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The following is a conversation with Tony Fadell, engineer and designer, co-creator of the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest thermostat.
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And he s the author of the new book, Build, an unorthodox guide to making things worth making.
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more than almost any human ever.
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He knows what it takes to create technology ideas, designs, products, and companies that revolutionize life for huge numbers of people in the world.
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So it truly is an honor and pleasure to sit down with Tony for a time and look back at one heck of an amazing life.
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And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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We got Mailgun for email campaigns, Scale for machine learning, NetSuite for efficiency, SimpliSafe for security, and Aidsleep for sweet, sweet naps.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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And now onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff.
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Maybe you will too.
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This show is brought to you by Mailgun by Cinch, an email delivery service.
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It has API for transactional and marketing.
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It also has a bunch of fascinating features like send time optimization.
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automatically, optimally figuring out what is the best time to send these particular kinds of emails.
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I ve used Mailgun for many, many years to programmatically send emails.
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I guess that would be called transactional.
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So based on people that sign up for different stuff, I would send them emails when I was teaching courses.
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At MIT, I would manage the email sending through the API iMailGun because you can use, I think I ve used both JavaScript and Python to do all kinds of emailing and it just takes care of all the hard work for you.
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Of course, you can also use it for marketing emails.
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You can automate a lot of that.
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You can both write it and send it, all that kind of stuff.
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The list of features is huge, but the most important thing, honestly, is that it s just reliable.
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So go to lexfriedman.com slash mailgun to learn more.
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This episode is also brought to you by Scale, the machine learning assisted data labeling platform.
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Scale Rapid works with any use case or task including image, video, text, annotation, and classification, 3D data, and it supports 20 plus languages.
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I ve said time and time again that the success of a machine learning system in the real world has a lot more to do with the data,
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meaning the annotations on the data, the data selection itself, and then the quality of the annotation, that s way more important than the machine learning model architecture.
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Whatever the neural network magic that you re doing is not nearly as important as the quality of the data.
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Now there s a lot of sort of caveats and nuances and all that kind of stuff, but for real-world application,
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At least 90% of the value, the bang for the buck, comes from the annotations, the quality of the data, the data selection and the data annotation.
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And that s what Scale is good at.
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Go to scale.com slash Lex today and you can get your first batch of data labeled up to 50 bucks for free.
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This show is also brought to you by NetSuite.
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NetSuite allows you to manage financials, HR, inventory, e-commerce, and many more business-related details all in one place.
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Somebody wrote me an email saying that NetSuite is awesome, but it s funny that I m doing an ad read for NetSuite since this is more for companies versus individuals.
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Yeah.
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They re awesome.
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I just do ad reads for stuff I m aware of and that I think is awesome.
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I have way more advertisers willing to advertise on this show since like two years ago than I can ever do ad reads for.
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So I m very picky.
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And there s all kinds of different reasons why I love certain companies.
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Magic Spoon is still a sponsor.
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Obviously Mailgun and ExpressVPN are things I ve used for many, many years.
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And NetSuite, I just time and time again come across them as a company that can be relied on to take care of the messy stuff and do it well.
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The messy stuff for running a business.
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Right now, they re doing special financing.
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It s back.
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Head to netsuite.com slash Lex to get their one-of-a-kind financing program.
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This show is also brought to you by SimpliSafe, a home security company designed to be simple and effective.
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It takes 30 minutes to set up.
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It is one of the systems I have set up in my place that takes security exceptionally seriously.
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It s the sort of consumer-facing,
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security system I use.
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It s the one I ve always used.
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Very easy to set up.
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I forget how many but they re all awesome.
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There s like no
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crappy sensors or products that SimpliSafe has.
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I recommend it highly.
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And yes, I m too signed up to interactive monitoring.
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It s great.
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Highly recommend it.
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This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its Pod Pro mattress.
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It controls temperature with a nap, is packed with sensors, it can cool down to as low as 55 degrees on each side of the bed separately.
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I am a huge believer in the power of the nap.
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Sometimes I ll drink a cup of coffee, take a 20 minute nap, and I wake up feeling better than I do after a full night s sleep.
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It s incredible.
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I don t know how it works, it s magic.
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And in terms of the effectiveness of my mind, a power nap is a power nap.
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The surface to me doesn t matter, because I often sleep on the floor, doesn t matter.
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But if I also wanted to feel good, which I do, you know, happiness is essential.
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Asleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Tony Fadell.
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When did you first fall in love with computers or let s say computer engineering and design?
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I first fell in love with
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computers and programming was in a summer school class in fifth grade in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan.
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It was a simple basic programming class, but the basic programming class was not like you might think it was.
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It was bubble cards.
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So literally it was, you know, the cards, the stack of cards and you would
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Use a number two pencil and you would put in your program line by line and you d have to make sure it was perfectly stacked and no errors and what have you.
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And you d take that set of cards and you d put it on this reader and it would go off to an IBM microcomputer somewhere in the, back then the cloud.
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And then you would sit on a Texas Instruments paper terminal and it would just, literally, I was just, I could write things and it would, I could program this machine to do stuff.
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And it was, you know, it was nowhere near sexy.
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There was no graphics, right?
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Oregon Trail was all in text.
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Right.
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The cards were so cumbersome that if you got one thing wrong or out of order or a disaster or you dropped one card, it would all fall apart.
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So just doing that, you know, print F or what was it?
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I can t even remember what it was.
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It was, you know.
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what the basic commands were, but.
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Oh, so when you say basic, you mean basic programming?
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Programming language.
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Okay.
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Basic programming.
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So you re writing basic programming language on paper.
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On paper.
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And you re calling it programming, though.
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It s called programming.
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Yeah, you re programming this computer in a remote location, and it came back, so it was truly cloud computing, in a way.
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It was really terminal-based computing.
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and the input and the program are separate, so the input to the program, or they go together.
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Or there s no input to the program, it just runs and it gives you output.
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Yeah, it goes in and it says ready, and then you can say run, and then it would run.
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But to program it, you didn t type it, because it was a printer terminal.
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You would make the stack of cards, and that would get it into the computer s memory.
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Okay, so where was the magic?
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The magic was that you could,
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create, you had a language and you could create what you wanted to create, right?
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You could create a world or what have you and have this interaction.
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And you could compute things, you could, you know, do numbers, you could, I was playing Oregon Trail, right?
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So you re less like- So you can play video games.
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Well, video.
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That s right.
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You could play text games and then imagine them in your brain, right?
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Oregon Trail.
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There s this meme I saw recently.
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If you want to feel bad about yourself as a programmer, realize that one person wrote Railroad Tycoon.
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I think that s the name of the game.
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It s this cool little builder game.
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One person wrote it in assembly.
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So from scratch, and for people who don t know, it kind of looks like a SimCity type game.
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It s a city builder, but obviously centered on railroads.
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And there s a nice graphics, it s three-dimensional, all that kind of stuff.
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All the things
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all the rich, colorful things you would imagine for a three-dimensional video game, all written in assembly, meaning the lowest level code next to binary, which is fascinating.
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And you had to notice the magic.
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at that low level at that time.
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You didn t have all the graphics, you didn t have all the APIs and all the sample codes, no stack overflow, no internet, none of that.
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You had to know registers, you had to know the opcodes, and you had to imagine the world in your brain, the memory structures and everything.
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There s no visualization, you visualized it all yourself, right?
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And so that was magic, but then the next part of the magic of where I got hooked even further was like, I m doing these little things,
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And then Electronic Arts came out for the Apple II, so I got an Apple II.
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And Electronic Arts came out, and I was programming and doing BASIC and making my own games.
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But then there were two games that really blew my mind.
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One was Pinball Construction Set.
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and the other one was music construction set.
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And these were both places where I could create pinball games and I could create musical scores, because I love music, and I could then play them, right?
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And so when you had that, you were like, oh, there s something very different.
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So I could create myself.
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But then there was others that create tools so you could create at a visual level.
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And then you would read the backstories, because electronics arts back in the day, it was one programmer who would program those things, you know, each of those things.
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And you could read their backstories.
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It was literally like a musician or someone else, like you could read Rick Rubin s, like, here s the thing.
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They tell you all that stuff.
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And there was one guy who wrote music construction set.
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He wrote it all in assembly, and he was 16 years old.
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And I was probably 12 or 13 at the time.
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And I went, oh my.
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If he was able to do this and had it published, right, and this amazing tool was created, I m like, what could I do?
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And so then it just kept building off of that.
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But really it was those seminal things, first the introduction and then the power through programming and turning these things into what you wanted to turn it into.
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And you didn t have to be 40, 50 years old and have PhDs.
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And then I was like, okay.
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This is really cool.
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I wish we did that with programmers, where we treated them like artists.
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We would know the backstory these days, today.
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Not just programmers, engineers.
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Engineers, designers.
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Yeah, like all the things about a product that I think we love are the little details, and there s probably a human being behind each of those details.
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that had their little inkling of genius that they put in.
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And I wish we knew those stories.
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That s always sad to me when I, because obviously I love engineering and I interact with companies and they, you know, autonomous vehicle is something I m really interested about.
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And I see that companies generally, and we ll probably talk about this, but they seem to want to hide their engineers, like engineers hold the secrets.
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Like the great secret, we do not speak of the great secret.
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But then the result of that is you don t get to hear their stories, the passion that is there behind the engineers, and also the genius.
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There s a difference between the stuff that s patented, like the kernel of the idea, and the beautiful sort of side effects of the idea.
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And I wish companies revealed the beautiful side effects a little bit more.
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But yeah, sorry for the distraction.
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So what you mentioned Apple II, what was the first computer you fell in love with?
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Like the product, the thing before you that was a personal computer?
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It was the Apple II.
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So the Apple II was something I was just lusting over.
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I think at the time it was the person of the year, maybe it was that year, I don t remember what.
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Well, Apple II was the person of the year?
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Yeah, for Time Magazine back in, I don t remember when, but it was around that same time, I was so young.
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But there was the Apple II, and I didn t know what it was, but I knew about tools, because my grandfather taught me all about tools.
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creating things, right?
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And I saw this thing, and I had that IBM experience, that terminal experience, and I m like, oh, I could have that at home, right?
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And so I need to have that at home, and the only thing that was really talked about in our circles was the Apple II, and I was just like, that s it.
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So I jumped up and down, it was very expensive.
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I have to have this, my parents were like, what?
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It was $2,500 back then in 1981, it was like crazy, right?
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So I was like, I m gonna make as much money as I can this summer.
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And my grandfather said, because he helped me learn all about tools and build things together.
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I will match whatever you make so you can get this computer.
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So I worked very, very hard as a caddy, golf caddy.
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Cadding actually for the families at the country clubs in the town where we lived.
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and did whatever I could, and that end of that summer, we got my Apple II, and you couldn t tear it away from me.
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It was my friend, it was everything.
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From a product perspective, what do you remember that was brilliant?
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The design choices, the ideas behind it, or is it just that it exists, or the very idea of a personal computer is the brilliant design choice?
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Yeah, it was that I could actually have this kind of tool in my house and I could use it anytime I wanted.
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I could program it anyways.
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There was no, you know, there was no internet connection.
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There was no, it was all just you.
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You either loaded software that you got from someone, right?
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or you created it yourself.
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And then there was the whole other thing which started happening, which we were doing, and this was kind of like MP3s and stuff, we were sharing software, right?
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So you built this community of sharing software.
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You would go and pirate, that was what it was called, pirate all this software.
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You d never use it all, but it was just that fun thing of like, I m gonna get all this other stuff and then tear it apart and do disassembly on it and see behind the scenes.
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So you really had a sense that this was your world and you owned it, right?
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and you could literally go into every register.
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We didn t have all those security layers like we do now.
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You could really touch bits, and you could poke bits, and you could make this light turn on, and the geek assignment just lit up.
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Now, it s so abstract.
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People don t even understand.
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Usually, some programs don t even understand memory.
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They just think it s unlimited, right?
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Yeah, and security.
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It s like now there s all this security that you should have, but it s like the adults all showed up
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to the party and now you can t have all the fun right it s like no no you know this
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This was the thing where if the power went out, you lost your whole program.
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You might have worked a whole day on it, and if you didn t press save at every other line, and you were to save, save, save, and it would like, grr, grr, the disk drive, or the tape drive, grr, grr, grr.
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Every single step was contemplated, because if you didn t, you lost maybe a ton of work.
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So a lot of the magic was in the software.
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The fact that you could have software, the fact that you could share software, the community around the software, it wasn t necessarily the hardware.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, that was the first step.
1
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The second step around the hardware was I got things like the Mockingboard, which the Mockingboard paired with the Music Instruction Set, you could now generate all kinds of tones and notes, and it was a synthesizer in the Apple II.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you would plug in this card and you d go, oh my God, look at this, and it would,
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, you could start generating cool sounds, you know, like it was a Moog, you know, like a Moog in a way, early Moog.
1
SPEAKER_01
What year are we talking about?
1
SPEAKER_01
This is 82, I think.
1
81, 82.
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And I bet you can make all the kind of synthetic sounds that are very cool in the 80s.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the 8-bit, you know, chiptunes, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then when you wanted to add a joystick, you had to pull a chip out and you had to plug in a dip socket to put in a joystick.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I was like, oh, and then I had to get more memory.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do we do that?
1
SPEAKER_01
And now I wanted to speed up product.
1
SPEAKER_01
So then that turned into a company, actually, from that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And a hardware software one at that.
1
SPEAKER_01
But it was all about modifying this thing in every way.
1
SPEAKER_01
First was software, and then you started gaining confidence, and then I got a little bit more money and stuff, and then you could get into the hardware and wire things.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the Apple II came with all the schematics.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in the back, in the early Apple IIs, you could open up and all the schematics were there.
1
SPEAKER_00
You purchased the Apple II and the schematics come with it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it came with it.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s an interesting choice.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can see everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s an interesting choice from a company perspective.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, it was like a real maker kind of thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right.
1
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I wonder what they, so that was intentional.
1
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Like this is.
1
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Absolutely intentional.
1
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This is for the cutting edge folks too.
1
SPEAKER_00
Or especially for the cutting edge.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was only the cutting edge.
1
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It was geeks for geeks.
1
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So we were like, oh, how did they make it?
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we got to learn through that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Apple One did the same thing, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It just, Apple Two became more packaged up and had a little bit better software, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Came with basic and then, you know.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it was really, it was what we might think of as a raspberry pie today or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
but not with so much software.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was literally, and all the chips were out there, so you could inspect the buses and the, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because everything was just broken out.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I guess that s the idea behind stable, big projects in open source, like on GitHub, that you have the schematics there, and it s kind of a product, but I wonder why more companies don t do that kind of thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, we re going to release this to a small set of people, self-selected, perhaps, that are kind of the makers, the cutting-edge folks, the builders, the at-home engineers.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, in some way, what Tesla is doing with the beta for the
1
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full self-driving, it s kind of like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like selecting a group of people.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that has to do more with you, how safe of a driver you are versus how much of a tinkerer you are, because you don t get to tinker.
1
SPEAKER_00
I wonder, is that a crazy idea to do for really cutting-edge technologies?
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SPEAKER_00
Especially you re interested in hardware stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
Is that crazy?
1
SPEAKER_00
Why don t more companies do that kind of thing, you think?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think back then it was about a community and serving that community of builders.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now this is about people who want to get the experience and want it really simple and easy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so there s the audience, or they believe the audience is small, who would value those other things that we re just talking about.
1
SPEAKER_01
But if we look at things like Raspberry Pi and all of these other little boards, right,
1
SPEAKER_01
there s a whole world more than I ve seen.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s amazing what you can do now with these little kits and the software that s created.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so there s a whole nother, I think, another batch of makers and builders that are coming up through the ranks.
1
SPEAKER_01
And if we look at YouTube channels and stuff, they take these little boards, they hack them, then they print out parts on their 3D printer, assemble them, and they create robots and
1
SPEAKER_01
what have you, so I think it s happening.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s just not as raw as it used to be, but it s there, and it s really expanding around the world, and that s really nice to see, because it s a whole new generation who are empowered.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think there s a semi-dormant
1
SPEAKER_00
genius amongst millions.
1
SPEAKER_00
So like Raspberry Pi is revealing that a little bit.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s probably, I wouldn t be surprised if it s several million Raspberry Pis that have been sold.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think more than that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s kind of this quiet storm.
1
SPEAKER_00
of genius, brewing, of engineers.
1
SPEAKER_00
We don t get to hear it because they re not organized.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, we get to hear it through inklings here and there.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like I said, YouTube, there s little communities that are local and so on, but if they were organized, if a leader would emerge, no.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so when did you first start to dream about building your own things, designing your own products, designing your own systems and software and hardware?
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, in high school, there was a company that a friend of mine founded, and I was the second employee, it was called Quality Computers.
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was a mail order, mail order, because there s no e-commerce then, there was no internet again.
1
SPEAKER_01
You either mailed in your little coupon and you said, this is what I wanted to order, or you wrote in to get a catalog and delivered to you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Turnaround time in this stuff was like, from the time you wanted to the time you bought it was maybe eight to 12 weeks.
1
SPEAKER_01
That was just the normal way of getting things.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Quality Computers was a mail order for Apple II, and it was software and all kinds of accessories, so hardware accessories, so hardware plug-in cards, joysticks, all this stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
And what we noticed was there were accelerators and memory cards.
1
SPEAKER_01
And to be able to use those cards,
1
SPEAKER_01
you had to actually go and change the software you used to access this new memory.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you literally have to go and you took the program that you had, let s say it was Apple works, which was like an early Microsoft office or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you had to literally change the code.
