's like,

Lex Fridman (2:27:17.160)

it just becomes like this black hole

Tony Fadell (2:27:19.720)

that just sucks you in and you're like,

Lex Fridman (2:27:20.920)

I can't think about anything else but this.

Lex Fridman (2:27:23.280)

It's almost like a relationship in the world, right?

Lex Fridman (2:27:26.360)

You know, when you have it with a, you find your partner.

Tony Fadell (2:27:29.560)

You know, you're like, mm, mm, wait, mm, something.

Lex Fridman (2:27:33.080)

And then you're trying to like,

Lex Fridman (2:27:34.120)

and then all of a sudden it just,

Lex Fridman (2:27:35.720)

it comes together, right?

Tony Fadell (2:27:36.760)

It's kind of like that.

Lex Fridman (2:27:37.760)

Ultimately achieved focus.

Tony Fadell (2:27:38.960)

See, I'm different.

Lex Fridman (2:27:39.880)

I just dive right in.

Tony Fadell (2:27:41.240)

I used to do that too.

Lex Fridman (2:27:42.240)

I used to dive right in.

Tony Fadell (2:27:43.600)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:27:44.440)

But I learned that you'd need time.

Tony Fadell (2:27:45.680)

It's more effective to run away from it.

Lex Fridman (2:27:47.280)

Run away from it.

Lex Fridman (2:27:48.240)

And so it chases you because it makes you think harder

Lex Fridman (2:27:51.320)

about that story.

Tony Fadell (2:27:52.480)

This is not dating advice.

Lex Fridman (2:27:53.880)

We're talking about stardom.

Tony Fadell (2:27:54.880)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:27:57.720)

But ultimately, so you have achieved a focus on it.

Lex Fridman (2:28:03.080)

But you also said to believe in yourself.

Lex Fridman (2:28:05.360)

So it's not necessarily even the idea.

Tony Fadell (2:28:06.880)

It's the human that believe in the human being.

Lex Fridman (2:28:11.880)

You have to believe in yourself and the idea that you have.

Tony Fadell (2:28:15.560)

Because if you don't have that belief,

Lex Fridman (2:28:17.800)

then you can't project that to other people

Tony Fadell (2:28:20.440)

to say, join the team.

Lex Fridman (2:28:24.120)

Let me ask you on, because you mentioned mentors

Lex Fridman (2:28:26.880)

and you've talked about having had incredible mentors

Lex Fridman (2:28:30.120)

in your life.

Tony Fadell (2:28:30.960)

You're also a mentor to a very large number of people.

Lex Fridman (2:28:34.600)

What does it take to find a mentor?

Lex Fridman (2:28:36.520)

How do you find a great mentor?

Lex Fridman (2:28:40.080)

Usually they also find you.

Lex Fridman (2:28:42.880)

Is it like with the ideas?

Lex Fridman (2:28:44.320)

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Tony Fadell (2:28:46.800)

No, what happens is you're in the right,

Lex Fridman (2:28:48.880)

you have a community around you, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:28:51.040)

And because you've been building a network,

Lex Fridman (2:28:53.680)

because you can't do it alone.

Lex Fridman (2:28:55.080)

So you have to create this network around you

Lex Fridman (2:28:57.600)

of relationships, not transactions,

Lex Fridman (2:29:00.200)

but relationships over time that you really cherish

Lex Fridman (2:29:02.800)

and people you talk to, okay?

Lex Fridman (2:29:04.880)

And you share vulnerable or nascent ideas with

Lex Fridman (2:29:09.520)

or crazy opinions with, and then you argue them through.

Lex Fridman (2:29:13.320)

But you start to see resonate, and it's not about age.

Lex Fridman (2:29:18.360)

It's just about this connection, right?

Tony Fadell (2:29:20.600)

I have mentors.

Lex Fridman (2:29:21.840)

Obviously when I was young, all my mentors were older.

Lex Fridman (2:29:23.920)

And as I get older, I have mentors who are younger than me

Lex Fridman (2:29:27.200)

or the same age, right?

Lex Fridman (2:29:28.560)

They're not all just older, right?

Lex Fridman (2:29:30.240)

And so it's about that connection.

Tony Fadell (2:29:32.360)

It's about being on that same wavelength,

Lex Fridman (2:29:35.000)

but they also, they can counterbalance you.

Tony Fadell (2:29:39.120)

They compliment you in some way.

Lex Fridman (2:29:41.120)

Like my best mentors had nothing to do with technology.

Lex Fridman (2:29:43.720)

They didn't know anything about technology, right?

Lex Fridman (2:29:46.600)

The way we know it.

Tony Fadell (2:29:47.720)

They were all about human nature and they could reflect that

Lex Fridman (2:29:49.840)

and help me get more human focused and more empathetic

Tony Fadell (2:29:53.440)

because I was so detailed in the technology.

Lex Fridman (2:29:56.440)

I needed to see from other perspectives,

Lex Fridman (2:29:58.760)

but then they wanted to learn more about the technology,

Lex Fridman (2:30:01.120)

right?

Tony Fadell (2:30:01.960)

Or they thought that this idea was so great

Lex Fridman (2:30:03.280)

that it should exist.

Tony Fadell (2:30:04.760)

Now let's work together on that.

Lex Fridman (2:30:06.640)

So it's really, they have to find you

Lex Fridman (2:30:08.880)

and you have to find them.

Lex Fridman (2:30:10.040)

And that's by sharing.

Tony Fadell (2:30:11.640)

You just don't go and look it up on the internet

Lex Fridman (2:30:14.840)

and say, who are the best mentors in the world?

Tony Fadell (2:30:16.680)

It just doesn't work that way.

Lex Fridman (2:30:18.560)

So form a network of people and see where,

Tony Fadell (2:30:21.120)

I mean, it's like finding relationships, finding love,

Lex Fridman (2:30:23.960)

all that kind of friendship.

Tony Fadell (2:30:24.800)

Human nature.

Lex Fridman (2:30:27.640)

Venture capitalists, money.

Lex Fridman (2:30:29.800)

Do VCs help or hurt a business in general?

Lex Fridman (2:30:33.360)

So like in those early stages in the chase

Tony Fadell (2:30:35.600)

of developing a V1, just what's the constructive

Lex Fridman (2:30:39.760)

and destructive power of money

Tony Fadell (2:30:42.840)

in the development of a brilliant idea

Lex Fridman (2:30:45.280)

and the deployment of a brilliant idea?

Tony Fadell (2:30:47.600)

I have seen brilliant venture capitalists.

Lex Fridman (2:30:50.720)

I have seen horrible ones.

Tony Fadell (2:30:53.440)

Ones that care about their LPs more

Lex Fridman (2:30:56.080)

than they care about the entrepreneurs.

Tony Fadell (2:30:58.800)

Of course, everyone's in it, at the end of the day,

Lex Fridman (2:31:01.200)

especially venture capital, they have to give a return

Tony Fadell (2:31:03.720)

to their limited partners, the people who invest in money

Lex Fridman (2:31:07.040)

that they have to shepherd that money

Lex Fridman (2:31:09.560)

and make sure it's watched over properly.

Lex Fridman (2:31:12.160)

But when there's not a balance, a pushback

Tony Fadell (2:31:14.760)

in a venture capitalist between what the LPs

Lex Fridman (2:31:17.400)

needs and what the entrepreneur needs,

Lex Fridman (2:31:20.880)

and that the entrepreneur might be trying really hard,

Lex Fridman (2:31:23.480)

but if they don't see, the VC doesn't see,

Tony Fadell (2:31:25.880)

the exit's gonna happen in two years

Lex Fridman (2:31:27.320)

and they just leave them hanging,

Tony Fadell (2:31:29.840)

when there's no, the value exchange is only money

Lex Fridman (2:31:33.200)

and not mentorship or ideas or other things,

Tony Fadell (2:31:37.680)

when there's not a relationship, but really a transaction,

Lex Fridman (2:31:40.320)

that's when money is toxic.

Tony Fadell (2:31:43.120)

Because you can get money everywhere.

Lex Fridman (2:31:44.400)

Maybe it's a little harder today,

Tony Fadell (2:31:46.520)

over the last month, but you can still find people

Lex Fridman (2:31:49.840)

with money who are on that, who wanna enable your mission

Lex Fridman (2:31:54.480)

and can be mentors, not always, not all of them,

Lex Fridman (2:31:57.960)

but some of them can be mentors, but they're on your side,

Tony Fadell (2:32:01.480)

then it's incredibly powerful

Lex Fridman (2:32:03.440)

because it's not just one plus one equals two, right?

Tony Fadell (2:32:06.040)

It's something bigger than that

Lex Fridman (2:32:07.560)

because then they can bring their networks of people

Lex Fridman (2:32:09.720)

and their networks of companies

Lex Fridman (2:32:11.240)

and other people they worked with

Lex Fridman (2:32:12.640)

that might wanna join your mission, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:17.120)

That's the kind of venture capitalist

Lex Fridman (2:32:19.280)

and smart money that's out there, right?

Lex Fridman (2:32:22.080)

But you have to build a relationship.

Tony Fadell (2:32:23.960)

People go, oh, look at that valuation.

Lex Fridman (2:32:26.040)

Oh, it's the brand name of the VC that's investing me.

Tony Fadell (2:32:29.840)

No, it boils down to who's that partner

Lex Fridman (2:32:32.840)

and how experienced are they?

Tony Fadell (2:32:34.640)

Don't just give me the brand, give me the person

Lex Fridman (2:32:37.720)

because that's the person I'm gonna be interacting with.

Tony Fadell (2:32:40.040)

I have to, there's a million questions I wanna ask you,

Lex Fridman (2:32:42.600)

but we're on season five already.

Lex Fridman (2:32:46.720)

But let me ask you, it seems like

Lex Fridman (2:32:50.200)

out of all the brilliant things you write about,

Tony Fadell (2:32:51.680)

it seems like not an important question,

Lex Fridman (2:32:53.040)

but it's a fascinating one to me as lawyers.

Tony Fadell (2:32:55.240)

You write about this.

Lex Fridman (2:32:56.240)

So does the company need lawyers and why?

Lex Fridman (2:33:03.600)

And what kind?

Lex Fridman (2:33:04.440)

So you write about sort of the value of this game, I guess.

