'Build' With Tony Fadell (The iPhone, Better Watches, and His New Book)¶
Published on Sun, 12 Jun 2022 12:00:00 +0000
Inside his new book, what innovation looks like in the watch market, and so much more.
Synopsis¶
In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, hosts James Stacy and Jack Forster welcome Tony Fadell, the inventor behind the iPod, iPhone, and Nest thermostat. The conversation centers around Fadell's new book "Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making," a New York Times bestseller whose proceeds benefit the Build Climate Fund. The book serves as both a mentorship guide and a tribute to the mentors who shaped Fadell's career.
The discussion explores the book's central themes, including the importance of understanding human nature over chasing technological change, the value of failure as a learning tool, and the critical need for storytelling in product development. Fadell emphasizes that successful products require a clear narrative from the beginning—similar to how films start with a treatment—rather than bolting technologies together and calling in marketing at the end. He discusses his concept of "painkillers versus vitamins," arguing that truly successful products solve real problems rather than offering nice-to-have features.
The conversation naturally weaves in Fadell's passion for watches, discussing how his appreciation has evolved over the years and deepened through exposure to Hodinkee's coverage. He celebrates the completion of his book by acquiring two special watches: a Patek Philippe 5740 and a new-old-stock Rolex. Fadell draws parallels between watchmaking innovation and technology, noting how both fields benefit from creators who challenge orthodoxy while respecting fundamental human needs. The episode concludes with Fadell discussing his current investment focus on climate solutions, mobility innovations, and companies like Impossible Foods and Diamond Foundry that aim to disrupt established industries for environmental and ethical benefits.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| James Stacy | This episode of Hodinky Radio is proudly brought to you by Hodinky Insurance. It's the fastest, easiest way to insure the watches you love. Get your quote now at Hodinky.com/slash insurance. Hey, it's me, James Stacy, and this week J,ack and I are joined by an extra special guest, Tony Fidel. In the event that name doesn't ring a bell, Tony is the man behind the iPod, the iPhone, and the NES thermostat, to name only a few highlights from a truly remarkable career. He recently wrote a book called Build, an unorthodox guide to making things worth making, and it reads like a patient mentorship in creating special new things and then supporting the many aspects of business that come from such a creation. It's a New York Times bestseller, and all the proceeds from the sale of the book are going to the Build Climate Fund, an investment fund for companies that Tony believes will help solve the climate crisis. Apart from his work in Silicon Valley, Tony is a hodinky investor and a true watch enthusiast. So we get into everything from aspects of the book to the evolution of his taste in watches, and even the watch themed way in which he celebrated the release of Build. This was such a fun chat, so let's get to This is a real pleasure, a fun way to start an episode of Hodinky Radio. Tony Fidel. Well, welcome to the show. What a treat |
| Tony Fadell | . Hey, James, Jack, it's so awesome to always talk to you guys. It's always fun. And you know, I get to combine like hanging out with you guys and talking about my favorite stuff, which is watches and products. So let's have at it. Let's see where we can |
| James Stacy | go. All right. So we've already done a little bit of an intro. Obviously, you've got a great new book out. I uh really enjoyed it. I know Jack did as well. And I wanna get into some topics of the book. Obviously we've got to touch on watches and and and other sort of fascinations that that hit home for you these days. Sure. The thing that really struck me about the book, and I think this is it's it might be a weird place to start, but it is where I wanna start, which is kind of right in the middle of the the bulk of the of the book where you mentioned not really liking the term thoughtful. And that could have just been the way that it was used for you. I I found this really interesting because Build really hit me as a sort of long-form essay about being thoughtful, about seeing all the stuff that people tend to miss. Right. And that you maybe missed at one point in your life or otherwise. The book really reads like really warm, compassionate advice, generally. Does the word thoughtful still remain kind of annoying to you or or can it be encapsulated helpfully and maybe not in the context of the Google to alphabet sort of stuff. Yeah. So |
| Tony Fadell | let's get into that. So look, I love that word thoughtful. You know, I think you're right on that. And and and and tr iied to make the book as as thoughtful as i could and meaningful for so many people because you know i i i want to help right it's this is really about honoring my mentors and the things that they taught me. And so I think you dove onto a part of the book that most people don't even mention yet, which is that thoughtful comment. That's such a great word that's used kind of callously. Is abused, I get callously or abused. You know, that's when it kind of goes. So I every time I think about either writing thoughtful or using the term thoughtful, I think twice about it because it really has that, you know, like, oh, it's like a PTSD moment when I hear it. But I I just wanna make sure that people understand that not always the language that they use is what they actually mean. And so, and we I think we know that. But when it comes to some such a nice word like thoughtful, and it's see it bastardized the way it was, it still gives me pause. I think give me five more years and I'll be able to get past it and use it again |