1
SPEAKER_01
and you would install these patches to then take advantage of the hardware.
1
SPEAKER_01
So what we started creating was software on top of it to do the automatic installation of all of these patches.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we made it much easier to take new hardware and the existing software you have and expand it into this new world.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it was creating tools and the really great customer support, and we started getting a lot of orders, because we had the software make it easier to install to give them the superpower.
1
SPEAKER_01
And at the same time, you know, they would be able to change their software and have a new world that wasn t existing from the companies that were creating the initial products.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so it was more of that.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then that happened with hard drives.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I wrote a hard drive optimizer for the Apple II to like read because you could get really fragmented.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I wrote that piece of software and we sold that through the company, along with the hard drives that we sold from third parties.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that all happened in 12th grade, freshman year of college.
1
SPEAKER_00
You wrote a hard drive optimizer in 12th grade.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, between 12th and freshman year.
1
SPEAKER_00
What programming language?
1
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember, was it assemblies?
1
SPEAKER_01
There were certain inner loops were assembly and other loops, actually there were,
1
SPEAKER_01
really early Pascal, no, C compilers.
1
SPEAKER_00
What was the motivation behind these?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it to make people s lives easier?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is it to create a thing, experience that is simpler and simpler and simpler, thereby more accessible to a larger number of people?
1
SPEAKER_00
Or did you just like to tinker?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, it was two things, really, because one, we wanted to sell more hardware and software, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
So it was like, oh, make it easier for the user.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then the other thing was, because I was also manning the customer support line,
1
SPEAKER_01
People would call and I d go, this doesn t work.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, oh, I gotta go fix the hardware and software, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or I gotta fix the software to make the hardware and the installation process better.
1
SPEAKER_01
So my whole world was out-of-box experience from when I was in high school.
1
SPEAKER_01
Because I had to man the customer support line.
1
SPEAKER_01
pack the boxes and write some of the code while we were doing, while Joe, Joe Gleason, who was the founder of Quality Computers, he was off doing the mark, the ads, placing the ads for the mail order, making sure we were running the credit cards, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
It was two of us, and then it turned into a third, and then we hired another person from high school to like pack boxes so I could stay on the customer support line or doing the software, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And it was all in his parents  basement, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
As you were scaling exponentially.
1
SPEAKER_01
Scaling, right, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bootstrapping.
1
SPEAKER_00
So we ll jump around a little bit, but what were the, you said you love music, what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod, if we jump forward?
1
SPEAKER_00
And how far back do those ideas stretch?
1
SPEAKER_00
You know, if you look at the history of technology,
1
SPEAKER_00
There s, I mean, not just the product, but the idea is truly revolutionary.
1
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it s time has come, but just if you look at the arc of history, sort of music is so fundamental to who we are as a humanity, and to be able to put that in your,
1
SPEAKER_00
make it truly portable is fascinating in a way that s truly portable.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it s digital as opposed to sort of like a Walkman or something like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
So what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod?
1
SPEAKER_01
You know, I was in love with music since I was a kid.
1
SPEAKER_01
Just loved music from, I think, second grade when I got my first albums and stuff like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
What kind of music are we talking about?
1
SPEAKER_01
So this was Led Zeppelin, this was The Stones, Hendrix, Aerosmith,
1
SPEAKER_01
Cheap Trick, Styx, Ted Nugent, you know, just the real, you know, the real American and British rock and roll, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
There s a bunch of people listening right now.
1
SPEAKER_00
Who, who s that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Who s that?
1
SPEAKER_00
Led Zeppelin?
1
SPEAKER_00
What is that?
1
SPEAKER_01
It drove my parents crazy.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you just blast it loud.
1
SPEAKER_01
Loud, just, and this was second, third grade, fourth grade, I just, I fell in love.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then we moved back to Detroit and I loved listening to the radio station, because there was all kinds of crazy music, because you d have an amalgam of rock and then funk and R&B, and I loved to listen at night.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I had a clock radio.
1
SPEAKER_01
But if I had the clock radio on, parents would go, go to sleep, stop that, turn that stuff off.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I hacked the clock radio and put a headphone jack in it.
1
Nice.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, so I said, oh, they re, okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I could listen to it all night and no one could hear me, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And I could just sit there and, you know.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just huddling around the radio.
1
SPEAKER_00
Groove out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Just listening to Zeppelin.
1
SPEAKER_00
Stairway to Heaven.
1
SPEAKER_00
What would you say is the greatest classic rock song of all time?
1
SPEAKER_01
Greatest classic rock song of all time?
1
SPEAKER_00
What pops into mind?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, no, you know what?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this has to be objectively number one.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s really hard, dude.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is so hard.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, you have to.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is a serious journalistic interview.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re not going to back down from these kinds of questions.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_01
What a challenge.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s hard to pick.
1
SPEAKER_00
But to me, Stairway to Heaven is a safe,
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like, it s so often considered to be one of the greatest songs of all time that you almost don t want to pick it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
But you return to it time and time again and it s like, yeah, this is something pretty special.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is a rock opera of sorts.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, the rock opera that really blew me away and still continues to blow me away is all of Dark Side of the Moon.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like that, I love Zeppelin.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can t say which one s better, but Dark Side of the Moon for me was, it was a, you know, audio experience, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
The whole thing from soup to nuts, plus all the synthesizers, all of those things.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so back to the iPod.
1
SPEAKER_01
So that s, from the early age, you loved music.
1
SPEAKER_01
Loved it.
1
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely loved it.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you know, always was just around it and always, I just, it was always playing, you know.
1
SPEAKER_01
I played it so loud that I actually hurt the earring in my right ear.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I still suffer from that today.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then- No regrets.
1
SPEAKER_01
No regrets whatsoever.
1
SPEAKER_01
Going to concerts in downtown Detroit and all that crazy stuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
So moving forward.
1
SPEAKER_01
So in college, I was a DJ.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I would DJ and hang out and play all the tunes I love and whatever for the crowd.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I continued to do that in Silicon Valley when I moved right after school.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so I was belugging all of these CDs around with me, 1,000 CDs, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And at the same time, and so those were heavy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And at the same time, I was doing the Philips Nino and Velo.
1
SPEAKER_01
Those are Windows CE-based mobile computing products.
1
SPEAKER_01
Nino was the first device to actually put Audible books on tape.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I worked with Audible, we met in a conference, and they were like, we don t wanna do hardware, we just wanna do content.
1
SPEAKER_01
I was like, well, we have this device, let s get it together.
1
SPEAKER_01
And we got Audible on that, and this was in 96 or 97, first Audible books.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, oh my God, that s audio.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, what if we put music on it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Right?
1
SPEAKER_01
And so, and the memory was very small at the time, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
There was almost no flash.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was all DRAM.
1
SPEAKER_01
When you did Audible, you stored it in DRAM.
1
SPEAKER_00
Right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Which is okay, probably, because how much books do you need is the idea.
1
SPEAKER_00
By the way, brilliant, I mean, just putting books, I know it s probably not the sexiest of things, but putting books on a mobile device is a brilliant step.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, sometimes you can t measure how much human progress occurred because of an invention.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s the sexy big products, but you never know.
1
SPEAKER_00
Wikipedia is one of those things that doesn t get enough, I think, credit for the transformational effects it has.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s not seen as the sexiest of products, but maybe it is.
1
SPEAKER_00
When you look at human history, Wikipedia arguably is one of the big things that,
1
SPEAKER_00
that basically unlocked human knowledge.
1
SPEAKER_00
Human knowledge.
1
SPEAKER_01
And human editing and human, you know, just the human nature of building something together.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it s fascinating.
1
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes you can t measure those things, maybe until many, many decades later.
1
SPEAKER_00
Anyway, sorry.
1
SPEAKER_00
So that was, you know, that was there.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then there was Audible, they put books, why not put
1
SPEAKER_01
Music and I m carrying around the music for the DJ gigs.
1
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, wait a second, two and two together, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Like, let s get rid of this.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so and then MP3 show up the the actual like in the format, the format MP3 showed up around 97, 98.
1
SPEAKER_00
So MP3 is compressed so you can have, like the storage is reduced significantly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Right, so you could go from a large full lossless digital track into something that can be stored in four to eight megabytes, something like that for the audio.
1
SPEAKER_01
Now, that s a reduced quality, but you could get it down there and you re like, oh.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, and now if we have enough flash or DRAM, we can put 10, 15, what have you, all in that same memory, and it starts to replicate a CD, and then ultimately, if you put it on a hard drive, you could start to put, you know, thousands of songs.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s also another brilliant invention.
1
SPEAKER_00
People don t realize, I think people would be surprised how big, in terms of storage, raw audio is.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the fact that you can compress it, like, I don t know what the compression is, but it s like 10x, it s very significant compression, and still it sounds almost lossless.
1
SPEAKER_00
Much the chagrin of Neil Young, who does not like that.
1
SPEAKER_00
But even Neil Young, even the stuff he talks about is still tiny files relative to the raw.
1
SPEAKER_00
So he wants us to increase it just a little bit more, a little bit more.
1
SPEAKER_00
But it s
2
SPEAKER_00
Still, that s an invention.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s a thing that unlocks your ability to carry around a device like a Nino and listen to music.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because without that, there s no way you can carry around a gigantic hard drive.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was MP3s, the Nino, and my hatred of carrying around all this heavy stuff that then spawned Fuse, and then ultimately became a lot of the ideas and things of that nature
2
SPEAKER_01
and my passions were born into then the iPod.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, it was too, Apple needed something and I wanted to fix something and it all kind of, you know, came together at the right place, right time, plus the right technology came at this.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was just like the stars aligned.
2
SPEAKER_00
So how did it come to life?
2
SPEAKER_00
The details of,
2
SPEAKER_00
the stars aligning, but the actual design, the actual engineering of getting a device to be small, the storage, the interface, how it looks, the storage, the details of the software, all that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
What are some interesting memories from that design process?
2
SPEAKER_00
What are some wisdoms you can,
2
SPEAKER_01
in part from that process.
2
SPEAKER_01
How long do you wanna go?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because I can go deep.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s go at least 20 hours, let s go.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay, 20 hours.
2
SPEAKER_00
This is one of the lengthy documentaries.
2
SPEAKER_01
We re gonna turn it into episodic binge listening.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Game of Thrones.
2
SPEAKER_01
So let s just start with after I was asked to be a consultant to put this thing together.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I already had knowledge of the space and the technology and all that stuff, but I had to very quickly, and a lot of the suppliers, because of what I was doing at Fuse, trying to create that thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So as a contractor, I was like, okay, what is the first thing you need to do?
2
SPEAKER_01
So after I showed different architectures and what three different products could be to Steve about options for storage options, battery options, form factor options, there was three options.
2
SPEAKER_01
And as I was told, given very good advice, give the two options you really do not like, but they re options, and give the best option last, because Steve will shoot all those down and give the best option last, and then you could talk about that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that was the one that had a 1.8-inch hard drive and a small screen, like the screen you know on the original iPod, classic iPod.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I had enough of the idea of the three or four different CPUs and processor suppliers and kind of systems that were out there that I had gone and found and put together on power supplies, disk drive interfaces, firewire interface, all that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I put together all of those schematics, or block diagrams, they weren t schematics yet, because it was just me.
2
SPEAKER_01
and coming up with a bill of materials, coming up with what it could look like, what would be the input output, how we could make a better headphone jack.
2
SPEAKER_01
That was also on there.
2
SPEAKER_01
Screen suppliers, tearing apart calculators.
2
SPEAKER_01
So got calculators and all kinds of electronics to get the right size, different sizes of small LCDs.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I got all kinds of different battery types.
2
SPEAKER_01
I got different types of, you know, and different battery sizes, double A s,
2
SPEAKER_01
AAAs, working through all the different, and there was lithium ion, nickel metal hydrate, so I took all the battery types, I took all of the memory types, processing types, LCD types, and connectivity and all that stuff, not wireless, but wired, and laid out these things as Lego blocks.
2
SPEAKER_01
So literally it had all of these things, and so it made them so I could put them together and figure out what the compact form factor would be.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, like how do we shove them together?
2
SPEAKER_00
What s the smallest possible box you can get?
2
SPEAKER_00
So the questions was on storage, so the hard drive,
2
SPEAKER_00
Batteries, double A, triple A. Screens, so screen size, and then for that you re tearing apart calculators.
2
SPEAKER_01
Calculators, digital cameras, whatever, and getting little things, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So you can make it physical, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
If you can make the intangible tangible.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I can say, look, we can make this.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I brought this whole bag of goods, and it was like,
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And like, here s this, here s this.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is why double A s won t work and because it makes it too fat and everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
So just educate everybody through, here s the parts that we can use.
2
SPEAKER_01
You should not sheet of paper.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s physical.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re playing in the physical space.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I would go back and forth.
2
SPEAKER_01
So truth be told,
2
SPEAKER_01
because there weren t good enough graphical tools on the Mac, I was using a PC with Vizio and some 3D tools and I was doing 3D design at the same time I was taking all these physical parts and going, okay, what feels right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you have to go from the details and then the rough and you go back and forth and you iterate, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so it was just a lot of fun.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I ultimately ended up with a styrofoam model and printouts that came from Vizio that I
2
SPEAKER_01
glued together and put my grandfather s fishing weights in, because I also modeled the weights, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I said, oh, this is this many ounces, this many ounces in grams.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then I went and got all that and made the, weighted these styrofoam models to then match that.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when you picked it up, it felt more or less form factor right.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it also, you felt how much, you know, was it going to be dense enough?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it going to feel solid and rigid in your hand?
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why does it need to feel rigid?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because it has to feel substantial.
2
SPEAKER_01
It has to feel like I have like a bar of gold in my hand, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, maybe you know this, when you open and close a car door, you know that thunk and you go BAM and you go, that feels solid, that feels real.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you get this tinny car that s like, ding!
2
SPEAKER_01
And you re like, does this feel safe?
2
SPEAKER_01
Does this feel like a value?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so when you have a device like that and you want to make sure that there s not too much air in it, that you ve distributed the density of the masses in the right way so it feels like it s the right thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you have to model battery life, costs, you know, mass.
2
SPEAKER_01
sizes of different things, and then you have to also think about what the UI is gonna look like, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So you have all of these constraints you re working with, variables you re working with, and you have to kind of, you know, you can t get the perfect of everything.
2
SPEAKER_01
What s the best, you know, local maximum of all of these components that come together to provide an experience?
2
SPEAKER_01
Local maximums, it s always trade-offs.
2
SPEAKER_00
What about buttons?
2
SPEAKER_00
But there was also the buttons too, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, by the way, a lot of these battles fought inside your mind or is it with other people?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it with Steve?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it lower?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like what?
2
SPEAKER_01
This was all independent.
2
SPEAKER_01
This was me before being able to present to Steve because I had to feel really confident.
2
SPEAKER_01
that if I was gonna put this in front of him, that it could be made, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I had to convince myself and go work through all the details, through like the very, very rough mechanical design, electrical design, software things, because I didn t wanna present something that was gonna be fictional, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
My credibility would be like trashed.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right?
2
SPEAKER_00
So you mentioned convince yourself.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re painting this beautiful picture of a driven engineer, designer, futurist.
2
SPEAKER_00
How much doubt were you plagued by through that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like this, this is even doable.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cause it s not obvious that this is even doable.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like to do this at scale, to do this kind of thing, to make it sexy, to shovel the screen, the batteries, the storage, to make the interface, the hardware and the software interface work, all of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I don t know, I would be overwhelmed by the doubt of that because so many things have to work, plus the supply chain.
2
SPEAKER_01
At that point, I wasn t getting into any of those details or anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s the basic stuff that you have to put together.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then you have to, through my learnings at General Magic and my learnings at Phillips and delivering multiple large-scale programs in manufacturing, you kind of get a rule of thumb and you know what to focus on at the beginning and what not to worry about over time.
2
SPEAKER_01
When I was early in my career, I worried about everything on the engineering details, so much so that I would be a nervous wreck.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sooner or later, you learn how to filter out and figure out what to prioritize.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so 10 years later, I was able to do a much better job of filtering out the things of like, we ll get to that in weeks to come.
2
SPEAKER_01
But right now we gotta like solve the very important things, which is, could this actually be something real and that you could deliver enough battery life, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Enough of an interface of the right cost.
2
SPEAKER_01
in the right price point.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you were sitting on a track record of successes and failures in your own mind where you had sort of already a confidence, a calmness, but still, was there a doubt that you can get this done?
2
SPEAKER_00
Always, always.
2
SPEAKER_00
How hard is it to achieve a sort of a confidence to a level where you could present it to Steve and actually believe that this is doable?
2
SPEAKER_00
Like what, do you remember when you felt?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that moment?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it was after I triple checked, but I couldn t bring anyone in, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t let anyone in on this.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was just me.
2
SPEAKER_01
Are they gonna trample on it, that kind of thing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Why?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, no, no, no, because I couldn t bring any, when I mean bring anyone in on this, one, it was a highly confidential program inside of Apple.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was like four people who knew about it, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I couldn t bring anyone from Apple because I was a contractor.
2
SPEAKER_01
I couldn t bring anyone else from the outside world.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m working for Apple and I m under this crazy NDA, right, in this contract.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was just, so I m doing this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh, and at the same time, I m also buying every competitive MP3 player and tearing them all apart, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Tore them all apart and looking at them and trying to learn from those as well.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it was all of this stuff in six weeks.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I didn t sleep.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I was like, because I was trying to make this, I was envisioning this since the Nino, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, oh my God, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
But there was another doubt that I had.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it wasn t just, could you make the product?