Tony Fadell (2:33:07.800)

Right, the legal game.

Lex Fridman (2:33:09.680)

It's...

Lex Fridman (2:33:13.560)

Why do we need lawyers?

Lex Fridman (2:33:14.600)

You sound exasperated by lawyers.

Tony Fadell (2:33:16.120)

I don't have a good question, I guess.

Lex Fridman (2:33:19.200)

Well, because...

Tony Fadell (2:33:20.040)

The why of lawyers is what you're asking.

Lex Fridman (2:33:21.320)

The why of lawyers, yes, exactly.

Tony Fadell (2:33:23.160)

Okay, the why of lawyers.

Lex Fridman (2:33:25.000)

Thank you.

Tony Fadell (2:33:26.360)

You even do the question.

Lex Fridman (2:33:29.920)

We just have to put why in front of everything you ask

Lex Fridman (2:33:32.000)

and then we'll be there.

Lex Fridman (2:33:33.200)

Lawyers, why, why?

Tony Fadell (2:33:34.840)

Even mafiosos had lawyers.

Lex Fridman (2:33:37.040)

Okay, you know, Tony Soprano, you know, Scarface,

Lex Fridman (2:33:44.800)

all of them had lawyers, right?

Lex Fridman (2:33:46.920)

Why?

Tony Fadell (2:33:47.880)

Because there are things in this world

Lex Fridman (2:33:49.640)

that you don't always consider in the government,

Tony Fadell (2:33:53.240)

in laws, in competitors,

Lex Fridman (2:33:57.960)

because you're so focused on what you're doing,

Lex Fridman (2:34:00.280)

they have to watch out for you, right?

Lex Fridman (2:34:03.600)

Now, the best kind of lawyers are the ones

Tony Fadell (2:34:05.640)

who try to work with you to enable what you're doing

Lex Fridman (2:34:08.920)

and see gray areas.

Lex Fridman (2:34:11.600)

Law is not black or white, it's how it's interpreted, right?

Lex Fridman (2:34:15.280)

And so they can help interpret things a certain way

Tony Fadell (2:34:17.600)

or help push on things a certain way

Lex Fridman (2:34:19.960)

to get change to happen or allow change to happen.

Tony Fadell (2:34:22.400)

Because if you have lawyers who are always,

Lex Fridman (2:34:24.040)

just like you were talking about PR people,

Tony Fadell (2:34:26.440)

if you have lawyers who are always saying no to everything,

Lex Fridman (2:34:28.280)

because their job is to really say no or maybe,

Tony Fadell (2:34:30.720)

they'll never say yes.

Lex Fridman (2:34:32.600)

And you also say their job is to say no

Lex Fridman (2:34:35.040)

and bill you by the hour.

Lex Fridman (2:34:36.280)

Exactly, exactly.

Tony Fadell (2:34:38.320)

Depressing.

Lex Fridman (2:34:39.160)

Right?

Tony Fadell (2:34:40.240)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (2:34:41.080)

If you don't wanna know, don't ask them,

Tony Fadell (2:34:42.320)

because you're gonna get a no,

Lex Fridman (2:34:43.360)

maybe a maybe.

Lex Fridman (2:34:44.200)

And you'll get charged for it.

Lex Fridman (2:34:45.040)

And you'll get charged for it anyways, right?

Lex Fridman (2:34:47.640)

So to have a partner, to have them on your team,

Lex Fridman (2:34:52.360)

to help you see maybe some of the things you don't see,

Tony Fadell (2:34:55.000)

some consequences, they help to rein that in

Lex Fridman (2:34:58.200)

or change your language.

Lex Fridman (2:35:00.120)

Like, are you gonna get sued for this ad?

Lex Fridman (2:35:02.240)

Just change this one word and it helps.

Lex Fridman (2:35:05.000)

Right?

Lex Fridman (2:35:06.040)

So you need to have a partner.

Tony Fadell (2:35:07.720)

Most of the times, especially engineers or designers,

Lex Fridman (2:35:10.840)

they see lawyers as only stifling.

Tony Fadell (2:35:13.800)

Lawyers can actually, if you do it right

Lex Fridman (2:35:15.400)

and you have the right type,

Tony Fadell (2:35:16.640)

they can actually open up a whole new world for you

Lex Fridman (2:35:19.000)

because of the interpretation

Lex Fridman (2:35:20.520)

and how we go about doing things.

Lex Fridman (2:35:22.840)

So.

Lex Fridman (2:35:23.680)

And they help you not get bogged down

Lex Fridman (2:35:25.520)

in the pain of little mistakes that didn't mean anything.

Tony Fadell (2:35:28.480)

Exactly, you shot yourself in the foot

Lex Fridman (2:35:29.800)

and you didn't even know it.

Tony Fadell (2:35:30.640)

You didn't even know you were carrying the gun.

Lex Fridman (2:35:33.600)

Just to jump around, Charles Bukowski once wrote,

Tony Fadell (2:35:36.720)

"'Find what you love and let it kill you.'"

Lex Fridman (2:35:40.680)

So the question is about work life balance.

Tony Fadell (2:35:44.120)

That's like finding an idea and let it chase you.

Lex Fridman (2:35:46.560)

Yes, but a little more aggressive.

Lex Fridman (2:35:50.480)

So what does work life balance look like

Lex Fridman (2:35:54.320)

that maximizes success and or happiness?

Lex Fridman (2:35:59.600)

Is there such a thing as work life balance?

Lex Fridman (2:36:02.400)

Is, can you speak to this?

Tony Fadell (2:36:05.640)

When your work is your life,

Lex Fridman (2:36:07.320)

and I mean that in the positive sense.

Tony Fadell (2:36:10.160)

When you're on a mission that really matters

Lex Fridman (2:36:12.960)

and you know that you can really affect,

Tony Fadell (2:36:15.880)

not just yourself, but other people's lives,

Lex Fridman (2:36:18.040)

and then that is very rewarding, right?

Tony Fadell (2:36:21.360)

That's not work.

Lex Fridman (2:36:23.240)

That's, like I said, a mission, right?

Tony Fadell (2:36:25.240)

You adopt that.

Lex Fridman (2:36:27.320)

But that said, you still need to have boundaries yourself.

Tony Fadell (2:36:30.200)

At General Magic, wonderful documentary,

Lex Fridman (2:36:32.240)

if no one's seen it, you gotta see that.

Tony Fadell (2:36:34.040)

It's amazing.

Lex Fridman (2:36:35.160)

I was physically and mentally unhealthy,

Tony Fadell (2:36:37.320)

socially unhealthy as well,

Lex Fridman (2:36:38.760)

because I put every waking minute into this thing,

Tony Fadell (2:36:43.160)

every ounce of me into it.

Lex Fridman (2:36:45.680)

And when it was a spectacular disaster,

Tony Fadell (2:36:48.920)

we were making the iPhone 15 years too early,

Lex Fridman (2:36:53.000)

the bottom fell out.

Tony Fadell (2:36:54.040)

I had nothing left.

Lex Fridman (2:36:55.720)

I had to get healthy socially, emotionally, physically

Tony Fadell (2:36:59.840)

after that, that trauma.

Lex Fridman (2:37:03.240)

I let everything go.

Tony Fadell (2:37:04.520)

I learned from that that you have to,

Lex Fridman (2:37:06.920)

even though you might put everything into your work,

Tony Fadell (2:37:09.560)

you need to find balance outside of it.

Lex Fridman (2:37:11.880)

Now that doesn't mean you're always,

Tony Fadell (2:37:14.320)

you know, it's three days a week working

Lex Fridman (2:37:16.960)

and four days a week or whatever it was.

Tony Fadell (2:37:19.160)

You're still working as hard as ever,

Lex Fridman (2:37:21.240)

but what you're doing is you're making sure

Tony Fadell (2:37:23.320)

when your thinking time is during work,

Lex Fridman (2:37:26.080)

that you're not ruminating at three in the morning.

Tony Fadell (2:37:28.160)

You use the tools that you have to put those ideas

Lex Fridman (2:37:31.360)

into databases or on pages or somewhere else

Lex Fridman (2:37:34.280)

so you can go back and look at them.

Lex Fridman (2:37:36.560)

So you're not always having to remember,

Tony Fadell (2:37:37.960)

because what happens is most people

Lex Fridman (2:37:39.000)

don't write this stuff down.

Lex Fridman (2:37:40.400)

So they just sit here and got to remember this,

Lex Fridman (2:37:41.880)

I got to remember this, I got to remember this.

Tony Fadell (2:37:43.920)

If you just put it into the tools

Lex Fridman (2:37:45.520)

and you can come back to it, you can come back fresh.

Tony Fadell (2:37:48.080)

A lot of the time is about ruminating

Lex Fridman (2:37:49.720)

about what I need to get done and remembering everything

Tony Fadell (2:37:52.760)

instead of doing the work.

Lex Fridman (2:37:55.520)

That's fascinating.

Lex Fridman (2:37:56.440)

So if you just put it down on paper,

Lex Fridman (2:37:58.480)

you can actually escape it.

Tony Fadell (2:38:00.320)

Escape it for a time, to have peace for a time.

Lex Fridman (2:38:03.160)

You mentioned General Magic.

Tony Fadell (2:38:08.160)

Let me ask you the Russian question.

Lex Fridman (2:38:11.600)

The Russian question.

Lex Fridman (2:38:13.200)

What's been the darkest moments of your life?

Lex Fridman (2:38:20.160)

Where are some of the darkest places

Lex Fridman (2:38:21.600)

you've got in your mind?

Lex Fridman (2:38:22.840)

You talked about if you're doing these kinds of things

Tony Fadell (2:38:26.000)

with startups, you're gonna have to face a crisis.

Lex Fridman (2:38:28.920)

Right, absolutely.

Tony Fadell (2:38:29.760)

If you're doing it right, you're gonna face it.

Lex Fridman (2:38:31.360)

So for you personally, where were some

Lex Fridman (2:38:34.000)

of the tougher moments in your life?

Lex Fridman (2:38:37.400)

Growing up, I went to 12 schools in 15 years.

Tony Fadell (2:38:43.160)

I was always the new kid.

Lex Fridman (2:38:47.320)

Put yourself in those shoes, right?