| Jack Forster | without without an issue. So Tony, would you say that the problem with the word thought I mean the reason for your reaction against the word thoughtful, it's a reaction against not what it actually means, but it but against its deployment as a cliche and as in fact a cover for thoughtlessness in communication. |
| Tony Fadell | Exactly. When it's used exactly in the opposite direction, just to say, you know, to make it sound like you've gone and done a lot of work before coming up with the decision when you know that is not the case, right? When people really are thoughtful, that is the only reason why it should be used. But I use it right now because too many people who were using it in the, you know, to c |
| James Stacy | over up their thoughtlessness Right. You know, I'm I'm curious. Uh obviously the book is about making things and the struggles they're in and and some advice, uh really a lot of advice, very um kind of specific advice that you've had based on your experiences. For a book that's about creation, I find it interesting that in the first line of the book you start on death. You know, that a lot of your mentors have come and are now gone. Was that sort of like an intention, an absolute like an intentional thematic something has to die for something to start or everything eventually comes to an end even making stuff. Everything eventually |
| Tony Fadell | comes to an end. And that you have to understand that you're going to have different phases of your life. Okay. And so for me, the whole book was born out of honoring my mentors and saying the only reason I'm sitting here talking to you and being able to have this wonderful world of watches and all these things that I get to play with is because I worked hard for sure, you know, and it brought a lot to the table. But these mentors, these people along the route, without any financial gain, saw something in me or something in the ideas or things I was working on and said they wanted to help. And were, you know, and and and these were different various part points of my life. And you know, when you think about those people and you say, oh, most of them have died, oh well, maybe now it's my turn to be the mentor, right? And maybe it's time to give back the way I was given to and try to do it at scale. And that's what the book's really about. So sure, look, all creations die at some point. You know, that's the natural arc of life, right? Even with things that are inanimate that we create as humans for other humans. And so it's just we should embrace that. We should understand that we |
| James Stacy | go through these, these, these arcs. Right. And it's worth remembering that the the best touch points of each of those arcs, I guess. Exactly |
| Jack Forster | . is build and then the the subhead is an un an unorthodox guide to making things worth making. And there's obviously so so first of all, this is not a one of the things that surprised me when I read it was this is not kind of s uh you know um uh a manual for managers per se. There's a very focused specific goal, which is like how do you actually go from having what you think is a cool idea to making something that actually is a cool thing. And once it's a cool thing, how do you get it outside how do you get it out there? And um the word that struck me was uh in the title was the word unorthodox. So there's lots of there's there's a ton of, I mean, you know, uh if you read every book written by a successful manager on how to be a successful manager, uh, you know, you you could be a thousand years old and and not get through all of them. But this this doesn't feel like that kind of a book, and I was wondering how you kind of connect the word unorthodox to your own projects, both as a, both as a watch collector and watch designer and as a person who just has spent his life doing this, building cool stuff. Like |
| Tony Fadell | what does anorthodox mean? So to me, there's there's really two forms of it and so unorthodox and the reason for the book we're using it for the book is that I come from the world of technology technology the orthodoxy of technology is that everything has to change all the time. Technology keeps moving and so everything needs to change as the technology changes and life and and and our and the things we use evolve because of that or you know, or or re evolve because of that. And so the book is counter to that orthodoxy of change. It's unorthodox because it's all about human nature. And as you said already, human nature doesn't change. Whether we wrote a book about, you know, build being set in a thousand years ago or 1500 years ago or 200 years ago, human nature doesn't change. And so this is unorthodox because it's really runs counter to the world of tech and maybe a lot of tech business ideas of like we should change the way we do management and this we should do the change the way we do reviews of people, personnel reviews or how we hire. You know, those are all interesting, but typically, whenever it comes down to human nature, those changes don't really apply. You go back to the fundamentals. And so that's what's unorthodox about the book. That said, when it comes to building things and to creating things, you want to be unorthodox because you don't want to just use the way you know, do the same things everyone else has been doing, make an evolutionary, uh, an evolutionary product. You want to make a revolutionary product. And so that needs to be a total different take. You might use the same human nature skills to make something, but you want to get something very unorthodox to what's out there today. And even in the in the format of the book, it took about nine months to get the format of the book right. It's not it, you know, you you may have seen it doesn't read like a linear book, and there was a, it's supposed to be an encyclopedia mentorship, small five to seven, nine page chapters that allow people to drop in, get in, get in, get out, like for the TikTok generation, you know, short attention span. But it does like try to hit home. Right. And so it's also unorthodox because it's not a standard book, the way you know her. And it's supposed to be much more of an encyclop |