2
SPEAKER_01
But could Apple actually have the balls to make it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because Apple was not the same company.
2
SPEAKER_01
that you know it today, in 2001.
2
SPEAKER_01
Really, it was cautious, conservative, careful?
2
SPEAKER_01
No, no, it was barely break even.
2
SPEAKER_01
It was worth four or five billion dollar company.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so the guts required there is not necessarily in the innovation, it s like, this is gonna cost a lot of money and we re gonna potentially lose all of it, because it ll be a flop.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s not just that, but there was only the Mac.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the Mac wasn t doing very well.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
There was less, it was about a 1% only in the US market share for the Mac, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
The company was in debt.
2
SPEAKER_01
Bill Gates had to give him a loan, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Michael Dell at the time was saying, shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders.
2
SPEAKER_01
So this is not the company that people go, oh my God, the iPhone came out.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a very different level of confidence and financial situation that the company was in versus the iPod.
2
SPEAKER_00
So given that, what was the conversation when you finally presented to Steve?
2
SPEAKER_00
What was that conversation like?
2
SPEAKER_01
The conversation was, well, we went through it, the presentation and all that stuff happened.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he was just like, and he never, he would flip through it real quick, throw the presentation aside and said, okay, let s talk about this, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we went through it all.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one was a big conversation about Sony.
2
SPEAKER_01
And Sony was the number one in all audio categories, home, portable, whatever, in the world, okay?
2
SPEAKER_01
I had been already gone through 10 years of failure, and I was like, wait a second, how are we gonna compete with Sony?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was always worried that Sony was gonna come out with whatever it was that they were gonna come out with, their MP3 player, and that was it, game over, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I was like, Steve, and this is why it took me four weeks to finally sign on to join Apple after he green-lighted the iPod program in that meeting was because
2
SPEAKER_01
I had built other things in the past at Phillips, the Nino and Velo, but they didn t know how to sell it or market it.
2
SPEAKER_01
They didn t know how to retail it, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So I was like, we could build this.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, Steve, I m pretty sure I can build this.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve done this before.
2
SPEAKER_01
But how are we gonna sell it?
2
SPEAKER_01
You have all your marketing dollars on the Mac.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he looked at me and he goes, you build this with a team and our team and Apple and just me, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And I dedicate that we will make sure that at least two quarters of all marketing dollars will only go to this product and nothing else.
2
Wow.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Mac was the lifeblood of all revenue of the company.
2
SPEAKER_01
So Steve saw something special here.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
And he said, I m going to commit all the marketing dollars.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you can deliver the experience that we re all talking about,
2
SPEAKER_01
If we can do that, and that was Jeff Robin as well, because iPod would have never happened without iTunes.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, people don t understand, that was a bundle.
2
SPEAKER_01
You couldn t do one without the other and vice versa.
2
SPEAKER_01
So Jeff and I were, you know, if Jeff and you can present and bring that experience to life, I will put all the marketing dollars behind it.
2
SPEAKER_00
When did the marriage of iPod and iTunes sort of, what was that?
2
SPEAKER_00
birth of ideas that made up iTunes.
2
SPEAKER_01
iTunes existed before the iPod, okay?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so Jeff Robin had his company, oh man, I can t remember the name of it, but it was bought.
2
SPEAKER_01
He was making a MP3 player app for the Mac.
2
SPEAKER_01
Steve saw it because there was MP3 player apps like Winamp and other things that were on the PC, real player.
2
SPEAKER_01
And Steve saw that going on and he saw that Jeff and his small team had this, I can t remember, Sound something.
2
SPEAKER_01
Anyways, he bought that and that became the basis of iTunes and then Jeff ran all of iTunes.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so what happened specifically there was they were starting to hook up to all these third-party MP3 players.
2
SPEAKER_01
because there s a lot of Korean, the MP man, like Walkman, but MP man, all these, and they were trying to hook them up.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they were like, these are horrible experiences.
2
SPEAKER_01
And through that, and they said, iTunes was something that was gonna help grow the Mac base because we were trying to get more people on the Mac.
2
SPEAKER_01
So this program would be a great new thing you could add to the Mac.
2
SPEAKER_01
And there was also internet connectivity at the time for the iMac.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so they did that, and then they re trying to do these hookups.
2
SPEAKER_01
They weren t going well.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s when they said, we need to build our own.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or Steve said, we need to build our own, since these are such horrible experiences.
2
SPEAKER_01
People don t wanna just burn CDs from iTunes.
2
SPEAKER_01
We need to get that music on the go, but in an Apple fashion.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s when I was called.
2
SPEAKER_01
to come in to do that, the iPod thing, after the six weeks, then he already envisioned, I m sure he had it envisioned, because they were trying to do this thing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, now that s it.
2
SPEAKER_01
iTunes, what, you know, it wasn t called iPod yet.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, what would become the iPod?
2
SPEAKER_01
That is gonna be the thing that then propels Apple into this new thing, because you re gonna bring all these music lovers in that are gonna need their,
2
SPEAKER_01
their next generation or Sony Walkman version 2.0.
2
SPEAKER_00
So when you look at, again, apologies to linger on iPod, but it s one of the great inventions in tech history.
2
SPEAKER_00
What wisdom do you draw from that whole process about spotting an idea?
2
SPEAKER_00
This is something you talk about in your book, Build.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you know that an idea is brilliant?
2
SPEAKER_00
At which stage?
2
SPEAKER_00
When did you know it was a good idea?
2
SPEAKER_00
And maybe is there like some phase shifts?
2
SPEAKER_00
First you complete doubt, then maybe hmm.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then maybe it becomes more than a hmm and becomes like a little more confidence, that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
And also wisdom about who to talk to.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they don t trample the idea in the early stages, that kind of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Any thoughts about this?
2
SPEAKER_01
We could go on.
2
SPEAKER_01
Again, how long do you want to go?
2
SPEAKER_01
This is a Netflix series, I told you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Multi-season.
2
SPEAKER_01
So a lot of lessons learned over those years of failure and success, but the first thing it starts with, there s a whole chapter called Great Ideas Chase You, and so it kind of goes into in-build, and it goes through kind of chapter and verse about all of those, how Nest became into being.
3
SPEAKER_01
but let s talk about it specifically for iPod, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So for me, I always had pain, the pain of carrying these CDs everywhere, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I had the joy of music, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
If you could say all of a sudden I could get the music I love all the time in a portable package and I can have all the music I love all the time, I was solving a pain which was, for me it was thousands of CDs, other people might be 10 or 15 CDs, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
and then I can have the joy of all this music uninterrupted.
3
SPEAKER_01
That was taking the pain, making a painkiller for it, and then at the end was a superpower, an emotional superpower that said, oh my, this is something different.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when you can actually focus on a pain and get a painkiller for it, not a vitamin, so the difference between a painkiller and a vitamin s very clear.
3
SPEAKER_01
One, you need, I gotta get rid of this pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
A vitamin, maybe it works, maybe it doesn t, maybe somebody needs it, maybe not, it s all marketing story, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So you start with the pain, give them a painkiller, and hopefully, if you can do it in the right way, you give them a superpower, an emotional superpower.
3
SPEAKER_01
That is always, and that s the way to know that you re hitting on something that s really powerful.
3
SPEAKER_01
The pain and the joy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Are you always aware of the pain?
3
SPEAKER_00
So it seems like a lot of great products
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like we do a lot of painful things and we just kind of assume that s the way it s supposed to be.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like with much autonomous vehicles, we all assume we re supposed to be driving.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t, you don t think of it as a pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, you ve habituated it away.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
You ve habituated it away.
3
SPEAKER_01
For me, when I go to other places, living in Bali or living in Paris or whatever, and I m not driving,
3
SPEAKER_01
I m walking or I m using a scooter or what have you, different thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you go, oh my God, when you left that environment, because everyone else is driving all the time, you re like, that s what you do.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you find out there s other ways of living and there s freedom when you get rid of that, you re like, oh my God, I didn t know that this was so much better.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s something in the book that s called out and I deemed it the virus of doubt.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what the virus of doubt is is when there s pain and it s been habituated away, you use the right marketing messages to bring people back to that initial experience they had or the initial experience that they had of that pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you remember when the first time you did blah and it felt like this, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you reawaken that habituated pain.
3
SPEAKER_01
and it becomes visceral, and then they re like, oh, yes, I hate that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you go, now I have the painkiller and the joy for you.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s when it all comes together and it goes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let me, on this, on the pain and the joy that s brilliantly put, you mentioned selling and marketing, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Marketing dollars.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have a love-hate relationship with marketing, like with a lot of things that require artistic genius.
3
SPEAKER_00
To me, the best marketing, I suppose, is the product itself and then word of mouth.
3
SPEAKER_00
So like create a thing that people love.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s fundamental.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
But so any other marketing requires genius to be any extra thing because every to me, I don t.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you can, by way of question, I m just speaking off the top of my head as a consumer, what is great marketing?
3
SPEAKER_00
What does it take to reveal the pain and the joy of a thing?
3
SPEAKER_01
It all starts at the beginning.
3
SPEAKER_01
And let me give you, I m gonna give you a couple of different ways of looking at it, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
And again, we might go a little long here.
3
SPEAKER_01
So just stay tuned in.
3
SPEAKER_01
So the first thing is, let s start at the beginning.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the early part of my career, like General Magic and Phillips and what have you,
3
SPEAKER_01
And especially when I was a teenager, when I was making my own chips and stuff like that, I really worried about just putting cool things together.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m like, when I put those two cool things together as an engineer, you go, that s cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then I would talk to some of the other friends who might be geeks too, and they go, yeah, that s cool.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because we knew the bits, so we put them together, and that s a new way of doing it, and you re like, wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s all what, it s not why.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why are you doing this?
3
SPEAKER_01
We know what we re doing, but we don t know why we re doing it, because we re not articulating it for ourselves, because it s just something we re like putting it together and like, yeah, that s cool because.
3
SPEAKER_01
because we think we re solving some problem we have, but we re not really articulating it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what normally happens, and this happens because we invest in so many companies around the world, you have these brilliant engineers, designers, scientists, researchers, they put together these what s.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then they develop it, develop it, develop it, and then at the end, they call in marketing and say, now tell a story about this, and let s get it out to the world, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
What happens then is marketing s like, well, why do people need this?
3
SPEAKER_01
Tell us why people need it.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so they create a story around this product.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the product was born out of what?
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not whys.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so marketing starts telling a story, and it turns out to be a fictional story usually.
3
SPEAKER_01
They say, oh, this is going to do these things.
3
SPEAKER_01
The product comes and is delivered, and it falls flat on its face because the marketing doesn t match the product because they weren t both created at the beginning together.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right?
3
SPEAKER_01
There are what s when you create a product, but there s a lot more why s.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the why s help inform the what s.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the why s also inform the marketing.
3
SPEAKER_00
So at the, that s what you mean deeply.
3
SPEAKER_00
We should start at the beginning.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the designer should be also the marketer.
3
SPEAKER_00
The engineer should be the marketer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Stop impressing the geek next to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
What is the superpower you re bringing or the pain you re killing for the end customer?
3
SPEAKER_01
right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Now let s contrast that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Think about a movie.
3
SPEAKER_01
A movie starts with a treatment.
3
SPEAKER_01
It has an audience, it says the audience, here s the characters, here s the storyline, the plot, here s the arc of the story, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
It pulls that all out.
3
SPEAKER_01
Then there s a script that s written.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that script is then produced, and then you add all the flourishes and what have you, music and graphics and what have you, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it comes out, and then there s the marketing of the movie, and that story was created at the beginning.
3
SPEAKER_01
What you need to do, if you re gonna do a great product, is create that treatment for your product.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I call that the press release.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do the press release.
3
SPEAKER_01
like the treatment, who s the audience, what features do you have, what pains are you solving for people, to have the virus of doubt there to remind them what pains they have and why you re solving them, the price, all of those things.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you use that as the bar, the measuring stick for what you do during development.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because what happens that along the route, you know this, oh, we re not gonna be able to get that feature done on time.
3
SPEAKER_01
Throw that one overboard, we have to hit the date.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, we re not sure this product s right yet.
3
SPEAKER_01
Add another feature, add another feature creep, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
If you don t have that story you know you re gonna tell at the beginning, you don t have that bar, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then at the end, you don t know when you re done if you don t have that story.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you can actually look at that press release.
3
SPEAKER_01
You change it over time, that draft.
3
SPEAKER_01
But then when you re done, you know the what s and the why s, you have all the things, the audience and everything, and then you can give that to marketing and say,
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, and marketing s been along the way, let s be clear.
3
SPEAKER_01
But then, everybody s in sync, and that s when you can tell a cohesive, non-fictional story about, and the product delivers on that story, or hopefully over-delivers on that story.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, in the drafting, from the beginning to the end of the press release, what does a successful team look like?
3
SPEAKER_00
Who s part of the draft?
3
SPEAKER_00
Is it engineers, designers?
3
SPEAKER_00
What s the purpose of a marketing department in a company, small, let s say small company, but more than two people.
3
SPEAKER_00
So from where does the why come from?
3
SPEAKER_00
Should it always come from the designer or should there be a marketing person that
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and ask the question.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I ll just keep asking random questions.
3
SPEAKER_01
I know these are great questions.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s because you re just like, I m like, I can t wait to tell you the answer.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s in the book as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
But you have to separate out the various functions of marketing.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s what I thought.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like, marketing s marketing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s really not.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s so many disciplines, just like in engineering, mechanical, electrical, software, and even software, cloud services, firmware, applications.
3
SPEAKER_01
Marketing has that much diversity as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you have to honor that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so there is marketing communications like PR, press, there is social marketing, there is a marketing creative, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
There s marketing activation.
3
SPEAKER_01
But there s another thing that also comes out and people confuse it with marketing, which is called product marketing or product management.
3
SPEAKER_01
And product management or product marketing is the voice of the customer.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re the person who sits there and listens to what s going on in the competition, in the marketplace, understanding the needs and those pains of the customer, and they re representing them in every single meeting so things don t get off track.
3
SPEAKER_01
right, so that, and they re creating the messages, not the marketing.
3
SPEAKER_01
What happens is there s messages that product marketing creates, like those are the deep messages, like we need to save 20% of energy, let s say, right, and then marketing turns that into something that s with creative and everything and brings that message across.
3
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it doesn t say that, but it comes maybe visually or some other way.
3
SPEAKER_01
So product management does that and holds that press release along the route and making sure that we re tracking.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then also marketing is tracking with that press release to make sure they re not telling a fictional story, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because they can also add extra adjectives or something and then the product can t deliver that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like, no, no, no, no, no.
3
SPEAKER_00
It has to be grounded to the press release, to the raw sort of ideas.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, to the customer needs, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because they re always representing the customer.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you have to have a product manager, typically that s the founder, right, in the beginning.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then over time you hire a product management team to then really, you know, watch over this the whole way.
3
SPEAKER_01
And they are talking to customer support, they re talking to engineering, they re talking to design, they re talking to sales and marketing, and they are always in the mix.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it s the hardest thing to hire for.
3
SPEAKER_00
Ooh, yeah, so they have this very important job of developing and maintaining the why.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why is it the hardest to hire for?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because you have to understand, first, nobody reports to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re alone.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you re alone, and you have to build great ties with all of these different functions.
3
SPEAKER_01
You have to understand what they do, be empathetic with what they do, and you have to project the customer s empathy or empathy for the customer to them and tell them why and why this customer needs this, why this doesn t work, so that they learn more.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re not just doing, but they learn about
3
SPEAKER_01
the customer s point of view and stand in their shoes to be able to then make better decisions on the engineering details or the operational details, customer support details, so they understand.
3
SPEAKER_01
If they re not the customer that it s intended for, they start to live
3
SPEAKER_01
through their eyes and see through their eyes of that customer so they make better decisions.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s probably fascinating, beautiful tensions between that and sort of the engineers, oh, that s cool, sort of the, you know, developing the what.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which makes it an extra hard job, I m sure.
3
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
Can I ask a sort of, a little bit of a personal question?
3
SPEAKER_00
One subfield of marketing, you mentioned comms and PR.
3
SPEAKER_00
How do I ask this?
3
SPEAKER_00
I can hear your struggle in your thigh.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why or do the comms and PR folks sometimes kill the heart and soul of the magic that makes a company?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or is that wrong to say?
3
SPEAKER_00
Give me an example.
3
SPEAKER_00
I will say the spirit of the example, which is,
3
SPEAKER_00
It feels like often the jobs of communications is to provide caution.
3
SPEAKER_00
It almost works together with legal to say.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, we probably should not say this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Let s be careful, let s be careful.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, that makes sense, except in this modern world, authenticity,
3
SPEAKER_00
is extremely valuable.
3
SPEAKER_00
And revealing the beauty that is in the engineering, the beauty of the ideas, the chaos of the ideas, I think requires throwing caution to the wind to some degree.
3
SPEAKER_00
I agree.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I just find that
3
SPEAKER_00
Boy, I mean, it s really, to push back on myself, I think it s an extremely difficult job because people hold you responsible if you re doing communications when you take risks.
3
SPEAKER_00
And especially when they fail.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s a difficult job.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I understand why people become cautious.
3
SPEAKER_00
But to me, communications is about taking big risks and throwing caution to the wind at its best.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because your job is to communicate
3
SPEAKER_00
in the long term, communicate the genius, the joy.