Lex Fridman (2:38:49.240)

You picked on, what were you picked on?

Lex Fridman (2:38:51.400)

Well, absolutely, but even more so,

Tony Fadell (2:38:53.600)

I was the geek with the computer.

Lex Fridman (2:38:55.680)

Remember the nerds in the 80s?

Tony Fadell (2:38:57.320)

You probably don't know this, but believe me,

Lex Fridman (2:38:59.520)

we were made fun of.

Lex Fridman (2:39:01.160)

What were these computers?

Lex Fridman (2:39:02.800)

What were these things?

Tony Fadell (2:39:03.640)

You're off in a cold.

Lex Fridman (2:39:04.920)

They're all off partying or going, whatever it was,

Lex Fridman (2:39:07.400)

and I'm sitting there like,

Lex Fridman (2:39:09.280)

and they're like, this guy is just this alien, right?

Tony Fadell (2:39:12.480)

Who's this new guy who just showed up and,

Lex Fridman (2:39:15.040)

and then you would ask the smart questions

Lex Fridman (2:39:17.960)

and you couldn't be the smartest in the,

Lex Fridman (2:39:20.280)

because then you get picked on too.

Lex Fridman (2:39:22.560)

And you're the new kid.

Lex Fridman (2:39:23.680)

So you're in this environment that's ever changing.

Tony Fadell (2:39:26.280)

You don't fit in and you are just asking questions

Lex Fridman (2:39:29.800)

because you think they're the right questions to answer,

Lex Fridman (2:39:32.480)

but then they like, you're making us look bad.

Lex Fridman (2:39:34.440)

Don't ask these smart questions

Tony Fadell (2:39:35.520)

because you're gonna make us do more work.

Lex Fridman (2:39:37.200)

So right there, it's pretty tough.

Lex Fridman (2:39:40.560)

And I'm moving cities, right?

Lex Fridman (2:39:41.800)

And I didn't have the internet

Tony Fadell (2:39:42.800)

to stay connected to people.

Lex Fridman (2:39:44.080)

There was no internet.

Tony Fadell (2:39:45.920)

Phone calls were $2 a minute.

Lex Fridman (2:39:47.640)

So it was lonely too.

Lex Fridman (2:39:49.280)

It was lonely, right?

Lex Fridman (2:39:51.680)

Right?

Lex Fridman (2:39:52.520)

I was a latchkey kid, right?

Lex Fridman (2:39:54.840)

I had my brother, but he was a skateboarder

Lex Fridman (2:39:56.880)

and he had a different social way of working.

Lex Fridman (2:40:00.640)

He loved to do that stuff and be outside.

Tony Fadell (2:40:02.400)

I loved the computer.

Lex Fridman (2:40:03.480)

So even in the computer, you were alone in the family.

Tony Fadell (2:40:06.600)

With the computer in the family, you were alone.

Lex Fridman (2:40:09.000)

I was absolutely alone.

Tony Fadell (2:40:09.840)

That was just me.

Lex Fridman (2:40:10.680)

But then, then you could find the other geeks, right?

Lex Fridman (2:40:15.240)

But there were just a few of us

Lex Fridman (2:40:16.480)

and we made this little thing.

Lex Fridman (2:40:18.480)

But then when you moved away,

Lex Fridman (2:40:20.040)

you know, then I had to use a BBS

Lex Fridman (2:40:22.400)

and a bulletin board system and a dial up modem.

Lex Fridman (2:40:24.960)

And then I started hacking the phone system

Tony Fadell (2:40:27.960)

to get free codes on MCI and Sprint back in the day

Lex Fridman (2:40:32.000)

to get long distance, to get free codes to call my friends,

Lex Fridman (2:40:35.160)

the geeks on the other side, right?

Lex Fridman (2:40:37.120)

Or to dial into a BBS cheaply

Tony Fadell (2:40:39.320)

that was in another part of the world.

Lex Fridman (2:40:41.200)

So this was this subculture

Lex Fridman (2:40:43.600)

and that was not accepted in any way.

Lex Fridman (2:40:45.400)

And not the heroes that you see today

Tony Fadell (2:40:47.120)

that are on the richest people in the world and everything.

Lex Fridman (2:40:52.000)

So that was the first set of trauma.

Lex Fridman (2:40:54.280)

And then the next one really was general magic.

Lex Fridman (2:40:56.640)

You know, the end of that, like I described before.

Lex Fridman (2:40:59.080)

And pulling yourself out and going just,

Lex Fridman (2:41:01.840)

cause I got so insular in that world

Tony Fadell (2:41:03.960)

of geeking out and building stuff

Lex Fridman (2:41:07.080)

that I just tore all the social ties, right?

Tony Fadell (2:41:11.000)

Because it was just, it was a drug.

Lex Fridman (2:41:12.960)

I was hooked on that.

Tony Fadell (2:41:13.920)

I was a junkie.

Lex Fridman (2:41:15.440)

I had to get clean.

Tony Fadell (2:41:17.920)

Yeah, and that made you who you are.

Lex Fridman (2:41:23.760)

Tempered, tempered.

Lex Fridman (2:41:28.040)

So Steve Jobs is no longer with us.

Lex Fridman (2:41:32.360)

One day you also will no longer be with us.

Tony Fadell (2:41:36.280)

That's the thing about this life, it ends.

Lex Fridman (2:41:41.880)

So no matter how many incredible things

Tony Fadell (2:41:43.840)

you brought to this world,

Lex Fridman (2:41:44.920)

no matter how many inventions you built,

Tony Fadell (2:41:48.120)

you too shall perish.

Lex Fridman (2:41:49.520)

Do you think about this?

Lex Fridman (2:41:51.520)

Are you afraid of your death?

Lex Fridman (2:41:57.680)

I am not afraid of my death.

Tony Fadell (2:42:00.800)

I am an atheist.

Lex Fridman (2:42:04.040)

And I think about the soul.

Tony Fadell (2:42:06.760)

Because I do, even though I'm an atheist,

Lex Fridman (2:42:08.400)

I think about the soul.

Lex Fridman (2:42:09.320)

And the soul is the thing that you instill in others

Lex Fridman (2:42:14.120)

when you go that lives on.

Tony Fadell (2:42:16.880)

It's not this thing that's magically in space.

Lex Fridman (2:42:20.520)

It's the thing that you've imparted onto people

Tony Fadell (2:42:23.360)

that you worked with and those relationships you've had.

Lex Fridman (2:42:26.520)

And that soul lives on in the stories that they tell, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:31.320)

And through Build, I'm hopeful that those stories

Lex Fridman (2:42:34.040)

stay relevant because they're human nature.

Tony Fadell (2:42:36.600)

They're not about who knows what the next iPhone thing is

Lex Fridman (2:42:39.280)

or the next iPod thing is.

Tony Fadell (2:42:40.680)

The stuff that I have been able, the privilege to make

Lex Fridman (2:42:45.120)

and work with people, those are all ephemeral.

Lex Fridman (2:42:48.480)

The iPod's gone now, right?

Lex Fridman (2:42:49.760)

This week, it was announced iPod's dead after 21 years.

Tony Fadell (2:42:56.080)

It is those human connections.

Lex Fridman (2:42:59.120)

It's that growth that you've helped someone

Tony Fadell (2:43:00.840)

just like they helped me.

Lex Fridman (2:43:02.440)

Just like Bill Campbell or Steve Jobs is gone,

Lex Fridman (2:43:04.920)

but they made me be better.

Lex Fridman (2:43:06.920)

That's the soul that I believe in.

Tony Fadell (2:43:09.080)

That's fascinating that you say that.

Lex Fridman (2:43:11.320)

Yeah, so many of these products,

Tony Fadell (2:43:14.240)

I mean, to push back a little bit,

Lex Fridman (2:43:16.080)

so even though the iPod is an end of an era.

Tony Fadell (2:43:19.880)

Using it every day.

Lex Fridman (2:43:22.040)

I think that, I mean, the number of people that impacted

Tony Fadell (2:43:26.640)

is just, so I suppose the soul is carried by the people.

Lex Fridman (2:43:32.160)

Exactly.

Tony Fadell (2:43:33.000)

Sometimes the products you create

Lex Fridman (2:43:34.720)

is the sort of the transport mechanism.

Tony Fadell (2:43:36.520)

It's the vessel.

Lex Fridman (2:43:38.120)

It's the vessel.

Tony Fadell (2:43:38.960)

They felt the love, and they felt that love,

Lex Fridman (2:43:41.400)

and it transformed them,

Tony Fadell (2:43:42.400)

even if they don't have the vessel anymore.

Lex Fridman (2:43:44.480)

Yeah, and in that way, the soul lives on.

Tony Fadell (2:43:46.720)

Just like the body is the vessel.

Lex Fridman (2:43:48.800)

That's beautifully put.

Lex Fridman (2:43:50.240)

Why do you think we're here?

Lex Fridman (2:43:52.160)

What's the meaning of life, Tony?

Tony Fadell (2:43:54.360)

Jesus Christ.

Lex Fridman (2:43:56.560)

And death, man.

Tony Fadell (2:43:58.000)

We're going all around.

Lex Fridman (2:43:58.960)

Meaning of life?

Lex Fridman (2:44:00.000)

Why, why?

Lex Fridman (2:44:01.040)

Because you said it's important to have a press release.

Tony Fadell (2:44:03.680)

I did.

Lex Fridman (2:44:07.280)

Okay.

Tony Fadell (2:44:08.120)

If humanity, if life on earth,

Lex Fridman (2:44:09.240)

if this thing, the consciousness,

Tony Fadell (2:44:11.800)

the falling in love, and building bridges,

Lex Fridman (2:44:15.600)

and iPods, and rockets,

Lex Fridman (2:44:18.480)

and trying to extend out into the cosmos, why?

Lex Fridman (2:44:22.040)

Why do you think we're doing it?

Lex Fridman (2:44:25.800)

Is there any meaning to it?

Lex Fridman (2:44:27.680)

We are naturally curious.

Tony Fadell (2:44:30.000)

We're, we are naturally curious individuals.

Lex Fridman (2:44:35.000)

And we are always looking for meaning.

Tony Fadell (2:44:39.920)

We're always trying to ascribe meaning to something,

Lex Fridman (2:44:42.760)

or understanding of something, right?