| James Stacy | edia. The other thing that I think people might be surprised about is it's not a love letter to the tyrants of Silicon Valley, which is very common the style of book that comes out of Silicon Valley. It's sure these people were terrible, but look at the amazing things they did or they were really hard to work with, but again, look at the amazing and all the money they made and the rest of it. And I thought it was pretty refreshing that you took um sort of a stance on highlighting some of the questionable behavior or the the the nebulous sort of the stuff that's just tied to personality and saying but it wasn't just personality it was the you saw the tip of an iceberg and everything under the water was all of the thoughtfulness, the consideration, the data versus the gut, all of that kind of stuff. And uh I I'm I don't r necessarily have a question to tie to that, only I've read so many books about the history of web one and web two. It was w weird to see one that that saw uh more of the human side of some of these um these sort of icons from the space, yourself included, really. Thank you |
| Tony Fadell | , young Padawan. No, seriously, you know, you're actually you're you're touching on those things that I really wanted to bring out in the book, which is how do people work together? How do you build stuff together? How do you imagine things that the world's never seen together? And there's all kinds of dynamics inside of that. And I wanted to, through tearing apart the background of the iPod or, you know, the iPhone nest, what have you trying to get people inside and and and get a sense of it because it's you know that it looks like a black black box to most people and it's really just humans working together and like you too can change the world. We were able to do it at Apple, but we were also able to do it at Nest all our own way, without necessarily the brand of Apple or Steve behind it. You can do that too. And that's what's so what's so amazing. And we see this with watch brands, right? We see incredible watch brands coming out from creators who decide to work in a new way with a new set of ideas and a new team, new technologies, and they can now shock and stun the world. They don't all have to be the biggest brands in the world to be able to bring innovation. And that's what I love so much about those, you know, the awards for the new latest and greatest up-and-coming watchmakers, right? You're just like, oh, it's wonderful. And it's we don't see enough of that, frankly, in in uh in other businesses. And it's really nice that the artisan and creator component in the watch world is actually highlighted by those powers it be in some cases, |
| Jack Forster | right? You have there's a very interesting polarity, and this sort of gets back to the question of um you know what it what it means to be unorthodox. You said unlu unorthodoxy in the tech world means to recognize that there are consistencies in human thought patterns of behavior and the way we relate to each other, which really don't change, which really are not subject to disruption. And if you you i you ignore those things at your peril. And both in terms of how you build a collection and in terms of how you design a watch, on the one hand, we have people uh and brands like um you know MBNF and Resence who are doing stuff that really is very, very far outside the orthodoxy of fine watchmaking. On the other hand, there's a very, very strong current of um adherence to design orthodoxy in not only in watch making and in watch design where traditional where tradition is some people might say uh overvalued to the detriment of watch making. Right. So both as a a collector and as somebody who, you know, has a keen eye for watch design and has been seeing how watch design evolves over the last thirty years. How do you think this uh uh orthodoxy of conservatism and adherence to tradition balances against the need for us to uh encourage innovation? Right. I it's a |
| Tony Fadell | great question. And and um I think the last time we talked, we talked a little bit about this as well, Jack. And uh the way I the way I see this is that we need both. Okay. We're gonna have traditionalists and everyone's like, I can only buy vintage and it can only be this certain way. And that's one person's way they develop a collection. There's another one, which is crazy orthodox unorthodox kind of things like you brought up MBNF, Ressance, these kinds of things where you go, okay, I want that stuff. And and it means both can both can live. It's just how do you approach it? Like one one says, oh, I'm going to only be in this more traditional line of things. Okay, that works for you. But that does allow, and that's what's so great, it allows the small brands to come up that have challenged your ideas to come up and allow that. It's the same thing in technology. People stick with their their lanes and then new things come up and then people might start copying it or what have you because they're like, oh, this is taking uh real business interests. So I think that's just the natural, you know, the natural order of things. I don't care whether that's the finance industry, the watch industry, the consumer electronics industry, it's all very similar in that regard, is that where there's an unserved need and new technologies that the incumbents don't want to embrace, that's the perfect