3
SPEAKER_00
the genius of the product.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that sometimes is attention with caution.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, so I, because I ve gotten the chance to meet a lot of very interesting people and interesting engineering teams and so on, I look at what they re doing and I look at what s being communicated and it s just, there s a mismatch because the communication is a lot more boring.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like there s something very, like,
3
SPEAKER_00
just straight up boring about the way they re communicating because of caution.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, you have just teed me up on another diatribe, okay?
3
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna get on my podium here.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yes, please.
3
SPEAKER_01
It all comes out of the leader.
3
SPEAKER_01
If the leader doesn t know how to storytell, or the leader doesn t know how to do bold storytelling,
3
SPEAKER_01
then you get even more conservatism from the PR and communications folks.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because they re always, so if you have not a bold leader, they re always going to be a filter, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
They re always gonna try to smooth things out and take off the rough edges and try, so they re gonna be even more, if you have a conservative messaging leader, you re gonna have even a more conservative communications department.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because they wanna keep their jobs.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, it s really simple.
3
SPEAKER_01
They gotta keep their jobs.
3
SPEAKER_01
If they say one wrong thing, it could be the end of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
So if you have a very conservative leader, they re going to be even more conservative.
3
SPEAKER_01
If you have a bold leader, they ll always take a little more conservative bend, but you re still gonna have bold communications.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so it starts with the leader.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, that said,
3
SPEAKER_01
When you think about the messages and the joy and revealing things, right, many of these leaders don t tell great stories.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what we do at FutureShape, our investment firm, is we take those scientists and the great minds and everything, and what do we surround them with?
3
SPEAKER_01
Marketing and communication.
4
SPEAKER_00
people and storytellers to give them the confidence to tell a much broader story.
4
SPEAKER_00
about the impacts of what they re creating and how big the global change can be with those technologies.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because usually they don t, those leaders who created those technologies, they don t really know how to communicate really well, and they don t feel very comfortable in how they speak.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it s interesting, because stories, I m a huge fan of stories.
4
SPEAKER_00
Have you ever read the book Story?
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
By Robert McKee?
4
SPEAKER_00
Mm-mm.
4
SPEAKER_00
You should read this, and this is what I read when I was 26.
4
SPEAKER_00
story by Robert McKee, and it s a book all about the ways to do script writing, the prototypical types of scripts, drama, comedy, and how it s been shown over millennia, how these stories are done.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a fascinating thing, and it gives you an insight to, and it s written for obviously Hollywood and movies and things like that, but it s incredibly useful for what we do.
4
SPEAKER_00
as designers and engineers and technology, you know, leaders.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s some aspect in this modern day where, you know, this podcast and so on, what I love is the humans behind the story, too.
4
SPEAKER_01
So some part of the story is the human beings.
4
SPEAKER_01
So humor, drama,
4
SPEAKER_01
Heartbreak, hope.
4
SPEAKER_01
Emotions.
4
SPEAKER_01
Emotions.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s not just about painting a beautiful story that s flawless.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s... Vulnerability.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s, you know, being a dreamer, like over-promising, and then failing, so changing your mind, realizing sort of just the whole of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then also being like,
4
SPEAKER_01
Depending, of course, where your personality is.
4
SPEAKER_01
Embracing the full richness and the complexity of the personality of the leader or the different people involved.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that s all part of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t just present this beautiful, always Pleasantville view of a product.
4
SPEAKER_01
There has to be...
4
SPEAKER_01
this humanity that s part of it, the full rollercoaster of the humanity, which I think has been very difficult for companies to embrace.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not sure why.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it s just an old school way of doing things that people think that we present a facade and we generate the story and we tell the story as opposed to sort of,
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, we learn, especially in the technical world, we present the story as it s faster, it s smaller, it s longer battery life, it s bits and numbers and metrics.
4
SPEAKER_00
That resonates, sure, with other geeks.
4
SPEAKER_00
What resonates with the planet?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s all emotions, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you can bring a great emotional story, but with a great rational story at the same time, why you should do this, and it s like, oh my God, you bring that superpower, that joy, then it all hangs.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s personal drama too.
4
SPEAKER_01
The human.
4
SPEAKER_00
Here s the pain I had, remember that thing?
4
SPEAKER_01
You re obviously this extremely well-known human being that s behind a lot of these
4
SPEAKER_01
great inventions of the technology world, but you re also just a human being.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have a clearly, like, a distinct personality that comes through.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, your eyes light up.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just the way you communicate is you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Some people are more stoic.
4
SPEAKER_01
Some people are, like, Elon is, you know, all over the place, the chaos.
4
SPEAKER_01
Steve Jobs, you know, there s a very, I mean, it s hard to put into words, I can be poetic and so on, but there s a very distinct, comes on stage, you know, that personality right there, that s not just the product, that s something else too.
4
SPEAKER_01
And like, you have to reveal that a little bit, and allow people to reveal that a little bit, and just let them be themselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
Look, why do I think your podcast is so amazing?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because you are yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
You talk about yourself, you bring your emotions into it, and you don t modulate it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re you, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It comes through, it s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
It feels right.
4
SPEAKER_00
You are you.
4
SPEAKER_00
You dress the way you wanna dress.
4
SPEAKER_00
You say, this is me, and this is all of me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you become vulnerable.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s much easier to do a podcast like that than run a very large company where a lot of people would feel the pain if you make, if you say something stupid.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s much more easy to be afraid and be careful.
4
SPEAKER_01
But nevertheless, the same applies.
4
SPEAKER_01
Authenticity and risk-taking is the only way, unfortunately, to be successful in the long term.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let me, just because we re jumping all over the place, just linger on the iPod.
4
SPEAKER_01
One of the great designs, broadly speaking in the word design of all time, what does it take to design a great product?
4
SPEAKER_01
If you look,
4
SPEAKER_01
We can jump around, we can look at Nest, we can look at iPod, we can look at iPhone, and many of the great things you design, but just looking at that one transformational thing, what can you say about what it takes to do a great design?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or maybe what makes a great design?
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, we talked about a painkiller and we talked about that joy that comes from it.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then there s the behind the scenes, there s the team, there s everyone who brings it to life, brings that story to life.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you have a great story and you know the why, then you can communicate it to those people who are working on it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then they bring their own thing into it, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It becomes emotional for them too.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not just a job, it s a mission.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so many of the details that are born out of these early prototypes, these things that you still haven t given full form to, there may be 80% done or maybe even 60% done, but you can see enough in there.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then you take those great ideas and you give the whys to the team and so that they feel it.
4
SPEAKER_00
they can understand it, then they bring their best and their ideas to the table and then you can select from those and you can then start to, it could be just a pixel change.
4
SPEAKER_00
It could be a slight change on how you do the audio for the feedback or maybe a curve on the mechanics or something like that of how it feels because everybody brings themselves trying to feel this thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re not just doing something that someone told them to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you can instill that mission and that why into that team, it doesn t have to be big, you get, I feel, a 10X.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everyone comes together in a special way and the magic is created.
4
SPEAKER_00
You put the love into it, the customer feels the love on the other side.
4
SPEAKER_01
So making the team, like taking him in onto the vision, onto the why,
4
SPEAKER_01
Now they feel, all the little details we think of the original.
4
SPEAKER_01
the iPod and all the many generations after, all those little details are, in them is the emotion of the engineers and the designers that... It s their baby.
4
SPEAKER_01
Working nights, struggling, this isn t right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like you said, changing little pixels here and there, changing the shape of things, changing the feel of things, like the materials,
4
SPEAKER_01
the, I don t know, just everything on the software, the packaging.
4
SPEAKER_00
The words on the packaging.
4
SPEAKER_01
Just everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
The words on the website.
4
SPEAKER_01
And always jumping from the very specific detail problem to the big picture, how the thing feels, the overall.
4
SPEAKER_00
Always jumping back and forth.
4
SPEAKER_00
What does it look like to the customer?
4
SPEAKER_00
How are we going to implement it in the most
4
SPEAKER_00
efficient way, because a lot of the stuff you don t know is some of that stuff is hacked in, maybe hacked in at the end.
4
SPEAKER_00
It may not be the most beautiful architecture that a geek would look at and go, oh my God, that s so beautiful, because we can look at and visualize this incredible software stack or hardware stack.
4
SPEAKER_00
Some of it could just be hacked in.
4
SPEAKER_00
You make it better over time, but it was that brilliant thing, and we gotta get that in, because that s the way you do it now, and we ll make it more efficient later.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe this is a good moment to draw a distinction between design and engineering, and does such a distinction even exist?
4
SPEAKER_00
Are these distinct disciplines or no?
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t think they re distinct.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think they re different types of design.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think there s always this idea of this, oh, on the mounts, designer, and it all comes down, and it all flows down like some magic.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not, there are electrical designers, there s AI designers, there is data scientist designers.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everybody has design, and there s a chapter in the book all about that, actually.
4
SPEAKER_00
That it s not just, you go to the mount and it comes down and you re enlightened.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s each person brings their form of design and their craft.
4
SPEAKER_00
If they re really good, they re artists in their own right.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re not just engineers, they re not just designers, they re artists.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re empathetic, they really wanna bring their best.
4
SPEAKER_00
A lot of the best engineers I have are not the technical, or that I ve worked with, are not the technical gotta get it exactly right.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re the artists, they came from music or they came from other things and they see that, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
When you work with very rigid,
4
SPEAKER_00
Engineers, this is the way, the only way, la la la.
4
SPEAKER_00
Those are not the engineers I wanna work with.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re all like a bit artists at heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, they understand the practicalness.
4
SPEAKER_00
They don t have to have the rigidity of this is the way it s done.
4
SPEAKER_00
If you re building something new, all new and revolutionary, none of us are experts at it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you come with that expert mindset, just tell me and I can give you a story.
4
SPEAKER_00
I should probably give you that story.
4
SPEAKER_00
About that, if you come with the expert and I m the expert, when you re doing something no one s ever done before, I don t want you on the team.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because we all are learning about something that has never been in existence before.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we have to bring that level of vulnerability and openness to new ideas and new ways of doing things throughout the team.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you want people that are able to have like beginner s mind or whatever, like don t commit as an expert.
4
SPEAKER_01
What s the story?
4
SPEAKER_01
You re not allowed to, okay, all right.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, I can tell.
4
SPEAKER_00
All right.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, you asked what were these risks, you know, like on the early iPod, and there was a few big risks.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like one, and this doesn t go in the story, but like putting rotating media in your pocket, and it could drop at any time,
4
SPEAKER_00
what happens there, and you can damage, because the heads and the hard drive media are so close, it smacks, it s dead, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So that was one big one, like, holy shit, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So that was something, and we had to design special tests and everything, and special software on that.
4
SPEAKER_00
But then there was another one, which was at the early days, the way the first generations of iPods, I had to hack,
4
SPEAKER_00
I had to hack the IDE interface to the hard drives.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I was like, okay, what we re gonna use is we re gonna use this chip for hard drive, hard drive, to make a hard drive, you had to have a chip that did firewire to a hard drive, okay?
4
SPEAKER_00
And then that would become a portable hard drive.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, then we had the MP3 player and the user interface and everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there was times when it was just this hard drive and there was times when it was a MP3 player.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I had to hot switch between what the hard drive thinks it was talking to, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So designed this thing, tore it apart, did all this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like,
4
SPEAKER_00
you know, maybe I m gonna screw up IDE, and there s something, there s some holes I m gonna see.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I go, who s the expert at Apple who understands IDE and everything?
4
SPEAKER_00
So this person comes over, the mass storage specialist comes over, and I put on the whiteboard and say, here s how we re gonna do this thing, and here s the commands, and da-da, and this is how it hot switches and everything.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s never gonna work.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, what?
4
SPEAKER_00
It was never gonna work.
4
SPEAKER_00
I said, well, let me go over here and show you this right here.
4
SPEAKER_00
I have it prototyped and it s been working for days.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just wanna see if you re gonna find any holes in the thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he just stormed out of the room and never even, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s hilarious.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve had a lot of experience like this with experts.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, for example, this ridiculous room.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had a person, and there s many people like this, that I showed them, here s the situation.
4
SPEAKER_01
For acoustics or something?
4
SPEAKER_01
For acoustics, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re like, no, no, no, no, this is horrible.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is not gonna work.
4
SPEAKER_01
The reflection, the curtains are not gonna stop.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a bunch of terminology they re telling me.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a similar kind of situation as the idea, which I was like, no, listen.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just need to see, is there major issues?
4
SPEAKER_01
And they re like a low-hanging fruit that are fixable and major holes I should be aware of, not like let s- $100,000 to upgrade.
4
SPEAKER_01
To upgrade for what exact purpose?
4
SPEAKER_01
What, not why?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
The why, the focusing on the story, on the content, on the, the why, the why, the why.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that actually, I ve experienced that, unfortunately, in the artistic realms too, which is like photography and videography, cinematography.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s interesting, I talk to photographers that are quote unquote experts, and it s always about, so much of the focus is on the equipment,
4
SPEAKER_01
the equipment behind, the sensors and the lighting.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, all right, all right.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what about the feeling of the story you create visually?
4
SPEAKER_00
The difference between a movie that s really well told,
4
SPEAKER_00
and it doesn t have all the effects and everything, versus maybe some of the superhero movies we see all the time, which is, good luck if there s a story, but man, there s a lot of action and CGI.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, that s right.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there s also value to those, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
CGI, superhero.
4
SPEAKER_01
Oh, sure.
4
SPEAKER_00
Can tell a better story, but you have to have a good story to begin with.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sure, exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
But if you re focused on the story, I guess you need to start with the story.
4
SPEAKER_01
You need to start with the story.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you bring in experts, they can often be
4
SPEAKER_01
detrimental, I guess, to the why.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re too good at doing the what.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, you can bring in experts for why.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s lots of experts for why.
4
SPEAKER_00
Too many times we get experts for what.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then they only focus on the what.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so they come with the specs and feeds and the numbers and all the other stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
But what you re really asking for is I need somebody about the why and understanding what we re trying to get done here and fitting the what s into that why.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s why I do think that one of the qualities that I really enjoy for people to work with is humility for a particular problem when you approach it.
4
SPEAKER_01
Basically, I don t know how to solve this, but we re going to figure it out.
4
SPEAKER_01
as opposed to, oh, I ve solved this thing many, many times before, I know exactly what to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
Humility before the chaos, sort of having an open mind that this is going to require a totally new way of doing things is a really nice quality to see.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re one of the fascinating humans in the history of Silicon Valley.
4
SPEAKER_01
Steve is another one of those.
4
SPEAKER_01
So those two humans came together for a time to work together.
4
SPEAKER_01
What was it like working with Steve Jobs?
4
SPEAKER_01
What aspect of his behavior and personality, let s say, brought out the best in you?
4
SPEAKER_00
Pushing you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Really pushing you.
4
SPEAKER_00
Relentless on the details.
4
SPEAKER_00
Challenging you for the right reasons.
4
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t bullying, it wasn t demeaning.
4
SPEAKER_00
He would critique the work, not judge the person, at least not in front of them, or inside of a, you know, in front of a group or anything like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, it was really that attention to detail.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he, when he would make a decision, you know, there are, when you
5
SPEAKER_00
make the first version of anything, something revolutionary, there are a lot of opinion-based decisions.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s only one or two people, three people who hold those opinion-based decisions and what they should be.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when you have those opinions,
5
SPEAKER_00
and you re trying to work with a team to implement those decisions.
5
SPEAKER_00
You have to really tell the why of those decisions.
5
SPEAKER_00
Just don t go do it, but why it s there.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you can feel part of that decision.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can understand what were the trade-offs of the different other,
5
SPEAKER_00
answers to that opinion, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And say, this is the reason why we picked the robot we picked because it s this for the customer or this for the overall story, what have you, so that you felt really good because a lot of times most people want a data-driven decision.
5
SPEAKER_00
But with V1s, you don t get data.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, maybe in a B2B, you could a little bit, because you can talk to customers, but you can t do that with a consumer product.
5
SPEAKER_01
V1, version one, B2B, business to business, versus what s the alternative?
5
SPEAKER_01
Business to consumer, V1.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
We re just defining some terms.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, sure, absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so, and when you say data-driven decisions versus what?
5
SPEAKER_01
Opinion-based decisions.
5
SPEAKER_00
So like gut, you have to use, you don t have any,
5
SPEAKER_00
you can t fall back on any data or any previous history to kind of inform you of what s going on, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And so if you look at most companies who are paralyzed and cannot make new innovations and new products, it s because they re trying to turn, and this is what I saw at Philips, they re trying to turn opinion-based decisions into data-driven decisions so they don t lose their jobs.
5
SPEAKER_00
So if you look at management consulting, management consulting is all about taking those opinion-based decisions, giving them to someone else to turn into data that comes back to them and says they can blame the management consultants when something goes wrong, as opposed to it wasn t me.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right?
5
SPEAKER_00
When you need to have to tell that story, you have to understand that, especially with V1, you need to be able to articulate those opinion-based decisions, and you need to own them.
5
SPEAKER_00
And if you fail with some of them, you didn t get it right, you then own them and fix them and move on, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Version one of the iPod wasn t perfect.
5
SPEAKER_00
Version one of the iPhone wasn t perfect.
5
SPEAKER_00
We got a lot of opinion-based decisions wrong.
5
SPEAKER_00
But as you go through, because you got more data.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because V2, you had data on those original opinions, and then you were able to then modulate off of that, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And you still have new opinions, because those are differentiators, that we call differentiators, the things that move the product forward in its evolution.