Lex Fridman (2:44:46.320)

And through that, it's just like evolution, right?

Lex Fridman (2:44:49.680)

And Darwinism.

Tony Fadell (2:44:50.600)

It's just that thing that's baked into our being

Lex Fridman (2:44:53.600)

at the most fundamental level.

Tony Fadell (2:44:55.280)

Driven by curiosity.

Lex Fridman (2:44:56.720)

Driven by curiosity.

Tony Fadell (2:44:58.720)

You're creating some pretty cool things along the way.

Lex Fridman (2:45:01.360)

Tony, you, and speaking of cool things,

Tony Fadell (2:45:03.480)

you've created some of the coolest things ever.

Lex Fridman (2:45:06.880)

And on top of that, you're just an amazing human being.

Tony Fadell (2:45:09.440)

It's a huge honor that you'll sit and talk to me today.

Lex Fridman (2:45:11.640)

This is fun.

Tony Fadell (2:45:12.800)

Lex, this is great.

Lex Fridman (2:45:14.320)

I didn't know where I was going,

Lex Fridman (2:45:16.160)

and I'm, let's talk, I'm looking for season.

Lex Fridman (2:45:18.880)

I would love to.

Tony Fadell (2:45:19.720)

Seven, eight, nine.

Lex Fridman (2:45:20.560)

Six, seven, yes.

Tony Fadell (2:45:21.400)

Let's go hang out and have dinner,

Lex Fridman (2:45:22.840)

and just rap about all kinds of crazy,

Tony Fadell (2:45:24.920)

I'd love to continue this.

Lex Fridman (2:45:26.480)

I would too.

Tony Fadell (2:45:27.320)

Thank you so much, Tony.

Lex Fridman (2:45:28.160)

Thanks, man.

Tony Fadell (2:45:29.560)

Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tony Fadal.

Lex Fridman (2:45:32.360)

To support this podcast,

Tony Fadell (2:45:33.880)

please check out our sponsors in the description.

Lex Fridman (2:45:36.960)

And now, let me leave you with some words

Tony Fadell (2:45:39.000)

from Tony Fadal himself.

Lex Fridman (2:45:41.200)

The most wonderful part of building something together

Tony Fadell (2:45:43.720)

with a team is that you're walking side by side

Lex Fridman (2:45:46.720)

with other people.

Tony Fadell (2:45:48.320)

You're all looking at your feet

Lex Fridman (2:45:49.880)

and scanning the horizon at the same time.

Tony Fadell (2:45:52.520)

Some people will see things you can't,

Lex Fridman (2:45:54.640)

and you will see things that are invisible to everyone else.

Lex Fridman (2:45:58.480)

So don't think doing the work just means

Lex Fridman (2:46:00.920)

locking yourself into a room.

Tony Fadell (2:46:02.800)

A huge part of it is walking with your team.

Lex Fridman (2:46:06.200)

The work is reaching your destination together

Tony Fadell (2:46:09.240)

or finding a new destination

Lex Fridman (2:46:11.320)

and bringing the team with you.

Tony Fadell (2:46:13.240)

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Lex Fridman (30:02.020)

Okay, well, you know, how long do you want to go?

Tony Fadell (30:05.740)

Cause I have, I can go deep.

Lex Fridman (30:07.940)

So, let's go at least 20 hours.

Tony Fadell (30:11.340)

Let's go, this is one of the lengthy documentaries.

Lex Fridman (30:14.860)

Are you going to turn it into episodic binge listening?

Tony Fadell (30:18.820)

Yeah, it's Game of Thrones.

Lex Fridman (30:20.140)

So let's just start with, you know,

Tony Fadell (30:23.100)

after I was asked to be a consultant

Lex Fridman (30:24.660)

to put this thing together.

Lex Fridman (30:26.380)

So I already had knowledge of, you know,

Lex Fridman (30:28.420)

the space and the technology and all that stuff,

Lex Fridman (30:31.060)

but I had to very quickly, and a lot of the suppliers,

Lex Fridman (30:34.700)

because of what I was doing at Fuse,

Tony Fadell (30:36.100)

trying to create that thing.

Lex Fridman (30:37.300)

So as a contractor, I was like, okay,

Lex Fridman (30:42.420)

what is the first thing they need to do?

Lex Fridman (30:43.700)

So after I showed a, you know, different architectures

Lex Fridman (30:48.540)

and what three different products could be to Steve

Lex Fridman (30:51.520)

about options for storage options, battery options,

Tony Fadell (30:54.740)

form factor options, there was three options.

Lex Fridman (30:57.740)

And as I was told, given very good advice,

Tony Fadell (31:02.060)

give the two options you really do not like,

Lex Fridman (31:04.560)

but they're options, and give the best option last,

Tony Fadell (31:06.560)

because Steve will shoot all those down

Lex Fridman (31:08.520)

and give the best option last,

Lex Fridman (31:10.500)

and then you could talk about that.

Lex Fridman (31:11.900)

And so that was the one that had a 1.8 inch hard drive

Lex Fridman (31:18.820)

and a small screen, like the screen, you know it,

Lex Fridman (31:23.220)

and the original iPod, classic iPod.

Lex Fridman (31:26.860)

And then I had enough of the idea of the three

Lex Fridman (31:30.620)

or three or four different CPUs and processor suppliers

Lex Fridman (31:35.500)

and kind of systems that were out there

Lex Fridman (31:37.780)

that I had gone and found and put together on power supplies,

Tony Fadell (31:41.380)

you know, disk drive interfaces,

Lex Fridman (31:43.760)

firewire interface, all that stuff.

Lex Fridman (31:45.460)

So I put together all of those schematics

Lex Fridman (31:48.660)

or, you know, block diagrams.

Tony Fadell (31:49.820)

They weren't schematics yet, because it was just me.

Lex Fridman (31:52.020)

And coming up with a bill of materials,

Tony Fadell (31:54.700)

coming up with what it could look like,

Lex Fridman (31:56.240)

what would be the input, output,

Lex Fridman (31:58.260)

how we could make a better headphone jack.

Lex Fridman (32:02.420)

That was also on there.

Tony Fadell (32:03.700)

Screen suppliers, tearing apart calculators.

Lex Fridman (32:07.140)

So got all calculators and all kinds of electronics

Tony Fadell (32:09.340)

to get the right size, different sizes of small LCDs.

Lex Fridman (32:14.980)

So I got all kinds of different battery types.

Tony Fadell (32:17.300)

I got different types of, you know,

Lex Fridman (32:19.260)

in different battery sizes, double A's, triple A's,

Tony Fadell (32:22.380)

working through all the different,

Lex Fridman (32:24.280)

and there was lithium ion, nickel metal hydride.

Lex Fridman (32:26.180)

So I took all the battery types.

Lex Fridman (32:27.900)

I took all of the memory types, processing types,

Tony Fadell (32:31.980)

LCD types, and connectivity and all that stuff,

Lex Fridman (32:38.260)

not wireless, but wired,

Lex Fridman (32:40.180)

and laid out these things as Lego blocks.

Lex Fridman (32:44.060)

So literally had all of these things as just,

Lex Fridman (32:46.300)

and so it made them so I could like, you know,

Lex Fridman (32:48.900)

put them together and figure out

Lex Fridman (32:50.260)

what the compact form factor would be.

Lex Fridman (32:52.940)

Oh, like how do we shove them together?

Lex Fridman (32:55.380)

What's the smallest possible box you can get?

Lex Fridman (32:57.380)

So the questions was on storage, so the hard drive,

Tony Fadell (33:01.220)

batteries, double A, triple A, screens.

Lex Fridman (33:06.020)

So screen size, and then for that,

Tony Fadell (33:07.780)

you're tearing apart calculators.

Lex Fridman (33:09.980)

Calculators, digital cameras, whatever,

Lex Fridman (33:11.620)

and getting little things, right?

Lex Fridman (33:12.740)

So you can make it physical, right?

Tony Fadell (33:14.780)

If you can make the intangible tangible,

Lex Fridman (33:17.060)

like, and so I can say, look, we can make this,

Lex Fridman (33:19.180)

and I brought this whole bag of goods,

Lex Fridman (33:21.540)

and it was like, right?

Lex Fridman (33:23.580)

And like, here's this, here's this,

Lex Fridman (33:25.260)

this is why double A's won't work,

Lex Fridman (33:26.980)

and because it makes it too fat and everything.

Lex Fridman (33:28.540)

So just educate everybody through,

Tony Fadell (33:30.380)

here's the parts that we can use.

Lex Fridman (33:32.380)

You should not sheet of paper, it's physical.

Tony Fadell (33:34.060)

You're playing in the physical space.

Lex Fridman (33:35.340)

Oh, I would go back and forth.

Lex Fridman (33:36.740)

So truth be told,

Lex Fridman (33:38.820)

because there weren't a good enough graphical tools

Tony Fadell (33:40.980)

on the Mac, I was using a PC with Visio and some 3D tools,

Lex Fridman (33:46.380)

and I was doing 3D design at the same time

Tony Fadell (33:49.140)

I was taking all these physical parts and going,

Lex Fridman (33:51.060)

okay, what feels right?

Tony Fadell (33:52.260)

Because you have to go from, you know,

Lex Fridman (33:54.220)

the details and then the rough,

Lex Fridman (33:56.220)

and you go back and forth and you iterate, right?

Lex Fridman (33:58.340)

And so it was just a lot of fun.

Lex Fridman (34:00.260)

And then it ultimately ended up with a styrofoam model

Lex Fridman (34:03.140)

and printouts that came from Visio

Tony Fadell (34:05.380)

that I glued together and put my grandfather's

Lex Fridman (34:08.300)

fishing weights in,

Lex Fridman (34:09.140)

because I also modeled the weights, right?

Lex Fridman (34:11.700)

So I said, oh, this is this many ounces,

Tony Fadell (34:13.860)

this is this many ounces and grams.

Lex Fridman (34:15.660)

And then I went and got all that

Lex Fridman (34:17.100)

and made the, weighted these styrofoam models

Lex Fridman (34:21.300)

to then match that.

Lex Fridman (34:22.580)

So when you picked it up,

Lex Fridman (34:23.460)

it felt more or less form factor, right?