place for those creators to thrive. Now, when it comes to collections, this goes right to the book. Are you data driven or are you opinion driven? Right? Some people are very opinionated in terms of how they build their collection because for me, I'm not all vintage. I'm not all modern. I'm I am always looking for some specific things in terms of the technology plus the design in a full package. Whereas other people are looking for provenance and they want to make sure they get the data-driven decision so that at the next auction, I'm going to have something that's more valuable. I don't know which is a better way of approaching it. I know what I like, which is, you know, going to to to going and finding odd things that are I believe resonate with me and will be valuable longer term. You're buying like artists that are undiscovered versus you know buying that thing at Christie's or whatever it is, it's like, oh, there's a provenance and I know kind of how that goes, but we always know that the markets can slide too. I look at investments because this is a lifestyle thing. And I look at this as what I care about when I'm telling the story about what's on my wrist and why. If I'm telling a story about what I can talk about the insides and the design and the designer and get to know the insides of why it was made the way it was. That's what I love because I love the stories behind and the people behind it. If I'm just talking about numbers and like the last auction was this and the last auction was that like whatever. Let's like just being a stock trader on Wall |
| James Stacy | Street. Right. Do you think that watch making in general or or watch marketing has a storytelling problem? They're treating it as commodities |
| Tony Fadell | . When you look at something like some of the very well-known brands, they are more or less the same as they have been for twenty, thirty years. I'm now of course I'm I'm not trying to denigrate anyone but if you look at it it's like kind of the same look and feel right and then we you have to get into the you know to me this this what we call speeds and feeds how much memory how fast is it all it's all those esoteric little details, right? So that's one thing. But I do think that there's this whole other thing, which is that storytelling that is, you know, the first one of a kind of a certain type of model, not just another colorway but true innovation and then the other stuff's built off of it yeah I just I I think that the marketing needs to tell more of those stories tell more stories about the creators the artists, the people behind it to bring that humanity into that as opposed to just talking about the bits. You know, I love the behind the scenes, I love the behind the scenes stories. I think what we need to talk more about is the why, not just the oh, I'm rich and I have this thing on my hand, you know, and get the girl or hand it down to my kids or whatever that is. It's just like it only to go so far for so many years, and it' justs you know, re,playing the same |
| Jack Forster | shtick over and over. Well, I mean, speaking of replaying the same shtick, I mean, you know, it's and speaking as a a a watch enthusiast and wa and watch writer who's uh as guilty of this as anyone, I mean, you know, forget about the brands. I mean, on the uh enthusiast communication side, we don't have a ton of creative narratives, right? I mean, it's kind of the same five things over and over again. What are those five things? Oh gosh. Um I inherited this wonderful uh watch from my father or mother. Here's how much it means to me. I hope to pass it on. Um in the future. I got something that uh is really hard to get or that nobody else can get. Uh sure, yeah.. R Rararityity. So uh you know this this is an incredible flex. Yeah that's that's that's number two. Um there's the uh there's there's the craft story, hey you know for the hundred millionth time I'm gonna this is this is what I mean when I say I'm gonna I'm as guilty of this as anyone. Hey, here's this uh amazing bevel that's been created on this movement. And I'm gonna tell you for the hundred millionth time uh um just how amazing it is, which is not to say that it's not amazing, but uh the argument for something being luxurious just because it's really hard for someone to do with a lot of training full stop. I feel like that doesn't go far enough. Um what else |
| James Stacy | ? Well, there's also a t what like uh like cult culturally attached provenance. This watch went to the moon, but like yours didn't. It just looks like or this one went to the bottom of the ocean, or right? Like I I'm not saying that's bad. It's clearly a great way to sell watches. Huge, really. Um and and it's also deeply fun from an emotional standpoint to be able to connect like that. But it is a it is a cliche, a move, a play. I |
| Tony Fadell | always love, and this is why I love talking watches, right? Because then we get into those opinion-based, you know, uh, you know, collectors who like, I like this for this reason and this reason. And so you can see it from you from their eyes. We get to see, and it's great to hear from, you know, get it from your eyes, Jack and James and the whole whole Dinky team, because but you have a certain set of of ways doing it, but it becomes much more personal stories, you know, because it they really bought it and they collected it and they're just like this is the thing. And I would never give this up for this reason. Like, you know, uh to me, I love that personal side of things. And that's what I always say is I ask people, why did you decide to build this company this way or this product this way? Like to me, I want to hear about all that stuff. I want to hear why they decided at a company to make this version of the device. What did they rule out? Right? Right, exactly. What did they rule out? And this is the