Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Tony Fadell and “Build”

Nilay Patel:

Tony’s written a new book called Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making, which, I’ll be honest, is total bait for Decoder. It’s one part memoir, one part tech industry gossip, and one part org charts and decision-making. Seriously, this book has a lengthy section with actual diagrams of org charts to illustrate how company cultures change as things get bigger.

Tony Fadell (via Jason Snell):

Steve didn’t just read a script for the presentation. He’d been telling a version of that same story every single day for months and months during development—to us, to his friends, his family. He was constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he’d get a puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting early audience, he’d sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it was perfectly polished.

It was the story of the product. And it drove what we built.

If part of the story didn’t work, then part of the product wasn’t going to work, either, and would need to be changed.

1 Comment RSS · Twitter

No wonder why the product from his era and now differ so much.

Leave a Comment