Lex Fridman (34:25.540)

And it also, you felt how much, you know,

Lex Fridman (34:27.980)

was it gonna be dense enough?

Lex Fridman (34:29.660)

Is it gonna feel solid and rigid in your hand, right?

Lex Fridman (34:34.140)

Why does it need to feel rigid?

Tony Fadell (34:36.060)

Because it has to feel substantial.

Lex Fridman (34:37.740)

It has to feel like I have like a,

Lex Fridman (34:39.540)

like a bar of gold in my hand, right?

Lex Fridman (34:41.620)

You know, maybe you know this,

Tony Fadell (34:43.500)

when you open and close a car door,

Lex Fridman (34:45.540)

you know that thunk and you go, bam,

Lex Fridman (34:47.180)

and you go, that feels solid, that feels real.

Lex Fridman (34:49.340)

And then you get this tinny car that's like ding,

Lex Fridman (34:52.340)

and you're like, does this feel safe?

Lex Fridman (34:54.460)

Does this feel like a value?

Lex Fridman (34:55.980)

And so you, when you have a device like that,

Lex Fridman (34:58.380)

and you wanna make sure that there's not too much air in it,

Tony Fadell (35:00.980)

that you distributed the density of the masses

Lex Fridman (35:04.780)

in the right way.

Lex Fridman (35:05.700)

So it feels like it's the right thing.

Lex Fridman (35:07.540)

So you have to model battery life, costs,

Tony Fadell (35:12.140)

you know, mass, sizes of different things.

Lex Fridman (35:16.140)

And then you have to also think about

Lex Fridman (35:17.420)

what the UI is gonna look like, right?

Lex Fridman (35:19.140)

You have all of these constraints you're working,

Tony Fadell (35:21.140)

variables you're working with,

Lex Fridman (35:22.500)

and you have to kind of, you know,

Tony Fadell (35:24.220)

you can't get the perfect of everything.

Lex Fridman (35:26.260)

What's the best, you know, local maximum

Tony Fadell (35:29.220)

of all of these components that come together

Lex Fridman (35:31.260)

to provide an experience?

Tony Fadell (35:32.380)

Local maximum, it's always trade offs.

Lex Fridman (35:34.260)

What about buttons?

Lex Fridman (35:35.700)

Buttons, well, there was also the buttons too, right?

Lex Fridman (35:37.860)

Oh, by the way, a lot of these battles

Lex Fridman (35:39.500)

fought inside your mind, or is it with other people?

Lex Fridman (35:41.900)

Is it with Steve, is it lower, like what?

Tony Fadell (35:44.820)

This was all independent.

Lex Fridman (35:46.100)

This was me before being able to present to Steve,

Tony Fadell (35:48.500)

because I had to feel really confident

Lex Fridman (35:51.020)

that if I was gonna put this in front of him,

Lex Fridman (35:53.940)

that it could be made, right?

Lex Fridman (35:55.260)

So I had to convince myself

Lex Fridman (35:56.980)

and go work through all the details,

Lex Fridman (35:58.580)

through like the very, very rough mechanical design,

Tony Fadell (36:01.340)

electrical design, software things,

Lex Fridman (36:03.820)

because I didn't wanna present something

Lex Fridman (36:05.260)

that was gonna be fictional, right?

Lex Fridman (36:07.020)

My credibility would be like trashed, right?

Lex Fridman (36:10.180)

So you mentioned convince yourself.

Lex Fridman (36:13.140)

You're painting this beautiful picture

Tony Fadell (36:15.700)

of a driven engineer, designer, futurist.

Lex Fridman (36:21.900)

How much doubt were you plagued by through that?

Tony Fadell (36:24.900)

Like this is even doable,

Lex Fridman (36:26.340)

because it's not obvious that this is even doable.

Tony Fadell (36:29.900)

Like to do this at scale, to do this kind of thing,

Lex Fridman (36:33.100)

to make it sexy, to shovel the screen,

Tony Fadell (36:39.700)

the batteries, the storage, to make the interface,

Lex Fridman (36:42.620)

the hardware and the software interface work, all of that.

Tony Fadell (36:45.140)

I mean, I don't know.

Lex Fridman (36:46.100)

I would be overwhelmed by the doubt of that,

Tony Fadell (36:48.220)

because so many things have to work, plus the supply chain.

Lex Fridman (36:51.580)

Like at that point,

Tony Fadell (36:52.660)

I wasn't getting into any of those details or anything.

Lex Fridman (36:55.580)

There's the basic stuff that you have to put together.

Lex Fridman (36:58.660)

And then you have to,

Lex Fridman (37:00.300)

through my learnings at General Magic

Lex Fridman (37:01.860)

and my learnings at Phillips

Lex Fridman (37:02.940)

and delivering multiple large scale programs

Lex Fridman (37:06.940)

and manufacturing, you kind of get a rule of thumb

Lex Fridman (37:09.180)

and you know what to focus on at the beginning

Lex Fridman (37:11.300)

and what not to worry about over time.

Lex Fridman (37:13.500)

Like when I was early in my career,

Tony Fadell (37:14.820)

I worried about everything on the engineering details

Lex Fridman (37:16.940)

so much so that I would be a nervous wreck.

Tony Fadell (37:19.780)

Sooner or later, you learn how to filter out

Lex Fridman (37:21.700)

and figure out what to prioritize.

Lex Fridman (37:23.660)

And so 10 years later,

Lex Fridman (37:25.300)

I was able to do a much better job

Tony Fadell (37:27.340)

of filtering out the things of like,

Lex Fridman (37:29.380)

we'll get to that in weeks to come.

Lex Fridman (37:31.740)

But right now we gotta solve the very important things,

Lex Fridman (37:36.100)

which is could this actually be something real

Lex Fridman (37:39.260)

and that you could deliver enough battery life, right?

Lex Fridman (37:42.700)

Enough of an interface of the right cost, right?

Lex Fridman (37:46.860)

And the right price point.

Lex Fridman (37:49.060)

So you were sitting on a track record

Tony Fadell (37:51.620)

of successes and failures in your own mind

Lex Fridman (37:54.460)

where you had sort of already a confidence,

Tony Fadell (37:57.300)

a calmness, but still,

Lex Fridman (38:01.260)

was there a doubt that you can get this done?

Tony Fadell (38:03.500)

Always, always.

Lex Fridman (38:05.180)

How hard is it to achieve a sort of a confidence

Tony Fadell (38:08.460)

to a level where you could present it to Steve

Lex Fridman (38:10.300)

and actually believe that this is doable?

Lex Fridman (38:13.460)

Like what, do you remember when you felt?

Lex Fridman (38:15.300)

Yeah, that moment?

Tony Fadell (38:16.140)

Yeah.

Lex Fridman (38:16.980)

I think it was after I triple checked my,

Lex Fridman (38:19.540)

I couldn't bring anyone in, right?

Lex Fridman (38:22.540)

I couldn't let anyone in on this.

Lex Fridman (38:24.460)

So it was just me.

Lex Fridman (38:25.940)

Are they gonna trample on it, that kind of thing?

Tony Fadell (38:27.660)

Why? No, no, no, no,

Lex Fridman (38:28.500)

because I couldn't bring any,

Tony Fadell (38:29.540)

when I mean bring anyone in on this,

Lex Fridman (38:31.220)

one, it was a highly confidential program inside Apple.

Lex Fridman (38:33.780)

There was like four people who knew about it, right?

Lex Fridman (38:36.500)

And so I couldn't bring anyone from Apple

Tony Fadell (38:38.220)

because I was a contractor.

Lex Fridman (38:40.060)

I couldn't bring anyone else from the outside world.

Lex Fridman (38:42.100)

I'm working for Apple and I'm under this crazy NDA, right?

Lex Fridman (38:45.460)

In this contract.

Lex Fridman (38:46.580)

So it was just, so I'm doing this.

Lex Fridman (38:50.740)

Oh, and at the same time,

Tony Fadell (38:51.660)

I'm also buying every competitive product, MP3 player

Lex Fridman (38:54.180)

and tearing them all apart, right?

Tony Fadell (38:55.900)

Tore them all apart and looking at them

Lex Fridman (38:58.300)

and trying to learn from those as well.

Lex Fridman (39:00.100)

So it was all of this stuff in six weeks.

Lex Fridman (39:02.340)

So I didn't sleep, right?

Tony Fadell (39:05.380)

Yeah, yeah.

Lex Fridman (39:06.420)

But I was like, because I was trying to make this,

Lex Fridman (39:09.340)

I was envisioning this since the Nino, right?

Lex Fridman (39:12.740)

And I was like, oh my God, right?

Lex Fridman (39:15.220)

But there was another doubt that I had

Lex Fridman (39:17.140)

and it wasn't just, could you make the product?

Lex Fridman (39:19.540)

But could Apple actually have the balls to make it?

Lex Fridman (39:25.140)

Because Apple was not the same company

Tony Fadell (39:28.740)

that you know it today in 2001.

Lex Fridman (39:31.500)

Really, it was cautious, conservative, careful?

Tony Fadell (39:34.060)

No, no, it was barely break even.

Lex Fridman (39:36.300)

It was a four or $5 billion company.

Lex Fridman (39:39.460)

So the guts required there is not necessarily

Lex Fridman (39:42.100)

in the innovation.

Tony Fadell (39:43.020)

It's like, this is gonna cost a lot of money

Lex Fridman (39:45.220)

and we're gonna potentially lose all of it

Tony Fadell (39:47.100)

because it'll be a flop.

Lex Fridman (39:49.620)

Well, there's not just that, but there was only the Mac.

Lex Fridman (39:52.980)

And the Mac wasn't doing very well.

Lex Fridman (39:55.580)

There was less, it was about a 1%

Lex Fridman (39:57.540)

only in the US market share for the Mac, right?

Lex Fridman (40:01.020)

The company was in debt.

Lex Fridman (40:02.660)

Bill Gates had to give him a loan, right?

Lex Fridman (40:07.620)

Michael Dell at the time was saying,

Tony Fadell (40:09.780)

shut down the company and give the money back

Lex Fridman (40:11.700)

to the shareholders.

Lex Fridman (40:13.900)

So this is not the company that people,

Lex Fridman (40:17.380)

oh my God, the iPhone came out.