thing that was the best thing. Then you understand more about the process and you get inside their heads and go, oh, I love that. And then what happens is the people who buy it, they retell those stories. And that's the best kind of word of mouth. Is when you and this is why we I always love to go behind the scenes of the design and talk about it because when you give people the superpower of looking at something with a designer's eye and why this and why not that, they feel like they have enough of the lingo that they can retell those stories. And then they're part of the brand, they're part of the message, and that they want to tell that. And that even and if they really are empowered, they'll go and buy it, right? And they go, and then they want to tell about that story all the time, just like with me in uh Recence. Like I love telling the story and how it's gone from that to a much bigger story from the time I first saw my the first type three, where it's a relationshi |
| James Stacy | p, not a transaction. That's what I care about. Absolutely. You know, I'm a big fan of Tim Ferris, and I know that you did an episode four build, which I've been sitting on because I I didn't I didn't just parrot his questions to you. You know, I think the first time you were on, you talked about how a big challenge ahead of you was long form writing, if I remember that that conversation I listened to it maybe six weeks ago again. Uh how did you approach the book and and did you assign kind of a special watch to to wear while you while you took on the task. I did assign a special watch when I got d |
| Tony Fadell | one. Okay, there you go. But uh no, so the task literally it started with, oh God. It was that pit of your stomach, like I just committed to something. I'd spent 15 years thinking about it. Right. And then finally bit the bullet on that. Only it only after I knew that the person, Dina Levinsky, who we wrote short form together at Nest. So we wrote all the short form content at Nest. And she and I, over three years, she found my voice and we really worked hard together on it. Only when I knew she was available and we could work together on would I do a book? I would I dare do a book. So thinking about it for 15 years, about the structure, what the content would be, knowing that the right co-writer was there to work alongside me that we trusted each other and we had gone through some of the same you know uh trials by fire together so that she could help you know crisp in the language and really understand and add in a lot of the details. So all of that stuff happened over time. And yeah, it was a challenge, you know, to go back and forth. And a lot of times she and I didn't see eye to eye in some chapters. And like the assholes chapter took eight times to rewrite. It's a great chapter. Thank you. Wonderful thank you as well. Thank you. Um and so so uh we had to, you know, so we we wrestled that down. But you know, over the time, as we got through about I'd say 12 months, then it started to click because we knew what it was we were doing. It was like, okay, bam, bam, bam. You know, we had to we and we had too much content and throw away a bunch of content. And I think the other part part uh was that was a problem for me is knowing when we're done because i you know obviously mechanical watches they don't get to get updated in the field okay but most of the things that i get to do, get I to update them in the field in some way. This wasn't that way. So this was much more of a mechanical watch for me. But at the end of the book, and and I just celebrate at the beginning of the month, I got myself a I got myself actually two watches to celebrate the end of the book. Uh some you can share with us or some you prefer to keep more more secret? Sure, I can sh I can share it. Uh you know, I got a a Patek 5740. So I got a paddock 5740. Uh that was a really that's been something uh that I've wanted for a long time. And the other thing was I actually came to the Hodinki offices and you guys wrote about it, which is that very special new old stock Rolex. Right. And so those two things were like kind of like ta-da. Cause I've always, you know, I've always loved Rolexes, but I haven't been a very big collector. But that was something that was so special that I had to have them. Absolutely. So those two things came together. I literally on the same day. Oh wow. Wow, that's quite a day. Yeah, yeah. On the same day, I got that two watches on the same day. I was like, okay. Now I can feel good, you know, and I like celebrate and I have some besides having a book, I have a I have something I take with me everywh |
| James Stacy | ere. Okay. It's time for our ad break. And anyone who has ever bought themselves a nice watch and then tried to add it to an insurance policy will know just how big a hassle it can be to get your watch insured. You need receipts, an appraisal, a pile of photos, and lots of patience just to get your watch properly protected. Frankly, it sucks. So we decided to make something better. Hodinki Insurance is the fastest, easiest way to ensure the watches you love. Get your quote now at hodinky.com/slash insurance. You know, in in reading the book and then even in seeing that uh Apple has now discontinued the iPod, do you feel and and even your appreciation for watches? I read the book and I can't quite get a concept for it. Do you feel that you're a sentimental person? I |