5
SPEAKER_00
But at the revolution stage, opinions, opinions, opinions, no data.
5
SPEAKER_01
And so you have this discussion, you and Steve, and the stage and the whole team,
5
SPEAKER_01
with opinions, and there you have to be harsh.
5
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t say harsh, but you have to be very determined, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, there are two real opinion-based decisions that happen on the iPhone.
5
SPEAKER_00
One was the keyboard.
5
SPEAKER_00
Should we have a hardboard keyboard or should we have a virtual keyboard?
5
SPEAKER_00
The BlackBerry was the number one productivity messaging device of its time.
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SPEAKER_00
It was called a CrackBerry for a reason, because people loved it because it was easy to type and they could get their work done.
5
SPEAKER_00
But when you re saying we re gonna move from that, everyone s talking about that in the market, and you say we re gonna move to a virtual keyboard, and it s not gonna work as well as the hardware keyboard, that s an opinion-based decision, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because the data is telling you.
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SPEAKER_00
All the best sales are over here.
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SPEAKER_00
God, that takes guts.
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SPEAKER_00
It takes guts, but you have to look at it from a different point of view.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is how I learned to come to understand this, because I had been building virtual keyboards before, and I knew the goodness and the badness in them.
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SPEAKER_00
But he was like, look, those are productivity devices.
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SPEAKER_00
Ours is born out of an entertainment device and productivity.
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SPEAKER_00
We need to show full screen videos.
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SPEAKER_00
We are going to have apps, not apps, but our apps, the Apple apps, because there were no app store yet, are going to take over the whole screen.
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SPEAKER_00
You want a full screen web browser.
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SPEAKER_00
You don t want one that s like half of the device is just a keyboard.
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SPEAKER_00
Maybe you don t need that keyboard in every instance.
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SPEAKER_00
So we want that part of the screen to change based on the tool you may need at the time.
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SPEAKER_00
And maybe it s just full view, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So you have to go and understand it s a different type of device just because that s that.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s successful for that reason, the Crackberry for the keyboard.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s not the only thing you re going to do with this device because people only did messaging and maybe a few phone calls, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
This was going to be so much more.
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SPEAKER_00
It was going to be an entertainment web browsing device.
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SPEAKER_00
So you wanted those tools to go away.
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SPEAKER_00
but it wouldn t be as good as the hardware keyboard.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that s an opinion.
5
SPEAKER_00
But let me give you another opinion-based decision that got turned around before it shipped.
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SPEAKER_00
Steve said, no SIM slot.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t want any slots.
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SPEAKER_00
We re going to make it very pure.
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SPEAKER_00
Johnny was like, of course, no slots.
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SPEAKER_00
And we all looked around and go, that doesn t work.
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SPEAKER_00
You can t do that.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, why does Verizon, and then he would always, and this was the magic of Steve, like when you said, no, that doesn t work, he d go, well, why does Verizon not have any SIM slots, right?
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SPEAKER_00
They showed that you can do a mobile phone with those SIM slots, and you re like.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, here we go.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so a few days later, we come back with, you know, and so product marketing, voice of the customer, engineering, we all come back with all the data showing how many data networks and mobile networks required SIM cards versus did not and what the trends were.
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SPEAKER_00
And so we showed the data and that killed the, or excuse me, brought back the SIM slot on the original iPhone because we re like,
5
SPEAKER_00
because he was just like, we re gonna tell AT&T to not use a SIM, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
We re gonna just tell them to do it differently, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But we were like, if we want this thing to go anywhere around the world, you wanna put that friction in.
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SPEAKER_00
People are gonna move from place to place.
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SPEAKER_00
They have different SIMs because of the prices and all that stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
We had to show all of that data, and then that opinion-based decision got turned into a data-driven decision, and the SIM slot obviously showed up.
5
SPEAKER_00
So those are two, at the very same time, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
opinion can hold, and so can data overrule opinion when data does exist for a V1.
5
SPEAKER_01
But at the end of the day, you don t know what the right answer is, so doing no SIM card slot may have been the right decision.
5
SPEAKER_01
We won t know, because maybe if that was the decision,
5
SPEAKER_01
then like many times throughout Apple s history, you basically change the tide of how technology is done.
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SPEAKER_01
You never know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Apple started Wi-Fi.
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SPEAKER_00
People don t understand.
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SPEAKER_00
Wi-Fi came out of it.
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SPEAKER_00
There was no Wi-Fi in 2001.
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SPEAKER_00
Apple started Wi-Fi.
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SPEAKER_00
And then everyone else got on board.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you look at now where we re going, we re going to phones without SIM slots.
5
SPEAKER_00
because we have eSIMs, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And now the SIM slot s becoming legacy, legacy, it s a legacy port.
5
SPEAKER_00
That legacy port will probably be gone by six, maybe 10 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
It ll be gone.
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SPEAKER_00
I m pretty sure of that.
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SPEAKER_00
Because it s so much easier for carriers.
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SPEAKER_00
They don t have to have physical things to go out, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So right now it s just the early days.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it will happen, and it will go its way.
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SPEAKER_00
It ll fall away, but it will take time.
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SPEAKER_00
You just couldn t do it back then.
5
SPEAKER_01
So timing is essential here, but at the end of the day, it s opinions, and that s where the genius is.
5
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes the data tells you one thing, but the data, at the end of the day, does represent the past.
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SPEAKER_01
And the future may be different than the past.
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SPEAKER_01
Sometimes there s wisdom in the past, and sometimes it s actually representative of something that should be overcome, and progress looks like leaving that stuff behind.
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SPEAKER_01
Like...
5
SPEAKER_01
The headphone jack.
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SPEAKER_01
Right.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, that, when different folks were getting rid of the headphone jack, boy, that I would love to be a fly on the wall of those discussions.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, we had that, oh.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was a discussion that happened almost every year.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
That was an every year, should we get rid of headphone jacks on the iPod?
5
SPEAKER_00
Right?
5
SPEAKER_00
When are wireless headsets gonna happen?
5
SPEAKER_00
And it took years to build all the right protocols, the chips, all those things, to make the experience that is the AirPods today, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
To say, have the confidence, because Bluetooth was good, but it wasn t Apple-like.
5
SPEAKER_00
So now it s like we gotta make our own chips, we gotta make our own software stacks.
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SPEAKER_00
Now we have the confidence to remove the headphone jack and actually make you pay $200 more for your iPhone that you were just paying because of the headphone jack.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now we ve grown our revenue, we ve given a new experience to the user, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Ta-da, you know, and it s just, it s magic.
5
SPEAKER_00
And now the world s transformed to everyone, you know, moving to that, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But it took years to understand the problem, develop the technology, and not just rush it to market to get a half experience, but to get it right and refine it, then ship it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And only then after, it was probably four or five years in development, just like the M1 processor, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
That was a work from 2008, right?
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SPEAKER_00
grinding away, grinding away, grinding away, then saying, okay, now we have the confidence we re doing our own silicon for all the iPhones and iPods, iPads and such.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now we re going to turn to the Mac and make sure we have the best processor, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Not just that we have the best integrated design team.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then besting everyone, making sure the software and the hardware is designed at the same time, making sure the kernels, all those things are going to use the best efficiency.
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SPEAKER_00
and then popping it out, and then it feels seamless.
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SPEAKER_00
It s magic.
5
SPEAKER_00
There were no, as far as I could tell, unless you were in real esoteric drivers or something like that, it just worked.
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SPEAKER_00
It was magic.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was not even a speed bump.
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SPEAKER_00
It was not even a crack in the road.
5
SPEAKER_01
So perhaps famously, Steve had a bit of a temper, Steve Jobs.
5
SPEAKER_01
Would you say his,
5
SPEAKER_01
particular personality in this aspect was constructive or destructive in the process of shaping these opinion-based ideas.
5
SPEAKER_00
So in Build, I write a chapter called Assholes.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yes, and you lay out beautifully the types of assholes, and maybe you could speak to the constructive and the destructive types of assholes.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so there s really two delineations that I have found of, you know, real fundamental ones, and that is, again, the why.
5
SPEAKER_00
Why do I feel this person is an asshole?
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, they might not be.
5
SPEAKER_00
I feel this is a person who s an asshole.
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SPEAKER_00
Are they motivated by their ego?
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SPEAKER_00
Or are they motivated by their mission?
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SPEAKER_00
Something they re trying to do that s, and doing in service of something else, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes those lines can be blurry, but it s usually pretty clear.
5
SPEAKER_00
When it s ego motivated,
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SPEAKER_00
it s clear they re just trying to get up in the ranks, push people down, shove people aside.
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SPEAKER_00
I think we saw a president do that on a stage once.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I m me and I m the, you know, I m the guy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I m gonna prove it by pushing everyone away and being nefarious or what have you, either passively aggressive or aggressively aggressive.
5
SPEAKER_00
What they re doing about themselves.
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SPEAKER_00
There s another one, which is someone who s so attentive to detail and unrelenting that they re trying to get the right things for the customer or in service of their mission, and they wanna make sure we fulfill those things, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
And they really care.
5
SPEAKER_00
They don t micromanage all the details, but they micromanage the details where the customer, it touches the customer in some way.
5
SPEAKER_00
People who work with those types of people, who are unrelenting and push you and might make you upset, a lot of times it s a knee-jerk reaction to go, they are an asshole.
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SPEAKER_00
Get off my back.
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SPEAKER_00
You re an ass.
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SPEAKER_00
Right?
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SPEAKER_00
And you re protecting your ego.
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SPEAKER_00
because what s happening is that person is usually pushing you beyond your boundaries.
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SPEAKER_00
They see something that we can do, or you can do, that you re just either not wanting to do for whatever reason, you re not confident in that, you re like, I don t want to take the extra time, and saying, no, we need to get that done, and pushing you, okay?
5
SPEAKER_00
And so,
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SPEAKER_00
When we came to those areas, it wasn t just a one-on-one, it could be Steve against the team going, we need glass instead of plastic on the front face of the iPhone, and we re going to do this.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we re like, God, you know, and so we did it.
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SPEAKER_00
And he pushed us because he didn t know all the details, but he could see in our minds that we re like, yeah, we could probably, yeah, we could probably, but man, it s really putting us at risk.
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SPEAKER_00
And we laid out the risks for him.
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SPEAKER_00
And he s like, I m willing to take those risks.
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SPEAKER_00
We ll do that.
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SPEAKER_00
We re like, we might be three months late.
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SPEAKER_00
He s like, this is so important.
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SPEAKER_00
We need to stay on time.
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SPEAKER_00
But it would be all the time, push, push, push.
5
SPEAKER_00
It reminds me of kids growing up, and me as growing up, when your parents push you to make you grow beyond your boundaries, your personal boundaries, and you re like, God damn it, I m sorry.
5
SPEAKER_00
But they do it for the right reasons.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now let s see, it s not bullying.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not about bullying, it s not about demeaning.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s about either pushing you to another part of the mission that needs to get done, or it s about critiquing your work, but not judging you.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, there s a lot to say there.
5
SPEAKER_01
So one, it s fascinating, it really is fascinating, and you laid out a very nice picture,
5
SPEAKER_01
it does feel like there s sometimes gray areas, which is why it makes all of this very complicated.
5
SPEAKER_01
So one question I have for you in terms of glass on the iPhone, how important is it that like Steve in that case is right?
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I could argue each side.
5
SPEAKER_01
It seems like in one sense, just having a strong vision and opinion is already going to make everybody grow, even if it turns out to be the wrong.
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SPEAKER_01
as long as you are sort of standing your ground.
5
SPEAKER_01
you know, Napoleon invading Russia or something in the winter.
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SPEAKER_00
It s just not gonna be a good idea.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not a good idea, but I m gonna hold to that.
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SPEAKER_01
And then once you decide, you go all in.
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SPEAKER_01
And then from that, even if the whole team knows it s the wrong decision, just sticking by it, powering through, you will learn through the pain of it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Everybody will learn.
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SPEAKER_01
So that s one side.
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SPEAKER_01
The other is maybe the asshole, the vision-driven asshole,
5
SPEAKER_01
gets to be more and more of an asshole if they have a track record of, through that process, having built people up, having made the correct decisions.
5
SPEAKER_01
They re not allowed to be an asshole.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re in rare air and no one can challenge them.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right.
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SPEAKER_00
Steve was never that.
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SPEAKER_00
That s the great thing.
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SPEAKER_00
He was never unchallengeable.
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SPEAKER_00
You could challenge him.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, the plastic to glass story is a perfect example of this.
5
SPEAKER_00
So at the beginning of the project, well before we were going, we had always had these things about plastic front iPods, these kinds of things, scratches and all that stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
So we said, oh, we re gonna have a glass or a plastic display, a cover for the display, because the display was glass underneath it.
5
SPEAKER_00
We argued back and forth about glass versus plastic, and then we all landed together on plastic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, the original decision was plastic.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the reasons were, okay, we don t wanna make a mistake, glass can break, people drop them all the time,
6
SPEAKER_00
So, we don t want to have a fragile device because you re going to be using even more than a music player, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And you re going to be holding your head and putting it in your pocket and misses and all that stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, we went down the road with plastic.
6
SPEAKER_00
When it was shown, when the product was shown at Mac World in 2007, the first time, that was plastic.
6
SPEAKER_00
We had just enough of them in the field at the time.
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SPEAKER_00
We started to start seeing light scratches on the plastic.
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SPEAKER_00
reviewers who didn t have the device yet, because it was behind glass.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you remember 2007, the Jesus phone comes up, and no one could even touch them.
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SPEAKER_00
You could just look at it in this beautiful museum-quality box, like it came from the future or whatever, the past, and it was like, oh, and you just looked, and that was all you got.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then people said, well, what screen is, what covers on that, you know, reviewers who knew better, you know, and then, oh, it s plastic.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they were like, really?
6
SPEAKER_00
And so there was enough of a doubt there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then when we started to do it, and then Steve changed the frame of reference of the question or of the result of what the customer would think.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, if we designed it with plastic and it s in their pocket all the time and it gets scratched by coins, lightly scratched or by keys or something like that, that is a design problem.
6
SPEAKER_00
We need to fix the problem.
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SPEAKER_00
That was our bad.
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SPEAKER_00
If they go off and drop it, or even slightly drop it, and it cracks, it s the customer s fault.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they have much lower, they have less likelihood to complain.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, they ll complain, but they re part of that failure.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s fascinating.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then- There s truth to that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because then they were part of why it failed, whereas the design, they didn t do anything wrong.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was just sitting in their pocket and it s scratching.
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SPEAKER_00
And that s normal use.
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SPEAKER_00
Abnormal use has been dropping.
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SPEAKER_00
And we re like, oh, now we get it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so we all moved to that mindset when you framed the problem and the solution in that way versus the original framing where we all landed on plastic.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, and then he was unrelenting on that, but we all had moved and we have moved mindset and we understood the why, and we marshaled together.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then by the end of June, and it was crazy, the mechanical product design teams, sourcing, all of us, the partner corning, pulled together to make that happen because it was the right reason, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
So this,
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, you look at these stories and you hear just the top line rumors of the takeaways, but that s not usually how it all happened of like one leader was, that s not how Steve was.
6
SPEAKER_00
Now I ve seen leaders who are just pounding, you know, and just had no real empathy for the team and understanding the why.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s just, it is the way I want it, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
I am the supreme leader.
6
SPEAKER_00
That wasn t like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
He just had a very strong opinion.
6
SPEAKER_00
Very strong opinion.
6
SPEAKER_00
But it was challengeable.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was challengeable, and if you came with the right thing, you could modulate that.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you had to come with a team.
6
SPEAKER_00
It couldn t just be you.
6
SPEAKER_00
You had to come with a team and data to overcome, because it was a very strong opinion.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there s personal quirks of character, like you said.
6
SPEAKER_00
Bad days and good days.
6
SPEAKER_01
Bad days and good days.
6
SPEAKER_01
So there s also the three options you said.
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SPEAKER_01
You notice that the third option is always going to be the one that s picked.
6
SPEAKER_01
Those kinds of.
6
SPEAKER_01
Idiosyncrasies.
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SPEAKER_01
Idiosyncrasies.
6
SPEAKER_01
So that brings up another thing.
6
SPEAKER_01
You said challenge the idea, not the person.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m somebody who has a, I have a temper, I use colorful language and so on, on teams I work.
6
SPEAKER_01
In my private life, I m much calmer and so on, but when I get really passionate with engineering teams,
6
SPEAKER_01
I ve been called an asshole.
6
SPEAKER_01
And you get, I mean, I am distinctly aware that you cross lines often.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s like levels, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
6
SPEAKER_01
It has to do with language and how language is heard.
6
SPEAKER_01
So for example, you could say a lot of stuff to me, you could swear, you could say stuff that sounds personal, like, I don t know, Lex, sometimes I think you re the dumbest human on the face of the earth or something, I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_01
This sounds very personal, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
But I m not gonna take that personally, I understand what s being said.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then I also noticed that there s other people that take stuff more personally.
6
SPEAKER_01
This has to do with teams.
6
SPEAKER_01
figuring out like, okay, who s going to take certain words personally and not, and you have to know, that s what makes a great coach, a great leader, a mentor, you have to factor all that in.
6
SPEAKER_01
But there s something about just being an asshole.
6
SPEAKER_01
and being passionate and really driven, that sometimes you do cross lines.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s, I don t know what to do with that, because it feels like it comes with the territory.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like you have, it seems like you can t just have a perfectly optimized.
6
SPEAKER_01
No.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, absolutely not.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re humans.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
We re humans.