Tony Fadell (40:18.860)

It's a very different level of confidence

Lex Fridman (40:20.620)

and financial situation that the company was in

Tony Fadell (40:24.300)

versus the iPod.

Lex Fridman (40:25.540)

So given that, what was the conversation

Lex Fridman (40:27.580)

when you finally presented to Steve?

Lex Fridman (40:29.420)

Steve, what was that conversation like?

Tony Fadell (40:34.260)

The conversation was, well, we went through it,

Lex Fridman (40:37.860)

the presentation and all that stuff happened.

Lex Fridman (40:40.780)

And he was just like, and he never,

Lex Fridman (40:43.420)

he would flip through it real quick,

Tony Fadell (40:45.500)

throw the presentation aside and said,

Lex Fridman (40:47.180)

okay, let's talk about this, right?

Lex Fridman (40:49.700)

And so we went through it all.

Lex Fridman (40:51.340)

And one was a big conversation about Sony.

Lex Fridman (40:55.660)

And Sony was the number one in all audio categories,

Lex Fridman (40:59.420)

home, portable, whatever, in the world, okay?

Tony Fadell (41:03.980)

I had been already gone through 10 years of failure.

Lex Fridman (41:06.420)

And I was like, wait a second,

Lex Fridman (41:07.260)

how are we gonna compete with Sony?

Lex Fridman (41:10.340)

And I was always worried that Sony

Tony Fadell (41:12.620)

was gonna come out with whatever it was

Lex Fridman (41:14.180)

that they were gonna come out with, their MP3 player.

Lex Fridman (41:16.460)

And that was it, game over, right?

Lex Fridman (41:19.860)

And so I was like, Steve,

Tony Fadell (41:22.260)

Steve, and this is why it took me four weeks

Lex Fridman (41:26.140)

to finally sign on to join Apple

Tony Fadell (41:27.900)

after he green lighted the iPod program in that meeting,

Lex Fridman (41:32.020)

was because I had built other things in the past

Tony Fadell (41:35.140)

at Phillips, the Nino and Velo,

Lex Fridman (41:36.740)

but they didn't know how to sell it or market it.

Lex Fridman (41:38.780)

They didn't know how to retail it, right?

Lex Fridman (41:41.340)

So I was like, we could build this.

Lex Fridman (41:42.820)

And I was like, Steve, I'm pretty sure I can build this.

Lex Fridman (41:45.100)

I've done this before, but how are we gonna sell it?

Tony Fadell (41:48.980)

You have all your marketing dollars on the Mac.

Lex Fridman (41:52.820)

And he looked at me and he goes, you build this

Tony Fadell (41:55.420)

with, you know, a team and our team and Apple

Lex Fridman (41:57.460)

and this and this and the me, right?

Lex Fridman (41:59.500)

And I dedicate that we will make sure

Lex Fridman (42:02.940)

that at least two quarters of all marketing dollars

Tony Fadell (42:05.500)

will only go to this product and nothing else.

Lex Fridman (42:08.860)

Wow.

Tony Fadell (42:10.260)

Right, Mac was the lifeblood of all revenue of the company.

Lex Fridman (42:14.140)

So Steve saw something special here.

Tony Fadell (42:16.980)

Exactly, and he said, I'm going to commit

Lex Fridman (42:19.820)

all the marketing dollars if you can deliver

Tony Fadell (42:21.620)

the experience that we're all talking about,

Lex Fridman (42:24.380)

if we can do that, and that was Jeff Robin as well,

Tony Fadell (42:26.140)

because iPod would have never happened without iTunes.

Lex Fridman (42:29.140)

You know, people don't understand that was a bundle.

Tony Fadell (42:31.260)

You couldn't do one without the other and vice versa.

Lex Fridman (42:33.660)

So Jeff and I were, you know, if Jeff and you can present

Lex Fridman (42:36.740)

and bring that experience to life,

Lex Fridman (42:40.780)

I will put all the marketing dollars behind it.

Tony Fadell (42:42.620)

When did the marriage of iPod and iTunes sort of,

Lex Fridman (42:48.340)

what was that birth of ideas that made up iTunes?

Lex Fridman (42:53.220)

iTunes existed before the iPod, okay?

Lex Fridman (42:56.220)

And so Jeff Robin had his company,

Tony Fadell (42:58.540)

oh man, I can't remember the name, but it was bought.

Lex Fridman (43:00.820)

He was making a MP3 player app for the Mac.

Tony Fadell (43:05.780)

Steve saw it because there was MP3 player apps

Lex Fridman (43:08.180)

like Winamp and other things that were on the PC,

Tony Fadell (43:10.580)

real player, and Steve saw that going on

Lex Fridman (43:13.900)

and saw that Jeff and his small team had this,

Tony Fadell (43:17.820)

I can't remember, sound something.

Lex Fridman (43:19.740)

Anyways, he bought that and that became the basis of iTunes

Lex Fridman (43:22.980)

and then Jeff ran all of iTunes.

Lex Fridman (43:24.860)

And so what happened specifically there was

Tony Fadell (43:27.900)

they were starting to hook up

Lex Fridman (43:28.900)

to all these third party MP3 players

Tony Fadell (43:31.340)

because there's a lot of Korean, the MP man,

Lex Fridman (43:34.580)

like Walkman, but MP man, all these,

Lex Fridman (43:36.780)

and they were trying to hook them up

Lex Fridman (43:38.300)

and they were like, these are horrible experiences.

Lex Fridman (43:41.180)

And through that, and they said,

Lex Fridman (43:43.420)

iTunes was something that was gonna help grow the Mac base

Tony Fadell (43:46.580)

because we were trying to get more on the Mac.

Lex Fridman (43:49.420)

So this program would be a great new thing

Tony Fadell (43:51.580)

you could add to the Mac.

Lex Fridman (43:53.060)

And there was also internet connectivity at the time

Tony Fadell (43:55.020)

for the iMac.

Lex Fridman (43:56.020)

And so they did that

Lex Fridman (43:57.740)

and then they're trying to do these hookups.

Lex Fridman (44:00.140)

They weren't going well.

Lex Fridman (44:01.300)

And that's when they said, we need to build our own.

Lex Fridman (44:04.540)

Or Steve said, we need to build our own

Tony Fadell (44:06.180)

since these are such horrible experiences.

Lex Fridman (44:08.020)

People don't wanna just burn CDs from iTunes.

Tony Fadell (44:10.660)

We need to get that music on the go,

Lex Fridman (44:12.940)

but in an Apple fashion.

Tony Fadell (44:14.420)

That's when I was called to come in to do that,

Lex Fridman (44:18.420)

the iPod thing after the six weeks.

Tony Fadell (44:20.900)

Then he already envisioned, I'm sure he had it envisioned

Lex Fridman (44:24.300)

because they were trying to do this thing.

Tony Fadell (44:26.740)

Okay, now that's it.

Lex Fridman (44:28.380)

iTunes, it wasn't called iPod yet.

Lex Fridman (44:32.500)

What would become the iPod?

Lex Fridman (44:33.820)

That is gonna be the thing that then propels Apple

Tony Fadell (44:36.580)

into this new thing

Lex Fridman (44:37.420)

because you're gonna bring all these music lovers in

Tony Fadell (44:39.740)

that are gonna need their next generation

Lex Fridman (44:43.740)

or Sony Walkman version 2.0.

Lex Fridman (44:46.900)

So when you look at, again, apologies to linger on iPod,

Lex Fridman (44:51.740)

but it's one of the great inventions in tech history.

Lex Fridman (44:58.220)

What wisdom do you draw from that whole process

Lex Fridman (45:00.800)

about spotting an idea?

Tony Fadell (45:03.660)

This is something you talk about in your book, Build.

Lex Fridman (45:09.100)

How do you know that an idea is brilliant?

Lex Fridman (45:11.480)

At which stage?

Lex Fridman (45:12.780)

When did you know it was a good idea?

Lex Fridman (45:16.260)

And maybe is there like some phase shifts?

Lex Fridman (45:22.020)

First you complete out, then maybe,

Lex Fridman (45:25.140)

and then maybe it becomes more than a hmm

Lex Fridman (45:27.140)

and becomes like a little more confidence,

Tony Fadell (45:29.020)

that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (45:29.920)

And also wisdom about who to talk to

Lex Fridman (45:35.660)

so they don't trample the idea in their early stages,

Lex Fridman (45:37.900)

that kind of stuff.

Lex Fridman (45:39.020)

Any thoughts about this?

Lex Fridman (45:40.260)

We could go on again.

Lex Fridman (45:41.580)

How long do you wanna go?

Lex Fridman (45:42.660)

20, this is a Netflix series, I told you.

Tony Fadell (45:45.940)

Multi season.

Lex Fridman (45:47.260)

So a lot of lessons learned over those years of failure

Lex Fridman (45:51.060)

and success, but the first thing it starts with,

Lex Fridman (45:55.860)

there's a whole chapter called Great Ideas Chase You.

Lex Fridman (45:58.700)

And so it kind of goes into in Build

Lex Fridman (46:00.700)

and it goes through kind of chapter and verse

Tony Fadell (46:03.060)

about all of those, how Nest became into being.

Lex Fridman (46:07.420)

But let's talk about it specifically for iPod, right?

Lex Fridman (46:10.840)

So for me, I always had pain,

Lex Fridman (46:13.540)

the pain of carrying these CDs everywhere, right?

Lex Fridman (46:16.660)

And I had the joy of music, right?

Lex Fridman (46:19.700)

If you could say, all of a sudden I could get

Tony Fadell (46:21.740)

the music I love all the time in a portable package

Lex Fridman (46:25.800)

and I can have all the music I love all the time,

Tony Fadell (46:28.060)

I was solving a pain, which was,

Lex Fridman (46:30.540)

for me it was thousands of CDs,

Lex Fridman (46:31.800)

other people might be 10 or 15 CDs, right?

Lex Fridman (46:34.940)

And then I can have the joy of all this music uninterrupted.

Tony Fadell (46:38.860)

That was taking the pain, making a painkiller for it.

Lex Fridman (46:43.180)

And then at the end was a superpower,

Tony Fadell (46:45.340)

an emotional superpower that said,

Lex Fridman (46:47.100)

oh my, this is something different.