| Tony Fadell | am in a way, yes, absolutely. You know, I think back fondly on a lot of things, and so absolutely, you know, the whole book uh looking back for my mentors and what they taught me of course i wanted to to bring that out i didn't want to have it overly emotional in the book right but yeah no absolutely i i i i hold attachment to a lot of things you know it's hard to hard to sell certain watches, you know. Well we've all been there. Right. It's like, no, I can't sell that. But then there's other things where you know that time has come and passed and I don't go back. You know, I lived in a certain house my first house, whatever. I've never gone back. I've never looked to go to the outside. I just won't. It was like that was a moment in time. Yeah. I remember it that way. I'm not going back. Right. So I have these kind of things. It's just like I remember the memories of what I had then and that's it. Like I hold those memories dear and I and I I did hope to communicate them in such a way |
| James Stacy | that they weren't too sappy in the book. For sure. No, I I that's why I kind of couldn't get a full feeling on it if you feel very strongly about the people that you've spent time with, but it almost seems like you're really able to disconnect from a product when you're finished with it or a job when you're finished with it or something like that. And it becomes something you learned from and now you're on to the next thing. Yeah, absolutely. You can't be too |
| Tony Fadell | wetted on that thing, especially in technology, because I was with the Apple II. You know, I had my Apple II and I saw the Apple II die. You know, and I tried I actually tried to keep it alive. I actually created a company with another guy and we made processors to the Apple too to make it run fast. Right. Right. So I just like, I don't want that thing to die. And then it's sooner or later I learned like this is, you know, exercise and futility. It's not just about the love. And so, you know, we have to move on. And that was my my my I guess |
| Jack Forster | my way of learning that. For sure. I mean one of the things that I took away from the book um and from the many years that it took you to get some of uh some v final version of what turned out to be very successful products off the ground is um it's very hard to know when to quit, right? I mean it's hard to know when you're just uh throwing good money after bad and good resources after bad and and and it can be a beautiful idea. The um there's a a device that you talk about um you know it's right at the beginning of the first chapter, Build Yourself, uh, where you say, I tried to build the iPhone twice. There's a drawing uh from 1989 by a guy uh named Mark Porrett. Am I pronouncing his name right? Yeah, uh Mark Purrat. Mark Mark Pratt Purrett. And uh it's uh it's it's called um uh the the crystal. Pocket crystal. Pocket crystal. And it's this um you know, even from the drawing, you just get a f feeling for, you know kind of what the objective was. I mean it's this beautiful talismanic object that you know even when it's turned off it feels precious, it looks precious, it's something that even if you're not using it, but it didn't pan out. And for a while I was a huge fan of uh Vertu uh cell phones. And they were, you know, kind of the and I mean the signature s I think is still to this day I think it's one of the most beautiful industrial objects anybody's ever designed. But it was just not going to work. Like that idea wasn't going to work. It was it was old before the first one ever hit the shelves. Right. And the the the something that really fascinates me is like obviously you have to lean into a project to make it work, but like, you know, it it do you develop an instinct for when it's time to um when it's time to move on? Is it does does it have to go all the way to commercial failure or can you sense a little bit earlier that maybe you're trying to do something that technology is not ready for, the world's not ready for |
| Tony Fadell | . You're right. It's a great question. And so this is what I learned at General Magic, right? As you were talking about the pocket crystal. The vision was right. The technology wasn't right at that point. The society wasn't right yet. It didn't know it had those problems yet. And so I look at it this way. You know, watches are different, but let's talk about electronic objects or things that are kind of advancing our civilization in a way. And so when I look at at most technology products, what people do is they come and take this technology, this technology, this technology, and they bolt it all together and they go, isn't that cool? And they're impressing the other geeks around them. And then they go and develop it. And then near the end they go call in marketing. Marketing, tell a story, come and tell give us a story for how we're going to sell this thing. And then marketing starts, who's this for why does it exist who are the competitors what's the market space blah blah blah blah blah and all of a sudden everyone's like looking at them going no it's cool what do you mean just do it and it's like uh it doesn't work and so so if you don't have a really concise story when you start, it's gonna come out garbage at the end. So let me give you a counterexample. When you create a movie, what do you start with? You start with a treatment. And that treatment has the act you know the uh the the different characters the the audience the settings the story arc the different you know the different uh chapters or acts in the whole thing outlines the budget everything. Then you create a script and then you produce off that script and you might change things slightly over time. And then you go and you add some music and graphics and all this stuff and you create a story. But that story more or less is along the lines of the treatment and the script that was written many months before and then you could put them together and say oh okay they make sense what i advocate is that everyone make a and this is what we did and even did for the book, create a press release before you get started, which is the treatment, which is the audience, the prize, the what are the key reasons why it should be there, what are all the different messages and all that stuff. And then use that as the guiding line to see if that's going to work. And sometimes you come up and go, oh, we can't do this because the technology is not right. Or society isn't ready to accept it. Like in the case of General Magic, nobody had email in 1992. Downloadable games. What are downloadable games? And what do you mean? Music on the go? And what about you know, buying tickets, right? And emojis. Like we had emojis back then, animated emojis |