6
SPEAKER_00
We don t have a program.
6
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s programmed the same way to react the same way to given stimulus, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, you said, I don t know if this was a real example, but you said, oh, you re the dumbest human on earth or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would never say that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely never.
6
SPEAKER_00
And if someone said that to me or I saw someone else say that to another person on the team,
6
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely not, that is not allowed because that s judging someone.
6
SPEAKER_00
You may be heated and you can get heated and you can say it in your intonation, but to then try to put a label on it and put a label on a person, that is not allowed.
6
SPEAKER_00
So if you let that kind of culture happen and it becomes somewhat, you know, sometimes it s in jest, you know, it has to be very much in jest and those two people have to have a really good working relationship.
6
SPEAKER_00
But other than that, I m sorry, it s gonna be a lot more,
6
SPEAKER_00
You could say aseptic in that way that you re not gonna add that stuff in, but you can do it with all other types of ways without saying that because then people who do react to that kind of language and don t have those shields because they might not have that stream confidence level that you do and you can just brush it off, that can be very cancerous in a team because people then mean that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then they see, oh, that s the right way to be.
6
SPEAKER_00
You gotta snuff that out and you gotta be that,
6
SPEAKER_00
You got to be that change or that model that you want to show the team.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s too, even if it doesn t affect me, it s going to affect a significant enough fraction of brilliant people where that shouldn t be part of the culture.
6
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, and other people see that happen and then, oh, I guess that s acceptable, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Just like politics in the workplace, is that acceptable or not?
6
SPEAKER_00
I call it out exactly when I see it in front of everyone, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because it s just another ego-driven thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to set the tone.
6
SPEAKER_00
as a leader for what you want your organization to be and how it gets reflected in the world.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you have to uphold that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure, you can have an excursion outside of that, but you have to go back and say, I m sorry.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to go and apologize, heal, and say, I was not the person I wanted to be that day.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m really sorry.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And even in front of the team.
6
SPEAKER_00
And have that humility and say, we re all human here.
6
SPEAKER_00
And just because I m the leader doesn t mean I don t make mistakes.
6
SPEAKER_01
So have the self-awareness, apologize.
6
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s also part of the culture.
6
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
How are you different from Steve as a leader and designer?
6
SPEAKER_01
So you ve spoken about sort of what made you strong, which is he was able to challenge, he was able to push you to bring out the best.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, I come from the technical angle, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Deep technology, software, hardware, systems thinking, you know, implementation, all that stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I have a different bent.
6
SPEAKER_00
He wanted to be an engineer, started, but really he was much better at all the other things, the storytelling, the interfacing, and being the voice of the customer, and being that product marketer in a way, right, that we talked about.
6
SPEAKER_00
I grew into being the product marketing, then marketing.
6
SPEAKER_00
He came really out the other way, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And never got really deep technically.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s two different mindsets.
6
SPEAKER_00
One s not better or worse, it s just, that s how it is.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it takes all kinds to, and all kinds can do great designs.
6
SPEAKER_01
Did it manifest itself differently, just the fact that you came from those different places?
6
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like what,
6
SPEAKER_01
So like the discussion about glass on the iPhone probably had a different flavor to it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
6
SPEAKER_00
When you started getting into the technical details, enough so you re getting the third order technical details and he can t argue with that anymore.
6
SPEAKER_00
Then with someone he s like, okay, you know, at some point he s like, I can t win this war.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he learned that very early on because he didn t like the way the look of the Macintosh board, the PCB was laid out.
6
SPEAKER_00
He wanted it to be beautiful on the outside and on the inside.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s like, why are all these wires running this way?
6
SPEAKER_00
Why doesn t it have all this symmetry?
6
SPEAKER_00
And we have to make it beautiful on the inside.
6
SPEAKER_00
And even the traces on the boards have to look a certain way.
6
SPEAKER_00
So the teams made the board they knew that would work.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then they made the board the way Steve wanted it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that didn t work.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then Steve instantly figured out, at some point, don t micromanage every single detail.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s some things he doesn t know enough about, and so he would get out of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
But that was one of those instances where he pushed really hard, and that s his opinion.
6
SPEAKER_00
So they said, OK, we re going to make it a data-driven decision, and we re going to make both, and we re going to show you the results.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then from there, he didn t get into those details.
6
SPEAKER_00
So from that, you could have a great challenge.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because then you could get those data and say, we can t do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And let me show you why.
6
SPEAKER_00
Or we can do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then Steve would go, you can t do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you re like, oh, we can do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let me show you.
6
SPEAKER_00
So there s certain times when you were bringing something to reality that he didn t think could exist.
6
SPEAKER_00
So it was always that creative tension, that interaction that was so successful.
6
SPEAKER_00
But there was one other fundamental thing that was different and that it graded on the team.
6
SPEAKER_00
and that I made sure and I learned from to not do.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I maybe overdo now in the opposite direction, which is when there s a great idea that comes from the team,
6
SPEAKER_00
acknowledge that person and go, that is a great idea.
6
SPEAKER_00
As the leader, you know, the opinion driven, that s a great idea.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s build on that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s see if that can do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Or it s a great idea, but not for now, put it aside.
6
SPEAKER_00
But call out when people have great ideas, because it s infectious.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that means maybe not ideas that come bubble up to the customer level, but inside the organization.
6
SPEAKER_00
People like, they get rewarded for their ideas and say, that s a great one.
6
SPEAKER_00
Steve was always like, you give an idea and he would go, hmm, okay.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_00
The next day, 24 hours later, it would come back with slight modifications.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve had this genius idea, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And sooner or later, we d look around the table and we d roll our eyes and go, here we go again.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it demotivates you from generating ideas a little bit.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, we got used to it, but later on in the team, it was just not, it doesn t wanna bring the best, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because if you re always like,
6
SPEAKER_00
The reaction is never, that s a genius idea.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was always like, it was either negative or neutral, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Then it doesn t have that same emotional effect that you want you to bring your best.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sometimes it s fun when people get excited by ideas.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
You kind of build on top.
6
SPEAKER_01
Excitement can be, but coupled with sort of harshness when the idea is bad and you call out the bad ideas too.
6
SPEAKER_01
So it s the good and the bad.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you could say, you don t have to say bad ideas.
6
SPEAKER_00
Say, maybe not now.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s table that for later.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s discuss it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Or say,
6
SPEAKER_00
That s a decent idea, but did you think about that idea this way?
6
SPEAKER_00
Not just no or yes, but let s talk about why that might not be applicable in this case so that they can learn, so the next time they bring the next idea, they can modulate and understand and start seeing through the opinion-based decision makers or the databases they re bringing, and bring better formatted arguments or ideas so that you have better chance of success the next time.
6
SPEAKER_00
You gotta train through those moments.
6
SPEAKER_00
You gotta teach those are teaching moments.
6
SPEAKER_01
I aspire to be that kind of person.
6
SPEAKER_01
I ll usually say that idea is shit.
6
SPEAKER_01
I remember that this brilliant person just gave that really shitty idea.
6
SPEAKER_01
So I remember to make sure the next time they give a good idea, I really compliment that good idea.
6
SPEAKER_01
But I personally...
6
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s emotion, but I call out the really shitty ideas.
6
SPEAKER_00
But you should call out the really great ones.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you let the pendulum swing both ways, then everybody goes, he s balanced.
6
SPEAKER_00
If it s always one way, why bring any idea?
6
SPEAKER_00
I m all about the pendulum.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
You gotta have both.
6
SPEAKER_00
The joy and the pain.
6
SPEAKER_01
Don t just give me pain all the time.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you mentioned the glass and the iPhone.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you wanted to, not just the iPod, not just Nest.
6
SPEAKER_01
You were one of the key figures in the creation of the iPhone.
6
SPEAKER_01
What s the interesting aspects?
6
SPEAKER_01
What s the good, the bad, and the ugly of the origin story of the iPhone?
6
SPEAKER_01
Again, this is a Netflix series that spans multiple seasons.
6
SPEAKER_00
But what- Change my flight, please.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, what wisdom, what interesting memories you have from the fight?
6
SPEAKER_01
So the pain and the joy that was foundational to the iPod,
6
SPEAKER_01
all the CDs you had to lug around.
6
SPEAKER_01
What was the pain and the joy and the vision of the iPhone in your mind, in the mind of the team, in Steve s mind, and so on?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, there s multiple pains.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to also look, there s not just customer pain, but there s business pain.
6
SPEAKER_00
So Apple now is getting out of that place where it was in 2001.
6
SPEAKER_00
Now people are starting to pay attention.
6
SPEAKER_00
Apple s starting to get in the culture again.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s becoming relevant.
6
SPEAKER_00
Cash is starting to flow.
6
SPEAKER_00
iPod is 60% of that.
6
SPEAKER_00
of the revenue, total revenue of Apple doing an 85% market share.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re starting to get a wind at your back.
6
SPEAKER_00
You got confidence.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like Apple had been beaten down since probably the first time the Mac was, since the Mac, it was a beaten company ever since the Mac.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we re talking 15 years at that point, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
This is the first time you re seeing like, and Steve would proudly came in front of us and said,
6
SPEAKER_00
Today, I can tell you all of the employees, we are now out of debt.
6
SPEAKER_00
We paid off our debt.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was a joyous moment for him, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And then ultimately for our team, because no more debt, wonderful, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
So now what you have is you have this successful thing changing the face of Apple.
6
SPEAKER_00
And you hear these heavy stomping footsteps of the mobile phone industry.
6
SPEAKER_00
Boom.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s the feature phones at that time.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re adding cameras.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re adding color displays.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re seeing the success of the iPod and going, that s just music.
6
SPEAKER_00
We have some storage.
6
SPEAKER_00
We can load music on our phones and we can do what the iPod does plus more.
6
SPEAKER_00
Boom, boom, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
And you re like, and how many hundreds of millions of them are being sold at that point?
6
SPEAKER_00
It wasn t billions yet, but it was still 100 million, 200 million a year.
6
SPEAKER_00
iPod hadn t gotten there.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was 20, 40, 50 million, something like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
So now you re like, okay, what are we gonna do about this Goliath who wants to take our lunch, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
The schoolyard bully.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so there was one, let s partner with them.
6
SPEAKER_00
So iTunes Music Store was there.
6
SPEAKER_00
All of these phones are gonna need music, so they can come to the iTunes Music Store and get that music for those phones, because it wasn t just about the hardware player at that point.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was about the software that you need on the desktop and the content that you needed to download.
6
SPEAKER_00
So now Apple had multiple legs of the stool, as Steve would always refer to it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So now the mobile phone industry, okay, we re gonna work with them.
6
SPEAKER_00
They are going to make an iPod shuffle, basically, inside of a phone, can have 99 songs total, and they re gonna come to our store, and you re gonna, it s like, okay, great.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s all gonna be well and good.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that became the Motorola Rocker Project.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was Apple and Motorola getting together.
7
SPEAKER_01
There was gonna be software on this smartphone, or not smartphone, but feature phone, to hook to iTunes to get your music.
7
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t even downloadable over a cloud or anything, because that wasn t available yet.
7
SPEAKER_01
It didn t have data networks yet.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was a disaster from the beginning.
7
SPEAKER_01
Two different cultures, two different types of leadership styles.
7
SPEAKER_01
not necessarily the most competent engineers on the other side, and it turned out to be an absolute horrible disaster.
7
SPEAKER_01
I watched the pains, because luckily I didn t have to be part of it, I watched the pains on Jeff Robbins  face each time we would meet, and he would be like,
7
SPEAKER_01
these guys are just, you know, like, really?
7
SPEAKER_01
Do we have to do this, Steve?
7
SPEAKER_01
And he s like, we re contractually obligated.
7
SPEAKER_01
And when he came out on stage and Steve showed it, it was maybe a one minute, you know, Steve loves those extended, you know, like drawn up.
7
SPEAKER_01
It might ve been a one minute, two minute kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he literally threw that phone out of his hand as fast as he could.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_01
Cause it was horrible.
7
SPEAKER_01
So that, so there was the pain of, we re not going to partner.
7
SPEAKER_01
So if we can t partner with these guys, we have to become one of them.
7
SPEAKER_01
to actually compete, to save the thing that is bringing Apple from that 15 years of malaise, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
So then from that, we were made a prototype of an iPod Plus phone, a classic with, well, it was an iPod, but it had a phone inside with all the music and all the other stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
And you use your headset, wired headset to do the audio, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
There was another project at the same time, because we were doing videos in the iTunes music store, iTunes video store, for music videos and movies.
7
SPEAKER_01
and it would be a full screen iPod.
7
SPEAKER_01
So instead of the classic, the way you know it, it would be full screen and it would have a virtual click wheel.
7
SPEAKER_01
It d have a virtual, like single touch touch screen that you could scroll, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
Think of maybe an iPhone like you knew it, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And then there was a third project going on, not in, those two were going on in my team, but the third project going on was the multi-touch screen
7
SPEAKER_01
technology to drive a Mac tablet.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so that Mac tablet, that touchscreen technology, there was just way too much you had to change on the software and everything to be able to use a tablet, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
We see this all the time, like people are like, there s not enough tablet apps today that are modified for tablet, they re just phone apps that are grown up, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
So then there would just be Mac,
7
SPEAKER_01
touch stuff, so you d have to have a whole developer community.
7
SPEAKER_01
That probably wasn t the best place to take that technology first.
7
SPEAKER_01
So you take that technology, marry it with the full screen iPod, and the phone stuff we were working on, so the iPod phone with the rotary dial was just like a rotary phone.
7
SPEAKER_01
We couldn t make that interface work well for data input.
7
SPEAKER_01
You put those three together and now is where those three things that then created the form or the technology and the form inside what would become the iPhone, married with a bunch of low-level software from the iPod and manufacturing software and drivers and communication stuff, combined with
7
SPEAKER_01
a very reduced Frankenstein Mac OS.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I mean that in the best way.
7
SPEAKER_01
It wasn t Mac OS just changed a little.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was totally, things were hacked out and changed and new code was inserted.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it really was a whole set of things from all different places to make that first iPhone OS.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then there was another team working on the apps.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then another team working on the design of how it looked overall between all that stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
So all of those things came together to create what we know as the first generation iPhone.
7
SPEAKER_00
And those are all probably fascinating engineering challenges.
7
SPEAKER_00
Correct.
7
SPEAKER_00
And great teams like creating the Frankenstein OS.
7
SPEAKER_00
That s fascinating, because you re simplifying, simplifying, but then you re just pulling different stuff from, and you re basically inventing, I mean, they re probably not thinking of it that way, but a new era of computing, a new kind of computer.
7
SPEAKER_01
It really is Frankenstein.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right, and you didn t have to run Mac software.
7
SPEAKER_01
If you look at some of the other smartphones of the time, like Windows and stuff, they were like, we need to make sure it runs Excel, and it runs Word or something like that in some reduced thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
This was like, no, no, no, no, this was born out of entertainment.
7
SPEAKER_01
So we didn t have to go and take all the same application, you know, all those other ones was about compatibility.
7
SPEAKER_01
This was about a whole new way of being.
7
SPEAKER_00
What did you think about the Steve Jobs presentation of the iPhone, the sort of the first iPhone?
7
SPEAKER_01
Phone, internet communicator and iPod in your pocket.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you re going to sort of present, you re announcing three new products.
7
SPEAKER_00
kind of thing, and then saying that it s all in one.
7
SPEAKER_00
Just, this is a good example, one of the sort of historic presentations of a product.
7
SPEAKER_00
Clearly, there s like some showmanship that works, some reason it works.
7
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t always work, it often doesn t work, but it did in this case, and it often did for Steve.
7
SPEAKER_00
Like, how did that feel?
7
SPEAKER_00
What part of the actually,
7
SPEAKER_00
the design process was that presentation.
7
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
7
SPEAKER_00
Like from the early, because you said, consider the why, the press release at the very beginning.
7
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
Steve was doing that the entire time.
7
SPEAKER_01
He was working on that story from day one.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
he was pitching us this, this, this, and then this, and then he would look at our faces, because you wouldn t, most people wouldn t, at least if you re working for him, wouldn t tell him what you really thought of what he was saying, but he would look at your faces, and then he would talk to a few real trusted confidants outside of the,
7
SPEAKER_01
outside of the organization and see what they thought, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And they could give him feedback on it and they could really challenge him, but he would also look at their faces and go, hmm.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so when you see that, hmm, then he would modulate it and change it slightly and change it.
7
SPEAKER_01
So he was working during all of that time on the story and the storytelling, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And the whys.
7
SPEAKER_01
while we re working on that and helping us refine it, just like the switch from plastic to glass, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
All the time working on that.
7
SPEAKER_01
So when he comes out on stage, he does something that every marketer is told not to do.
7
SPEAKER_01
Say, these three things are now combined in one.
7
SPEAKER_01
That is like the, they say that that is the laziest form of storytelling possible for marketing.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right?
7
SPEAKER_01
But it was the best one because it was all those pains.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was like, I want my iPod, but I want my communications, and I want my internet browsing because I want it on the go so I can look up things, because it was information.
7
SPEAKER_01
And when you were on the road, you had a laptop, you had an iPod, and you had a phone, and you had to carry all of these things with you at once.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now we re gonna solve that pain for you and put it all together.
7
SPEAKER_01
So he was just showing you the pain and beating that virus of doubt and going, it s now in this one magical thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he could come up and masterfully tell that story, because he told it almost every day to all of these people inside very quietly.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then it was just, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
It was like a Tony Award winning play that had been worked on for 10 years.