Lex Fridman (46:50.540)

So when you can actually focus on a pain,

Lex Fridman (46:53.320)

not and get a painkiller for it, not a vitamin.

Lex Fridman (46:57.380)

So the difference between a painkiller

Lex Fridman (46:58.780)

and a vitamin is very clear.

Tony Fadell (46:59.940)

One, you need, I gotta get rid of this pain.

Lex Fridman (47:02.900)

A vitamin, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't,

Tony Fadell (47:05.340)

maybe somebody needs it, maybe not,

Lex Fridman (47:06.840)

it's all marketing story, right?

Lex Fridman (47:08.960)

So you start with the pain, give them a painkiller,

Lex Fridman (47:11.580)

and hopefully if you can do it in the right way,

Tony Fadell (47:13.820)

you give them a superpower, an emotional superpower.

Lex Fridman (47:17.420)

That is always, and that's the way to know

Tony Fadell (47:21.580)

that you're hitting on something that's really powerful.

Lex Fridman (47:23.740)

The pain and the joy, are you always aware of the pain?

Lex Fridman (47:31.360)

So it seems like a lot of great products,

Lex Fridman (47:34.300)

it's like we do a lot of painful things

Lex Fridman (47:36.340)

and we just kind of assume that's the way it's supposed

Lex Fridman (47:40.460)

to be, like with autonomous vehicles,

Tony Fadell (47:42.620)

we'll all assume we're supposed to be driving.

Lex Fridman (47:46.620)

And it doesn't, you don't think of it as a pain.

Tony Fadell (47:50.500)

Right, well, you've habituated it away.

Lex Fridman (47:54.100)

You've habituated it away.

Tony Fadell (47:55.100)

For me, when I go to other places,

Lex Fridman (47:58.820)

living in Bali or living in Paris or whatever,

Lex Fridman (48:01.020)

and I'm not driving, I'm walking or I'm using a scooter

Lex Fridman (48:05.060)

or what have you, different thing,

Lex Fridman (48:06.780)

and you go, oh my God, when you left that environment,

Lex Fridman (48:10.200)

because everyone else is driving all the time,

Tony Fadell (48:12.300)

you're like, that's what you do.

Lex Fridman (48:13.540)

And you find out there's other ways of living

Lex Fridman (48:15.580)

and there's freedom when you get rid of that,

Lex Fridman (48:17.540)

you're like, oh my God, I didn't know

Tony Fadell (48:20.580)

that this was so much better.

Lex Fridman (48:21.740)

So there's something in the book that's called out

Lex Fridman (48:24.700)

and I deemed it the virus of doubt.

Lex Fridman (48:27.460)

And what the virus of doubt is, is when there's pain

Lex Fridman (48:30.980)

and it's been habituated away,

Lex Fridman (48:33.200)

you use the right marketing messages

Tony Fadell (48:35.860)

to bring people back to that initial experience they had

Lex Fridman (48:39.460)

or the initial experience that they had of that pain.

Lex Fridman (48:42.200)

Do you remember when the first time you did blah

Lex Fridman (48:45.540)

and it felt like this, right?

Lex Fridman (48:48.940)

And then you reawaken that habituated pain

Lex Fridman (48:54.500)

and people, and it becomes visceral

Lex Fridman (48:56.980)

and then they're like, oh, yes, I hate that.

Lex Fridman (49:01.140)

And then you go, now I have the painkiller

Lex Fridman (49:04.020)

and the joy for you.

Lex Fridman (49:05.780)

That's when it all comes together and it goes.

Tony Fadell (49:10.560)

Let me, on this, on the pain and the joy

Lex Fridman (49:12.700)

that's brilliantly put, you mentioned selling

Lex Fridman (49:17.740)

and marketing, right?

Lex Fridman (49:19.700)

Marketing dollars.

Tony Fadell (49:22.860)

I have a love, hate relationship with marketing,

Lex Fridman (49:26.940)

like with a lot of things that require artistic genius.

Tony Fadell (49:30.900)

To me, the best marketing, I suppose,

Lex Fridman (49:34.060)

is the product itself and then word of mouth.

Lex Fridman (49:37.420)

So like create a thing that people love.

Lex Fridman (49:40.380)

Oh, absolutely, that's fundamental.

Tony Fadell (49:41.900)

Yeah, so any other marketing requires genius

Lex Fridman (49:46.540)

to be any extra thing.

Tony Fadell (49:48.460)

Because to me, I don't, yeah, maybe you can,

Lex Fridman (49:54.620)

by way of question, I'm just speaking off the top

Lex Fridman (49:59.340)

of my head as a consumer, what is great marketing?

Lex Fridman (50:03.660)

What does it take to reveal the pain

Lex Fridman (50:07.100)

and the joy of a thing?

Lex Fridman (50:08.260)

Okay.

Tony Fadell (50:09.460)

It all starts at the beginning.

Lex Fridman (50:11.820)

And let me give you, I'm gonna give you a couple

Lex Fridman (50:13.780)

of different ways of looking at it, okay?

Lex Fridman (50:15.860)

And again, we might go a little long here.

Lex Fridman (50:18.460)

So just stay tuned in.

Lex Fridman (50:22.220)

So the first thing is.

Tony Fadell (50:23.060)

Start at the beginning.

Lex Fridman (50:23.900)

Let's start at the beginning.

Tony Fadell (50:26.020)

In the early part of my career, like General Magic

Lex Fridman (50:29.340)

and Philips and what have you,

Lex Fridman (50:33.580)

and especially when I was a teenager,

Lex Fridman (50:36.380)

when I was making my own chips and stuff like that,

Tony Fadell (50:39.900)

I really worried about just putting cool things together.

Lex Fridman (50:44.100)

I'm like that, when I put those two cool things together

Tony Fadell (50:46.540)

as an engineer, you go, that's cool.

Lex Fridman (50:48.860)

And then I would talk to the other friends

Tony Fadell (50:50.460)

who might be geeks too, and they go, yeah, that's cool.

Lex Fridman (50:54.180)

Because we knew the bits, so we put them together

Lex Fridman (50:57.020)

and that's a new way of doing it.

Lex Fridman (50:58.220)

And you're like, wow, that's all what?

Lex Fridman (51:02.820)

It's not why?

Lex Fridman (51:04.840)

Why are you doing this?

Tony Fadell (51:06.340)

We know what we're doing, but we don't know

Lex Fridman (51:08.300)

why we're doing it, because we're not articulating it

Tony Fadell (51:10.340)

for ourselves, because it's just something

Lex Fridman (51:12.180)

we're like putting it together and like, yeah, that's cool

Tony Fadell (51:14.140)

because we think we're solving some problem we have,

Lex Fridman (51:17.900)

but we're not really articulating it.

Lex Fridman (51:19.700)

So what normally happens, and this happens

Lex Fridman (51:21.820)

because we invest in so many companies around the world,

Tony Fadell (51:24.940)

you have these brilliant engineers, designers,

Lex Fridman (51:26.980)

scientists, researchers, they put together these what's.

Lex Fridman (51:32.620)

And then they develop it, develop it, develop it.

Lex Fridman (51:35.780)

And then at the end, they call in marketing

Lex Fridman (51:38.180)

and say, now tell a story about this

Lex Fridman (51:40.660)

and let's get it out to the world, okay?

Lex Fridman (51:43.940)

What happens then is marketing is like,

Lex Fridman (51:46.380)

well, why do people need this?

Tony Fadell (51:48.300)

Tell us why people need it.

Lex Fridman (51:50.180)

And so they create a story around this product,

Lex Fridman (51:54.440)

but the product was born out of what's, not why's.

Lex Fridman (51:57.780)

And so they start telling, marketing starts telling a story

Lex Fridman (52:00.700)

and it turns out to be a fictional story usually.

Lex Fridman (52:03.500)

They say, oh, this is going to do these things.

Tony Fadell (52:06.200)

The product comes in as delivered.

Lex Fridman (52:07.940)

And it falls flat on its face

Tony Fadell (52:10.100)

because the marketing doesn't match the product

Lex Fridman (52:12.940)

because they weren't both created

Lex Fridman (52:14.500)

at the beginning together, right?

Lex Fridman (52:17.940)

There are what's when you create a product,

Lex Fridman (52:19.700)

but there's a lot more why's

Lex Fridman (52:21.380)

and the why's help inform the what's.

Lex Fridman (52:23.700)

And the why's also inform the marketing.

Lex Fridman (52:27.020)

So that's what you mean deeply

Tony Fadell (52:31.020)

at we should start at the beginning.

Lex Fridman (52:32.620)

So the designer should be also the marketer.

Tony Fadell (52:35.580)

The engineer should be the marketer.

Lex Fridman (52:37.940)

Exactly.

Tony Fadell (52:38.780)

Stop impressing the geek next to you.

Lex Fridman (52:40.540)

What is the superpower you're bringing

Lex Fridman (52:42.540)

or the pain you're killing for the end customer, right?

Lex Fridman (52:48.020)

Now let's contrast that.

Tony Fadell (52:51.540)

Think about a movie.

Lex Fridman (52:53.020)

A movie starts with a treatment.

Tony Fadell (52:54.860)

It has an audience.

Lex Fridman (52:55.940)

This has the audience.

Tony Fadell (52:56.820)

Here's the characters.

Lex Fridman (52:57.700)

Here's the storyline, the plot.

Lex Fridman (52:59.160)

Here's the arc of the story, right?

Lex Fridman (53:02.660)

It pulls that all out.

Tony Fadell (53:04.580)

Then there's a script that's written.

Lex Fridman (53:07.180)

And that script is then produced.

Lex Fridman (53:09.520)

And then you add all the flourishes

Lex Fridman (53:11.060)

and what have you music and graphics

Lex Fridman (53:13.100)

and what have you, right?

Lex Fridman (53:14.700)

And then it comes out

Lex Fridman (53:15.820)

and then there's the marketing of the movie.

Lex Fridman (53:17.260)

And that story was created at the beginning.

Lex Fridman (53:19.680)

What you need to do if you're gonna do a great product

Lex Fridman (53:22.780)

is create that treatment for your product.

Lex Fridman (53:24.940)

And I call that the press release.