| Jack Forster | . Oh my God. There's a there's a hilarious anecdote in the book about a lemon emoji. And then somebody from somebody from marketing saw it and you were like, this is the coolest thing ever. And they were like, I don't care about the lemon |
| Tony Fadell | . I just wanted to do something for me. Exactly. And so what you have to do is you have to really understand what it is and who you're making it for. And then you can start to see along the route if you're going to be able to deliver on that. Like if we would have said a wireless communicator when there was no wireless network there was no wi-fi even at the time right you're right these are the kind of things where you like people go why do you need this so you have to make sure that even if it's a great vision, when does technology and society line up with your ability to deliver on that vision? It's not always the latest and greatest crazy technology, if society doesn't know the problems you're trying to solve and they don't have those problems, at least some fraction of the tech uh of the population really understands it and resonates with, you're not going to get anywhere. You gotta, you gotta, you gotta solve pain you have to bring painkillers for the pain not vitamins that people may or may not need. Bring painkillers for the pain and hopefully those painkillers are also um are superpowers you're bringing superpowers to people. That's when you're like it's all there. Of course, 15 years later, instead of general magic in the early 90s, 15 years later, there was the internet. People understood browsing, but they wanted to do it on the go. They understood communications and messaging and and emojis and you know email and they also understood all the music a thousand songs in their pocket at least right they started all that stuff and they said wait a second I want all that stuff in one device because that's a pain because I have to carry my mobile phone and my iPod my and my laptop and my iPod, right, to get all that same experience. So you gotta you have to make |
| James Stacy | sure you get the timing right for sure. Yeah. That makes sense. And uh in the book, you you just mentioned um vitamins versus painkillers. There's quite a few contrasting versus statements uh in the book. You know, you've got data versus gut and atoms versus electrons, novel versus necessary. And uh my mind, especially when it comes to watches, really attached to the idea of novel versus necessary because watches don't qualify really on either most of the time. They call their new watches novelties. You know, that's that's what they come out, but really something being actually novel in watches is is kind of rare to what we were talking about earlier. Actual genuine innovation. That's not the unlike in the tech world where there's always a push to move forward with something new, a lot of watchmaking is just iterating upon what has been working for 50, 60, 70 years. W how how do you think of that when it when it some of those, especially something like novel versus necessary, when it leaves the the tech space? Well I well, it's a gre |
| Tony Fadell | at question. It's a great question. And you know, I I you're you're making me ponder, you know, deep more deeply like why like certain types of watches. Yeah. It's because the creators behind them found a new way of representing something that we've been working on for 200 years, right? And going, oh, we think we found everything. And then all of a sudden, boom. Somebody comes out of left field and solves it in a whole different way. And it might not just be more more beautiful looking, but the information display might be more um much more easily accessible. It's easier to read. Like and so I care about people who are still innovating on these things that seem to not have any seem to not have any innovation around them, but yet we can still bring innovation in even when it seems like everything's ever been tried. That's the kind of innovator I love to see, right? Is that and they're stirring up the status quo. Do you need a watch? You if you have a phone, obviously, you you can get the time somewhere else. It's about supporting those artists and doing things differently because a lot of the same techniques that you find in wat what findchmaking, we copied. We would go and study and brought it into the iPhone or the iPod, or we brought it into Nest, how to machine a certain thing and how to do it at scale and make it so beautiful you know like brushing you know something like that those kinds of things to me continue to move uh things forward maybe not always in the watch world but in other places of the world of people who really see it? Th'eres still tons of innovation to be had in this device that we think is so simple, so ubiquitous, and so commodity that there are still craftspeople out there who can bring fresh ideas to an industry that's you, know, hundreds of years old, which is really really amazing a testament to the hum |
| James Stacy | an spirit and creativity. You know, I'm I'm wondering y looking back which is uh this book does look back over over your time at several companies and creating several different things. If you look back at kind of the way that you've thought about watches and appreciated them, has it changed at all? Or is it all from the same sort of root synapse somewhere deep in your brain that that kind of sets you up for this fascination? It has changed since I started col |