7
SPEAKER_00
But also the human came through, the timing.
7
SPEAKER_00
Of course, it was all that, it was all of it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And of course he was dramatic at certain points and he would raise his voice and a wry smile or whatever it was.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was all those touches.
7
SPEAKER_01
He was an actor as well as a storyteller.
7
SPEAKER_01
But it was the truth, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
The truth came through, it was a nonfiction story.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then he added those personal flourishes on top of it for dramatic effect.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
7
SPEAKER_00
So there s a designer you mentioned, Johnny Ave.
7
SPEAKER_00
You both are brilliant designers, great human beings.
7
SPEAKER_00
There were some battles fought in the distant past between the two of you.
7
SPEAKER_00
Looking back, what is the positive characteristics of Johnny that made you a better person and designer, having worked with him?
7
SPEAKER_01
watching the process that the design team that Johnny led.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t know where, because that was over years.
7
SPEAKER_01
I didn t see all of those things, but watching the design process of really, because it was really a team that was about materials.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was about form.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was about colors.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was about these physical characteristics.
7
SPEAKER_01
When we talked about this earlier, it was design.
7
SPEAKER_01
What is design?
7
SPEAKER_01
Design s everywhere, okay?
7
SPEAKER_01
So what they were really focused on was form, how the feel was, how it looked, the aesthetics, the physical aesthetics.
7
SPEAKER_01
and watching going through that process, I learned so much in that process about how to do colors, how to do materials, how to think deeply about curves, right, and shadows, and how it would look not just in your hand, but how it would look in the photograph you were gonna take for marketing, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
So how it would look, how you would feel,
7
SPEAKER_01
All of it.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was all of those physical things around that and watching the process to get there, that was enlightening for me, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
It opened my mind to go, oh, okay.
7
SPEAKER_01
Just like there s a process for all these other things, it wasn t just magic and you say,
7
SPEAKER_01
Ha, ha, ha, there it is.
7
SPEAKER_01
It was really a process of refinement, of opening the funnel at the beginning and refining down over time to get to that final mile and selecting and doing the selection.
7
SPEAKER_01
And certain times there were opinion-based design details.
7
SPEAKER_01
But a lot of data-driven designs of what can we deliver in volume, what can we do different things?
7
SPEAKER_01
So you always had these constraints that you had to work with.
7
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes,
7
SPEAKER_01
they and the team, not just I, would say, we need this.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we re like, we can t deliver that.
7
SPEAKER_01
But maybe we were able to work together to find different design characteristics and different implementation characteristics that could get to that point without what they were describing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And instead of yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, let s find some other way to solve the problem together.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I ve seen this in several companies I ve more closely interacted with, like Tesla is an example.
7
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes, you know, talking about curves, sometimes it s very painful on the engineering side to deliver a very specific kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_00
And one question that comes up in my mind is like, well, how far should we go to try to deliver
7
SPEAKER_00
a tiny adjustment in a curve, in the curvature, or in whatever the form factor is, or the color of the material, when the cost is like 10x to deliver, not financially, but just like in effort, like how many problems to have to solve.
7
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you can say any wisdom to that, because when you re thinking about curves, you re designing in the space of ideas, you re like platonic forms kind of thing.
7
SPEAKER_00
Not always grounded to how much pain is gonna be involved in delivering this, but that s,
7
SPEAKER_00
As you should, perhaps, because then if you re always thinking about the pain required to deliver this thing, you ll be too conservative.
7
SPEAKER_00
You wouldn t do the wild ideas.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right, exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
But you have to understand, again, the why behind it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And at Nest, when we had limited resources,
7
SPEAKER_01
putting a screwdriver in the box, a custom designed screwdriver in the box was born out of those experiences I had at Apple and seeing how you can create something that s emotional.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s part of marketing and it s part of the product experience overall, even though it seems extraneous.
7
SPEAKER_01
I went back and made the design team and the mechanical team change some curves on the Nest Protect, the smoke and CO detector we did at Nest.
7
SPEAKER_01
after they had already tooled it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I said, they re saying this costs more.
7
SPEAKER_01
I said, it doesn t look right.
7
SPEAKER_01
There is a, but they re like, oh, well, we had, I said, no, you re gonna go back and you re gonna make that change.
7
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I told you we needed to do it.
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We had a better looking model.
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That is gonna get done.
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I know it s gonna be a terrible cost to you, but we already had this discussion and that s the way it s gonna have to be.
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And I m sorry, but it is what it is.
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You know, because it s better for the customer and it looks better in the pictures and all the other stuff.
7
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And then we did it and it was great.
7
SPEAKER_01
And everyone agreed it was great at the end, but it was pain to get there.
7
SPEAKER_01
Those are where, those little details are where the magic comes out, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, if you don t do, if you don t take those pains and put in the love, the customer s gonna feel
7
SPEAKER_01
they re either gonna feel the pain or they re gonna feel the love if you put it in, right?
7
SPEAKER_01
So it depends on how much time and effort you wanna put into something and what really matters to you and so how you communicate what you do.
7
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We re human beings after all.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is there something you ve learned from sort of the tensions that are natural or that happen in teams when they re passionate and they re trying to solve these problems?
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SPEAKER_00
Is that the way of life?
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and there s the human drama, is that just, is that always going, is that, it is what it is?
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SPEAKER_00
Does that make you better, actually, the drama, the tension between personalities and all that kind of stuff?
7
SPEAKER_01
Look, a rollercoaster ride without ups and downs is no fun.
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It s the journey.
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It s the journey that brings out the best in everyone.
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We re forged, we re tempered by those experiences, not all the ups.
7
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but also the downs, and that s when you get the humanity and the connection, and we can tell these stories till we re blue in the face and smile every time because we did something together that each of us couldn t do apart, but when it comes together, that s where all the emotions happen, and that s where, if it s born out of the right reasons and the right story and the right way, that s where the magic happens, not just for the customer, but for how it transforms each person who is working on it, and they will never forget those experiences in their life.
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positively and negatively that happened at the time, but they look back and it s only positive because they did something that mattered.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yet another brilliant idea that you brought to life is Nest, Nest thermostats and the big umbrella of Nest.
7
SPEAKER_00
Again, as part of this Netflix series, season three, what was the most memorable, the most painful, the most insight-laden challenge you had to overcome to bring this to life?
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Well, the first thing for me was making someone care about their thermostat.
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No one considers it.
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They never had any customer choice.
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They didn t install it.
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They usually don t even use it because it s so complicated or what have you.
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They bitch at it, they hide it in a corner, and then they just pay the bill, right, of whatever it is, right?
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It s totally unloved, unconsidered, right?
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So how do you wake up, like I said, the virus of doubt, how do you wake that up and get people going,
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you know, remember every day when you go in and it s like, you re just frustrated and then you get the bill and you pay the bill.
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So you have to do that.
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So that was one thing.
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I think the other big one was not delivering, you know, it was, all of it was hard, right?
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It was constrained.
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We had only so much stuff.
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We were bootstrapped.
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We didn t have massive funding.
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We didn t get hundreds of millions of dollars.
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It was, but we did it for the right reasons.
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But I think the other big part of it was not just building a disruptive product because a lot of the people on the team had done that.
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We knew what we were doing and that was,
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If we got the design right, we could deliver it with enough time.
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It was getting the disruptive go to market.
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In other words, how to take that product from the end of the production line and get it into the customer s hands.
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Because there was no retail or customer choice in thermostats.
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No one even, it was never considered purchase.
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They never thought they had choice.
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Some guy, usually in suspenders and a butt crack, told them, looked around, looked at their house and said, this looks like somebody who s got, is well-to-do.
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This thermostat is now gonna cost you $350, thank you very much.
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And you re like, I ll take whatever you give me, right?
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And then, and it goes into another house, it s worth $100, it was the same damn thing, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So there was no price transparency.
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There was no choice.
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You just got what you were given.
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SPEAKER_00
So how do you go, and this was an entrenched industry, that s why there was no innovation in it, because it was doing just fine, because every house needed them.
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SPEAKER_00
All the installers were programmed by the product deliverers by bonuses to say, you re gonna only carry our product, and if you sell this many, you re gonna get a free trip to Hawaii.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right?
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SPEAKER_00
And for these guys who install, I get a free trip to Hawaii, that s dream for them, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
So this whole channel was fully controlled by the product guys, and it was almost monopolistic in a way.
8
SPEAKER_00
So how do you go around that?
8
SPEAKER_00
So creating a disruptive go-to-market channel, one was direct to consumer, right?
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SPEAKER_00
And all the marketing that was necessary to get that message across.
8
SPEAKER_00
Another one was getting the installation right.
8
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No one was self-installing thermostats.
8
SPEAKER_00
So how do we get enough people who are early adopters to be able to self-install them confidently so they didn t still have to call the guy to come and install it because then he would say, this is a crap product.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, I got the must better product, right?
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SPEAKER_00
So you had to get rid of that friction.
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SPEAKER_00
And then ultimately, how do you get the people who were not just early adopters, but people who needed to see it and touch it before they bought it, how do you get that into retail when the large brands of the time of thermostats and Home Depot and Lowe s had contracts that they couldn t bring in any other brands?
8
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they were owning the channel all the way to where there was any sort of slight customer choice.
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And it was really contractor choice more than it was consumer choice.
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SPEAKER_00
So all of that had to be innovated along with the product.
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And so to me, that was a huge challenge and something I had never done, most of us had never done, and we had to create, that was as much as a project as actually delivering the product itself.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it turned out to be a giant hit.
8
SPEAKER_01
And it was acquired by Google for $3.2 billion.
8
SPEAKER_01
As a founder and leader, just out of curiosity, in these cases of acquisition, is it always a good thing?
8
SPEAKER_01
Is there any part of you and the team that considered saying no?
8
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we considered saying no all the way along the process, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
We d all been in big companies before.
8
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Um, we knew what it was like and the politics and all the other stuff and what I came to learn, especially from Phillips.
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Cause Phillips was a very, it was 375,000 people.
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It was a big, it was massive company.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right.
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And tons of politics.
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And I was like, do we want to go back into that world?
8
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Cause I had so many negative experiences from that.
8
SPEAKER_00
But then going to Apple, which was, you know, not big, but it was big enough that it could have all these dynamics.
8
SPEAKER_00
But then when you saw a leader rise up and get rid of those dynamics or not allow many of them to flourish, then you re like, oh, with the right leadership, this can be a beautiful marriage, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And so for four months, we were working together with them, with Google, to make sure that we had the right leadership and we were gonna be in the right environment, that it felt right.
8
SPEAKER_00
So that happened.
8
SPEAKER_00
It absolutely happened.
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SPEAKER_00
We worked on all the details.
8
SPEAKER_00
We didn t even talk about price.
8
SPEAKER_00
We were talking about how s the brand gonna work?
8
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Who s the team gonna work with?
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How are we gonna get IP?
8
SPEAKER_00
How are we gonna do exchanges?
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How are we gonna get budgets and all that stuff done?
8
SPEAKER_00
So we worked through all of that before we actually sealed any kind of deal.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because they were already investor in the company.
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So we already knew, they knew relatively where the end point was for the price.
8
SPEAKER_00
So working through all those prerequisites, I knew that
8
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as a individual product company that was trying to create a platform, no investors were gonna invest in a platform that could take three, four years and many, many hundreds of millions of dollars to build without all kinds of new products at the same time.
8
SPEAKER_00
And products that we were having, which were successes, but they weren t even break even yet, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
We were still developing them.
8
SPEAKER_00
So how are we gonna get more people to fund all of these things and this platform that I really wanna create?
8
SPEAKER_00
Because my worry, and I had seen this many times in Silicon Valley, is these small startups have bravado and they said, I m gonna take on the big guys, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
With a platform.
8
SPEAKER_00
But when those platform guys show up, and Apple says they re gonna get in the, at the time, nobody cared.
8
SPEAKER_00
They were curiously, just curious, what s next, yeah, yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
But Apple wasn t in the market, Google wasn t in the market yet, Amazon wasn t there, Microsoft, Samsung, they were not, they were all just, that s curious, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And I had watched, if you said, I m gonna go challenge them,
8
SPEAKER_00
and I m gonna build a platform, and then they all of a sudden, one by one, go, oh, well, we re building a platform now, we re building a platform.
8
SPEAKER_00
They fudded you to death, fear, uncertainty, doubt, and the developers run away, and you can t make that platform.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I m like, before the landscape gets changed on us, because we ve attracted so much attention, they announce something, we need to change the landscape on them.
8
SPEAKER_00
Let s go to the best place where we can build out the platform, have the right leadership behind us, to help us grow this thing into what the vision it should be.
8
SPEAKER_00
And that s what we believe we were doing with the Google acquisition.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is it possible to take on the platforms?
8
SPEAKER_01
So you said there s a lot of startups with bravado and all that kind of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_01
Right.
8
SPEAKER_01
Doesn t mean, you know, James Joyce, when he was 20, said, I m gonna be the greatest writer of the 20th century.
8
SPEAKER_01
before he wrote anything of value.
8
SPEAKER_01
You know, one of them might be actually right.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, in this modern world, when you, so first of all, people should definitely get your book billed as just this giant number of advice on this exact question of,
8
SPEAKER_01
how to build cool things, how to build a startup, how to, all the different stages of that team and hiring.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s mostly human nature.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s not technical.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s mostly human nature behind it.
8
SPEAKER_01
It turns out it s, you know, turtles all the way down, that s human at the bottom.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes, so.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is it possible to build startups that take on the big guys, whatever that is, of the modern era?
8
SPEAKER_01
So for now, it s these platforms of Apple, Google, Twitter, I don t even know, Meta, I guess, called now.
8
SPEAKER_01
Is it possible to take them on?
8
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
8
SPEAKER_00
But you don t take them on on their same turf.
8
SPEAKER_00
You take them on on the turf they re gonna want to have in the future.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Spotify is a platform.
8
SPEAKER_00
It started as an application, is now a platform.
8
SPEAKER_00
Right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Think of WeChat.
8
SPEAKER_00
Think of all the super apps out there that are now wallets and delivery services and travel services and transportation services all within an app.
8
SPEAKER_00
They ve innovated in a different level, in a different space that the platform companies weren t.
8
SPEAKER_00
Google was an app company.
8
SPEAKER_00
It was solving search.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then it became a platform company.
8
SPEAKER_00
Apple was solving personal computing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Or iPhone was solving internet browsing, all that stuff.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then it became a platform company when the App Store was added.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you look it up,
8
SPEAKER_00
There s no such thing as building a platform company.
8
SPEAKER_00
You build a great app first, and then you can expand it and have the right to become a platform.
8
SPEAKER_01
Your whole book is just a bunch of advice for young people, but let me ask- And older people.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, everyone is young at heart, and if you re not, you should be.
8
SPEAKER_01
In terms of picking a career, you have advice on this point, what advice would you give to a person on how to pick a career?
8
SPEAKER_00
What is it you want to learn?
8
SPEAKER_00
And who is it you want to learn from?
8
SPEAKER_00
Just like you pick a university.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re like, I want to go here for this expertise.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ve heard about these programs, especially a graduate.
8
SPEAKER_00
graduate studies, you go for a certain program with a certain set of people.
8
SPEAKER_00
Why don t you do that when it comes to a job?
8
SPEAKER_00
You just don t go, or in a career, you just don t go and say, I just wanna go work at Google, or I just wanna work at Apple.
8
SPEAKER_00
You wanna go to a certain team with a certain set of people and work with them on something that you re really curious about and you wanna learn about.
8
SPEAKER_01
I just wanted to comment that it s such a, it s a subtle but a brilliant framing of just ask the question, what do I want to learn?
8
SPEAKER_01
And then see what career path is going to maximize that.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s so interesting.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s the first question I ask anyone who interviews with me.
8
SPEAKER_00
When I say I m gonna bring somebody on the team, first question is, what do you wanna learn?
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t want the expert, like we talked about earlier, says, I m the expert in this.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna hire me as the expert.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re doing something new.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re not an expert, because we re not an expert either.
8
SPEAKER_00
What is it you want to learn?
8
SPEAKER_01
On the topic of learning, what is the best way to learn?
8
SPEAKER_01
Starting, you go into this new place, into this new world, into maybe V1, you said you re building V1.
8
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the whole world is late.
8
SPEAKER_01
is full of V1s or V0s waiting for the V1 to come along.
8
SPEAKER_01
Zero to one.
8
SPEAKER_01
Zero to one.
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the process of that look like?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s the process of learning?
8
SPEAKER_00
How do you learn?
8
SPEAKER_00
Well, let me put a framing and then we ll talk about that last piece.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have now, looking back, especially writing this book, I have a version one of myself, a version two, a version three, a version four.
8
SPEAKER_00
I had a lot of opinions.
8
SPEAKER_00
about myself and what I wanted to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
Sometimes those opinions, for certain people, those opinions are formed and they get the data from their parents and they go do what their parents told them to do or their surroundings.
8
SPEAKER_00
My opinions was like, I wanna go and learn this, I m curious about that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I made the zero to one move and then over time, by doing, I was refining those things and learning what I was really curious about and what I was really good about because I was getting data
8
SPEAKER_00
And then I was like, then I had another set of opinions to create version two of me.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then I would go and do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it was learning by doing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Starting with the opinion, you re not gonna get any facts.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, most people are like, where do I make the most money for my position?
8
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to start with data.
8
SPEAKER_00
Start with the why.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s your curiosity?
8
SPEAKER_00
What do you want to learn?