Lex Fridman (53:26.980)

Do the press release like the treatment.

Lex Fridman (53:30.500)

Who's the audience?

Lex Fridman (53:31.620)

What features do you have?

Lex Fridman (53:33.260)

What pains are you solving for people?

Lex Fridman (53:35.100)

Have the virus of doubt there to remind them

Lex Fridman (53:37.820)

what pains they have and why you're solving them.

Lex Fridman (53:40.060)

The price, all of those things.

Lex Fridman (53:41.820)

And you use that as the bar, the measuring stick

Lex Fridman (53:46.660)

for what you do during development.

Tony Fadell (53:48.540)

Because what happens that along the route, you know this.

Lex Fridman (53:52.620)

Oh, we're not gonna be able

Tony Fadell (53:53.460)

to get that feature done on time.

Lex Fridman (53:55.420)

Throw that one overboard.

Tony Fadell (53:56.380)

We gotta hit the, we have to hit the date.

Lex Fridman (53:58.540)

Oh, we're not sure this product's right yet.

Tony Fadell (54:01.020)

Add another feature.

Lex Fridman (54:02.620)

Add another feature creep, right?

Tony Fadell (54:05.340)

If you don't have that story

Lex Fridman (54:06.500)

you know you're gonna tell at the beginning,

Lex Fridman (54:08.500)

you don't have that bar, right?

Lex Fridman (54:11.300)

And then at the end, you don't know when you're done

Tony Fadell (54:13.740)

if you don't have that story.

Lex Fridman (54:14.560)

So you can actually look at that press release.

Tony Fadell (54:16.940)

You know, you change it over time, that draft.

Lex Fridman (54:21.900)

But then when you're done, you know the what's and the whys.

Tony Fadell (54:24.880)

You have all the things, the audience and everything.

Lex Fridman (54:26.900)

And then you can give that to marketing and say,

Tony Fadell (54:29.500)

well, and marketing has been along the way, let's be clear.

Lex Fridman (54:32.100)

But then everybody's in sync.

Lex Fridman (54:33.900)

And that's when you can tell a cohesive,

Lex Fridman (54:35.580)

non fictional story about,

Lex Fridman (54:37.700)

and the product delivers on that story

Lex Fridman (54:39.600)

or hopefully over delivers on that story.

Lex Fridman (54:41.980)

So in the drafting from the beginning

Lex Fridman (54:45.860)

to the end of the press release,

Lex Fridman (54:47.760)

what does a successful team look like?

Lex Fridman (54:49.860)

Who's part of the draft?

Lex Fridman (54:51.500)

Is it engineers, designers?

Lex Fridman (54:53.560)

What's the purpose of a marketing department

Tony Fadell (54:56.760)

in a company, small, let's say small company,

Lex Fridman (54:59.800)

but more than two people?

Lex Fridman (55:02.460)

So from where does the why come from?

Lex Fridman (55:06.900)

Should it always come from the designer

Tony Fadell (55:08.820)

or should there be a marketing person

Lex Fridman (55:10.580)

that yeah, steps in and ask the question.

Lex Fridman (55:13.660)

So I'll just keep asking random questions.

Lex Fridman (55:16.180)

No, these are great questions.

Tony Fadell (55:18.060)

So, cause you're just like, I'm like,

Lex Fridman (55:20.100)

I can't wait to tell you the answer.

Lex Fridman (55:22.220)

So it's in the book as well,

Lex Fridman (55:23.780)

but you have to separate out

Tony Fadell (55:25.780)

the various functions of marketing.

Lex Fridman (55:27.780)

That's what I thought, I was like,

Tony Fadell (55:30.860)

marketing's marketing, and it's really not.

Lex Fridman (55:34.420)

There's so many disciplines,

Tony Fadell (55:35.620)

just like in engineering, mechanical, electrical, software,

Lex Fridman (55:38.660)

and even software, it's cloud services,

Tony Fadell (55:41.700)

firmware applications,

Lex Fridman (55:43.700)

marketing has that much diversity as well.

Tony Fadell (55:46.620)

Okay, and you have to honor that.

Lex Fridman (55:48.900)

And so there is marketing communications like PR, press,

Tony Fadell (55:53.900)

there is social marketing,

Lex Fridman (55:57.140)

there is a marketing creative, right?

Tony Fadell (56:00.220)

There's marketing activation,

Lex Fridman (56:03.300)

but there's another thing that also comes out

Lex Fridman (56:05.740)

and people confuse it with marketing,

Lex Fridman (56:09.700)

which is called product marketing or product management.

Lex Fridman (56:13.460)

And product management or product marketing

Lex Fridman (56:15.820)

is the voice of the customer.

Tony Fadell (56:18.780)

They're the person who sits there and listens

Lex Fridman (56:21.860)

to what's going on in the competition, in the marketplace,

Tony Fadell (56:25.500)

understanding the needs and those pains of the customer,

Lex Fridman (56:28.580)

and they're representing them in every single meeting

Lex Fridman (56:31.700)

so things don't get off track, right?

Lex Fridman (56:34.900)

So that, and they're creating the messages,

Tony Fadell (56:38.380)

not the marketing.

Lex Fridman (56:39.380)

What happens is there's messages

Tony Fadell (56:40.740)

that product marketing creates,

Lex Fridman (56:41.940)

like those are the deep messages,

Lex Fridman (56:43.340)

like we need to save 20% of energy, let's say, right?

Lex Fridman (56:48.140)

And then marketing turns that into something

Tony Fadell (56:50.260)

that's with creative and everything

Lex Fridman (56:52.460)

and brings that message across.

Tony Fadell (56:53.660)

Maybe it doesn't say that,

Lex Fridman (56:54.540)

but it comes maybe visually or some other way.

Lex Fridman (56:57.580)

So product management does that

Lex Fridman (56:59.940)

and holds that press release along the route

Lex Fridman (57:04.940)

and making sure that we're tracking.

Lex Fridman (57:07.100)

And then also marketing is tracking with that press release

Lex Fridman (57:09.620)

to make sure they're not telling a fictional story, right?

Lex Fridman (57:12.180)

Because they can also add extra adjectives or something,

Lex Fridman (57:15.340)

and then the product can't deliver that.

Lex Fridman (57:16.820)

It's like, no, no, no, no, no.

Tony Fadell (57:18.180)

Keeps everybody in check.

Lex Fridman (57:19.020)

It has to be grounded to the press release, to the raws.

Lex Fridman (57:22.060)

Right, to the customer needs, right?

Lex Fridman (57:24.020)

Cause they're always representing the customer.

Lex Fridman (57:25.900)

So you have to have a product manager.

Lex Fridman (57:28.660)

Typically that's the founder, right?

Tony Fadell (57:30.980)

In the beginning.

Lex Fridman (57:32.180)

And then over time you hire a product management team

Tony Fadell (57:36.420)

to then really watch over this the whole way.

Lex Fridman (57:40.180)

And they are talking to customer support.

Tony Fadell (57:42.660)

They're talking to engineering, they're talking to design,

Lex Fridman (57:45.100)

they're talking to sales and marketing.

Lex Fridman (57:47.580)

And they are always in the mix.

Lex Fridman (57:50.540)

And it's the hardest thing to hire for.

Tony Fadell (57:52.540)

Ooh, yeah.

Lex Fridman (57:53.460)

So they have this very important job

Tony Fadell (57:55.620)

of developing and maintaining the why.

Lex Fridman (57:58.940)

Exactly.

Lex Fridman (57:59.820)

Why is it the hardest to hire for?

Lex Fridman (58:01.660)

Because you have to understand,

Tony Fadell (58:03.540)

first, nobody reports to you.

Lex Fridman (58:06.500)

You're alone.

Lex Fridman (58:07.340)

So you're alone and you have to build great ties

Lex Fridman (58:10.540)

with all of these different functions.

Tony Fadell (58:13.740)

You have to understand what they do,

Lex Fridman (58:15.900)

be empathetic with what they do.

Lex Fridman (58:17.700)

And you have to project the customer's empathy

Lex Fridman (58:21.980)

or empathy for the customer to them and tell them why

Lex Fridman (58:25.340)

and why this customer needs this, why this doesn't work.

Lex Fridman (58:28.740)

And so that they learn more.

Tony Fadell (58:30.260)

They're not just doing,

Lex Fridman (58:31.100)

but they learn about the customer's point of view

Lex Fridman (58:33.860)

and sit in there and stand in their shoes

Lex Fridman (58:36.340)

to be able to then make better decisions

Tony Fadell (58:38.140)

on the engineering details or the operational details,

Lex Fridman (58:41.120)

customer support details.

Lex Fridman (58:42.580)

So they understand that if they're not the customer

Lex Fridman (58:47.260)

that it's intended for,

Tony Fadell (58:48.460)

they start to live through their eyes

Lex Fridman (58:51.580)

and see through their eyes of that customer

Lex Fridman (58:53.780)

so they make better decisions.

Lex Fridman (58:55.100)

And there's probably fascinating, beautiful tensions

Tony Fadell (58:59.460)

between that and sort of the engineers.

Lex Fridman (59:03.500)

Oh, that's cool.

Tony Fadell (59:04.540)

Sort of the developing the what.

Lex Fridman (59:08.180)

Exactly.

Tony Fadell (59:09.220)

Which makes it an extra hard job, I'm sure.

Lex Fridman (59:11.860)

Exactly.

Tony Fadell (59:12.700)

Can I ask a sort of a little bit of a personal question

Lex Fridman (59:15.100)

on the one subfield of marketing you mentioned,

Tony Fadell (59:17.780)

comms and PR.

Lex Fridman (59:22.700)

How do I ask this?

Tony Fadell (59:23.540)

I can hear your struggle in your sigh.

Lex Fridman (59:27.900)

Why or do the comms and PR folks sometimes

Tony Fadell (59:36.420)

kill the heart and soul of the magic

Lex Fridman (59:40.840)

that makes a company or is that wrong to say?

Tony Fadell (59:45.100)

Give me an example.

Lex Fridman (59:46.700)

I will say the spirit of the example,

Tony Fadell (59:48.980)

which is it feels like often the jobs of communications

Lex Fridman (59:55.860)

is to provide caution.

Tony Fadell (59:58.940)

It almost works together with legal to say.