8
SPEAKER_00
And then follow that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I took the lowest job on the totem pole at General Magic, because I wanted to get in there to work with the right team.
8
SPEAKER_00
I didn t even know what they were doing.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I thought that it felt right.
8
SPEAKER_00
I was barely living above the poverty line working there, working 80 hours a week, because it was so amazing to learn, just like a college student, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
That s what I was doing.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then I learned more from that, and then changed those opinions into data, and then I found other opinions.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it s the same thing, but it was by doing, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
The way you find out what you wanna do in life is by figuring out what you don t wanna do.
8
SPEAKER_01
And the only way you find that out is by doing a bunch of stuff.
8
SPEAKER_00
Doing a bunch of stuff and refining it.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s hilarious, yeah, that s brilliant.
8
SPEAKER_01
So in terms of the career path of leaping into the startup world and launching a startup, what does it take to successfully found a startup?
8
SPEAKER_01
To have a chance to succeed?
8
SPEAKER_01
And maybe how do you decide to take that leap?
8
SPEAKER_01
is there sort of having founded, having been part of many V1s, many of some of the most successful V1s ever, what s it take to take that leap?
8
SPEAKER_01
Maybe leave your job, cushy job at a company and do the startup?
8
SPEAKER_00
What does it take?
8
SPEAKER_00
it takes belief in yourself.
8
SPEAKER_00
That s the first thing.
8
SPEAKER_00
Belief that you can do it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Not, but hopefully with mirrors or mentors around you or coaches around you to make sure you know you re not crazy.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a crazy smart idea, but you re not crazy and you re just working on something as like a lone mad man or woman, you know.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have a great idea, and like I said, great ideas chase you.
8
SPEAKER_00
You can, in this world, there are so many people who have more ideas than they have time to implement.
8
SPEAKER_00
I used to be like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
I would like, oh my God, I have this idea, I have this idea, and you try to do all of them.
8
SPEAKER_00
But the best ideas are the ones that you can really focus on, and you shut out all those other things, and you bring them other ideas into the thing you re trying to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I try to run away from a great idea.
8
SPEAKER_00
and then it stalks me.
8
SPEAKER_00
It hunts you down because you re like, ah, that s gonna have this problem, I m gonna put it aside.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then all of a sudden, a few days later, oh, I think I know how to solve that problem, or I talk to somebody, and you re just always kind of niggling around the edges of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And then at some point, it s like, it just becomes, it becomes like this black hole that just sucks you, and you re like, I can t think about anything else but this.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like a relationship in the world, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
you know, when you have it with a person, you find your partner, you know, you re like, hmm, hmm, Wade, hmm, something, and then you re trying to like, and then all of a sudden it just, it comes together, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of like that.
8
SPEAKER_00
Ultimately achieve focus.
8
SPEAKER_00
See, I m different.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just dive right in.
8
SPEAKER_00
I used to do that too.
8
SPEAKER_00
I used to dive right in.
8
SPEAKER_00
But I learned that you need time.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s more effective to run away from it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Run away from it.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so it chases you because it makes you think harder about that story.
8
SPEAKER_00
This is not dating advice.
8
SPEAKER_00
We re talking about stardom.
8
SPEAKER_01
But ultimately, so you have achieved a focus on it.
8
SPEAKER_01
But you also said to believe in yourself.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it s not necessarily even the idea, it s the human.
8
SPEAKER_01
that believe in the human being.
8
SPEAKER_00
You have to believe in yourself and the idea that you have, because if you don t have that belief, then you can t project that to other people to say, join the team.
8
SPEAKER_01
Let me ask you, because you mentioned mentors, and you ve talked about having had incredible mentors in your life.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re also a mentor to a very large number of people.
8
SPEAKER_01
What does it take to find a mentor?
8
SPEAKER_01
How do you find a great mentor?
8
SPEAKER_00
Usually they also find you.
8
SPEAKER_00
Is it like with the ideas?
8
SPEAKER_00
No, no, no.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, what happens is you re in the right, you have a community around you, okay?
8
SPEAKER_00
And because you ve been building a network, because you can t do it alone, so you have to create this network around you of relationships that don t, not transactions, but relationships over time that you really cherish and people you talk to.
8
SPEAKER_00
okay, and you share vulnerable or nascent ideas with, or crazy opinions with, and then you argue them through, but
8
SPEAKER_00
you start to see resonate, and it s not about age.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s just about this connection, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
I have mentors, obviously when I was young, all my mentors were older, and as I get older, I have mentors who are younger than me or the same age, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
They re not all just older, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
And so it s about that connection.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s about being on that same wavelength.
8
SPEAKER_00
But they also, they can counterbalance you.
8
SPEAKER_00
they compliment you in some way.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like my best mentors had nothing to do with technology.
8
SPEAKER_00
They didn t know anything about technology, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
The way we know it.
8
SPEAKER_00
They were all about human nature and they could reflect that and help me get more human focused and more empathetic because I was so detailed in the technology, I needed to see from other perspectives.
8
SPEAKER_00
But then they wanted to learn more about the technology, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Or they thought that this idea was so great that it should exist.
8
SPEAKER_00
Now let s work together on that.
8
SPEAKER_00
So it s really, they have to find you and you have to find them, and that s by sharing.
8
SPEAKER_00
You just don t go and look it up on the internet and say, who are the best men in the world?
8
SPEAKER_00
It just doesn t work that way.
9
SPEAKER_01
and network of people and see where, I mean, it s like finding relationships, finding love, all that kind of friendship.
9
SPEAKER_01
Venture capitalists, money.
9
SPEAKER_01
Do VCs help or hurt a business in general?
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SPEAKER_01
So like in those early stages in the chase of developing a V1, just what s the constructive and destructive power of money in the development of a brilliant idea and the deployment of a brilliant idea?
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I have seen brilliant venture capitalists, I have seen horrible ones.
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Ones that care about their LPs more than they care about the entrepreneurs.
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Of course, everyone s in it, you know, at the end of the day, especially venture capital, they have to give a return to their limited partners, the people who invest in money, that they, you know, that they have to shepherd that money and make sure it s watched over properly.
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but when there s not a balance, a pushback in a venture capitals between what the LP needs and what the entrepreneur needs, and that the entrepreneur might be trying really hard, but if they don t see, the VC doesn t see, the exit s gonna happen in two years, and they just leave them hanging.
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When it s, there s no, the value exchange is only money and not mentorship or ideas or other things.
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when there s not a relationship but really a transaction, that s when money is toxic.
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Because you can get money everywhere.
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Maybe it s a little harder today, you know, over the last month, but you can still find people with money who are on that, who wanna enable your mission and can be mentors.
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not always, not all of them, but some of them can be mentors, but they re on your side, then it s incredibly powerful because it s not just one plus one equals two, right?
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SPEAKER_00
It s something bigger than that because then they can bring their networks of people and their networks of companies and other people they worked with that might want to join your mission, right?
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That s the kind of venture capitalist and smart money that s out there, right?
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But you have to build a relationship.
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SPEAKER_00
People go, oh, look at that valuation.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh, it s the brand name of the VC that s investing in me.
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SPEAKER_00
No, it boils down to who s that partner and how experienced are they?
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Don t just give me the brand, give me the person because that s the person I m gonna be interacting with.
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SPEAKER_01
I have to, there s a million questions I want to ask you, but we re on season five already, but let me ask you, it seems like out of all the brilliant things you write about, it seems like not an important question, but the fascinating one to me is lawyers.
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You write about this, so does a company need lawyers, and why?
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In what kind?
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SPEAKER_01
So you write about sort of the value of this game, I guess.
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It s a game.
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It s a legal game.
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Why do we need lawyers?
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SPEAKER_00
You sound exasperated by lawyers.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t have a good question, I guess.
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SPEAKER_01
The why of lawyers is what you re asking.
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The why of lawyers, yes, exactly.
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SPEAKER_01
Okay, the why of lawyers.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
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SPEAKER_01
You even do the question.
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SPEAKER_00
We just have to put why in front of everything you ask, and then we ll be there.
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Lawyers, why?
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Why?
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Even mafiosos had lawyers.
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Okay?
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You know, Tony Soprano, you know, Scarface, all of them had lawyers, right?
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Why?
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Because there are things in this world that you don t always consider in the government, in laws, in competitors,
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because you re so focused on what you re doing, they have to watch out for you, right?
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Now, the best kind of lawyers are the ones who try to work with you to enable what you re doing and see gray areas.
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Law is not black or white, it s how it s interpreted, right?
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And so they can help interpret things a certain way or help push on things a certain way to get change to happen or allow change to happen.
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SPEAKER_00
Because if you have lawyers who are always, just like you were talking about PR people,
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SPEAKER_00
If you have lawyers who are always saying no to everything, because their job is to really say no or maybe.
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They ll never say yes.
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SPEAKER_01
And you also say, their job is to say no and bill you by the hour.
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Exactly, exactly.
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Depressing.
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Right?
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If you don t wanna know, don t ask them, because you re gonna get a no, maybe a maybe.
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And you ll get charged for it.
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And you ll get charged for it anyways, right?
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SPEAKER_00
So to have a partner, to have them on your team, to help you see maybe some of the things you don t see, some consequences,
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they help to rein that in or change your language.
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Like, are you gonna get sued for this ad?
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Just change this one word and it helps, right?
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So you need to have a partner.
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Most of the times, especially engineers or designers, they see lawyers as only stifling.
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Lawyers can actually, if you do it right and you have the right type, they can actually open up a whole new world for you because of the interpretation and how we go about doing things.
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And they help you not get bogged down in the pain of little mistakes that didn t mean anything.
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Exactly, you shot yourself in the foot and you didn t even know it.
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You didn t even know you were carrying the gun.
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Just to jump around, Charles Bukowski once wrote, find what you love and let it kill you.
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SPEAKER_01
So the question is about work-life balance.
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That s like finding an idea, let it chase you.
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Yes, but a little more aggressive.
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So what does work-life balance look like that maximizes success and or happiness?
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Is there such a thing as work-life balance?
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Can you speak to this?
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When your work is your life, and I mean that in the positive sense, when you re on a mission that really matters,
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and you know that you can really affect not just yourself, but other people s lives, and then that is very rewarding, right?
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That s not work.
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That s, like I said, a mission, right?
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You adopt that.
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But that said, you still need to have boundaries yourself.
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At General Magic, wonderful documentary, if no one s seen it, you gotta see that.
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SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
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SPEAKER_00
I was physically and mentally unhealthy, socially unhealthy as well, because I put every waking minute into this thing.
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every ounce of me into it.
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And when it was a spectacular disaster, we were making the iPhone 15 years too early.
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The bottom fell out.
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I had nothing left.
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I had to get healthy socially, emotionally, physically after that, that trauma.
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I let everything go.
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I learned from that that you have to, even though you might put everything into your work, you need to find balance outside of it.
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Now, that doesn t mean you re always, you know,
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It s three days a week working and four days a week or whatever it was.
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You re still working as hard as ever, but what you re doing is you re making sure when your thinking time is during work, that you re not ruminating at three in the morning.
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You use the tools that you have to put those ideas into databases or on pages or somewhere else so you can go back and look at them.
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So you re not always having to remember, because what happens is most people don t write this stuff down.
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So they just sit here, I gotta remember this, I gotta remember this, I gotta remember this.
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If you just put it into the tools, and you can come back to it, you can come back fresh.
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A lot of the time is about ruminating about what I need to get done, and remembering everything, instead of doing the work.
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That s fascinating.
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So if you just put it down on paper, you can actually escape it.
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Escape it for a time, to have peace for a time.
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You mentioned,
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General Magic, let me ask you the Russian question.
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What s been the darkest moments of your life?
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Where are some of the darkest places you ve gone in your mind?
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You ve talked about if you re doing these kinds of things with startups, you re gonna have to face a crisis.
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If you re doing it right, you re gonna face it.
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So for you personally, where were some of the tough,
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tougher moments in your life?
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Growing up, I went to 12 schools in 15 years.
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I was always the new kid.
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put yourself in those shoes, right?
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You picked on?
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Well, absolutely, but even more so, I was the geek with the computer.
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Remember the nerds in the 80s?
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You probably don t know this, but believe me, we were made fun of.
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What were these computers?
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What were these things?
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You re off in a cold, they re all off partying or going whatever it was, and I m sitting there like, and they re like, this guy is just this alien.
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Right?
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Who s this new guy who just showed up and and then, you know, you would ask the smart questions and you couldn t be the smartest in the because then you get picked on, too.
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So it s and you re the new kid.
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So you re in this environment that s ever changing.
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You don t fit in and you are just asking questions because you think they re the right questions to answer.
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But then they like you re making us look bad.
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Don t ask these smart questions.
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You make us do more work.
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So right there.
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It s pretty tough.
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And I m moving cities, right?
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And I didn t have the internet to stay connected to people.
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There was no internet.
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Phone calls were $2 a minute.
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So it was lonely too.
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It was lonely, right?
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Right?
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I was a latchkey kid.
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I had my brother, but he was a skateboarder, and he had a different social way of working.
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He loved to do that stuff and be outside.
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I loved the computer.
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So even in the computer, you were alone in the family.
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With the computer in the family, you were alone.
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SPEAKER_00
I was absolutely alone.
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That was just me, but then...
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Then you could find the other geeks, right?
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But there were just a few of us and we made this little thing.
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But then when you moved away, you know, then I had to use a BBS, a bulletin board system and a dial-up modem.
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And then I started hacking the phone system to get free codes on MCI and Sprint.
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back in the day, to get long distance, to get free coats, to call my friends, the geeks on the other side, right?
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Or to dial into a BBS cheaply that was in another part of the world.
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So this was this subculture, and that was not accepted in any way, and not the heroes that you see today that are on the, you know, the richest people in the world and everything.
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So that was the first set of trauma.
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And then the next one really was general magic.
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you know, the end of that, like I described before, and pulling yourself out and going just because I got so insular in that world of geeking out and building stuff that I just tore all the social ties, right?
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Because it was just it was a drug.
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SPEAKER_00
I was hooked on that.
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I was a junkie.
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I had to get clean.
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Yeah.
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And that made you who you are.
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Tempered.
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So Steve Jobs is no longer with us.
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One day you also will no longer be with us.
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That s the thing about this life, it ends.
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So no matter how many incredible things you brought to this world, no matter how many inventions you built, you too shall perish.
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Do you think about this?
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Are you afraid of your death?
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I am not afraid of my death.
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I am an atheist, and I think about the soul.
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Because I do, even though I m an atheist, I think about the soul.
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And the soul is the thing that you instill in others when you go that lives on.
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It s not this thing that s magically in space.
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It s the thing that you ve imparted onto people that you worked with and those relationships you ve had.
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And that soul lives on in the stories that they tell.
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Right?
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And through Build, I m hopeful that those stories stay relevant because they re human nature.
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They re not about who knows what the next iPhone thing is or the next iPod thing is.
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The stuff that I have been able, the privilege to make and work with people, those are all ephemeral.
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The iPod s gone now, right?
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This week, it was announced, iPod s dead after 21 years.
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It is that, those human connections.
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It s that growth that you ve helped someone just like they helped me.
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Just like Bill Campbell or Steve Jobs is gone, but they made me be better.
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That s the soul that I believe in.
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That s fascinating that you say that.
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Yeah, so many of these products, I mean, to push back a little bit, so even though the iPod is an end of an era,
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using it every day.
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I think that, I mean, the number of people that impact it, it s just, so I suppose the soul is carried by the people.
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Exactly.
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Sometimes the products you create is sort of the transport mechanism.
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It s the vessel.
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It s the vessel.
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And they felt the love, and they felt that love, and it transformed them, even if they don t have the vessel anymore.
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Yeah.
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And in that way, the soul lives on.
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Just like the body is the vessel.
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SPEAKER_01
That s beautifully put.
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Why do you think we re here?
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What s the meaning of life, Tony?
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We re going all around.
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Meaning of life?
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Why?
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Why?
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Because you said it s important to have a press release.
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If humanity, if life on Earth, if this thing, the consciousness, the falling in love and building bridges and iPods and rockets and trying to extend out into the cosmos, why?
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Why do you think we re doing it?
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Is there any meaning to it?
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Because we are naturally curious.
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We are naturally curious individuals, and we are always looking for meaning.
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We re always trying to ascribe meaning to something, or understanding of something, right?
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And through that, it s just like evolution, right, and Darwinism.
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It s just that thing that s baked into our being at the most fundamental level.
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Driven by curiosity.
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Driven by curiosity.
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and creating some pretty cool things along the way.
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Tony, you, and speaking of cool things, you ve created some of the coolest things ever.
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And on top of that, you re just an amazing human being, and it s a huge honor that you would sit and talk to me today.
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This is fun.
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SPEAKER_00
Lex, this is great.
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I didn t know where we was going, and I m, let s talk, I m looking for seats.
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I would love to.
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Seven, eight, nine.
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Six, seven, yes.
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Let s go hang out and have dinner and just rap about all kinds of, I d love to continue this.
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I would too.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you so much, Tony.
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This is beautiful.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation with Tony Fadell.
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SPEAKER_01
To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
9
SPEAKER_01
And now, let me leave you with some words from Tony Fadell himself.
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The most wonderful part of building something together with a team is that you re walking side by side with other people.
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You re all looking at your feet and scanning the horizon at the same time.
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Some people will see things you can t and you will see things that are invisible to everyone else.
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So don t think doing the work just means locking yourself into a room.
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A huge part of it is walking with your team.
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The work is reaching your destination together or finding a new destination and bringing the team with you.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
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