| Tony Fadell | lecting in 1999, I think I started. And I think a lot of it has to do with you guys. I blame Jack. Yeah, let's blame Jack. No, it's it's really you guys have opened my eyes to look at other details that I wouldn't have seen. Right. Because now it's like that. Now I'm not saying this is about prices and auctions. I'm talking about, oh, look at this roche pont, right? Let's look at this. Let's look at this triple split let's look at all these different mechanisms and you start to get inside of them you know like i love the you know the silicon some of the silicon based uh you know mechanicals i like some of the new automatics that are out there. love I the, you know, the uh the basically the analog computer of the slim royal oak, right? You know, you look at all these things, you go, oh my God. And if you know anything about how to create stuff, you start to like, oh wow, this is really cool. And you get inside of it. And then you want to know more about the people behind it, not just the company, but I want to know about the artisans behind it. And you guys sometimes get to get access in that way and get to open it up and talk about it. And so to me, that that is open you guys have opened my eyes and asked me, you know, and and really challenged me to see more. That's what you guys are so good at doing |
| Jack Forster | . You know, it's funny that um the whole the whole um there's a there's a sort of a dichotomy kind of built into the way that we think about watches and we think about collecting watches. So it's it's you know it it's sometimes framed as watch collecting on the one hand and watch making on the other. And people are interested in watch making are not necessarily interested in watch collecting and vice versa. But I think that that's I think that's a false dichotomy, man, you know, because uh without I mean without watch making, there are no watches to collect, obviously. And a lot of the brands that we value, we value uh because of their decades-long reputation for great watchmaking. But on the other hand, if we don't have this desire to kind of intersect with that world experientially, if we don't have collecting, then we don't have any incentive to either uphold tradition or try something new. |
| Tony Fadell | You go from making to collect some people buying, then collecting, right? And it and it becomes this the this way of that it drives things forward without the collectors, without this stuff, people wouldn't invest as much into the designs, these amazing new designs that creators come up with. And I think that we have to understand that you, know, not everyone's a collector and not all makers have to collect. What you know, I don't go and collect everything I make, but I don't collect lots of things. I don't even collect a lot of things I make, you know, just because I care more about the journey and the and the ideas than I care about the end product collecting it in a way that is like museum product collecting. It just everybody comes from a different point of view, but it takes both sides to drive an industry the way it does, right? You guys kind of go inside of it and and really tear it apart in the in the most in in the |
| James Stacy | most uh conscientious way. Well one thank you for the the many compliments. That's uh you know, my ego does not need that. Uh certainly not from you. Um you know, in in reading the book, I think it's fair to say that you see failure as a very important stage in succeeding. Absolutely. But even even for you know, I'm in my mid thirties now, I failed at all sorts of stuff'.s That what eventually got me into watches. And uh I'm still terrified of failure. What why do you think um why do you think it's so scary? Eve even for maybe people who have been through a bunch of it. |
| Tony Fadell | Great question. I think it's because we are brainwashed by an educational, you know, uh educational process that says, if you fail, you are not gonna make it in life. Right? We're told, oh, if you get a F R D out of test, oh, your life is over, you're not gonna get in that college. And if you don't get in that college, then you're not gonna get in that job that you wanted. Like, no, you gotta you gotta learn, right? You gotta learn. And failure is not the end. I wasn't an A student everywhere. I I was an A student in the things I cared about and pretty my mediocre student in the things I really didn't care about. I think that is a big thing that we are we bring into into into our life, our parents, our society brings. But let's contrast this with learning to walk. When we learn to walk, we fail at walking maybe a thousand times before we learn to walk. And we have an environment, our parents and our family around us going, yeah, just stood up for one second, yay, keep trying. How do we all of a sudden go from that environment to if you fail this test, your life is over. Right? Like if we said that when people are kids were trying to walk, babies are trying to walk, we'd be like, no one would ever walk. You know, like God help us all if everyone thought they could drive the first time they got in behind a car, right? We'd all be dead. Yeah, most people can't after years. So well, that's a whole nother thing. Because they think they're good. We need to have a little bit more failure in driving, but that's a different story. You we have to understand that if we're gonna push ourselves, it means you're going to have butterflies in your stomach. If you don't, you're not trying hard enough or you're not paying attention. So as far as I'm concerned, I really see that that we need to rethink this. And you know, probably a lot of your worries about failure are PTSD from something that happened when a bad test or the SATs or God knows what it was. R |
| James Stacy | ight. Yeah, it's it's an interesting thing to talk about. And and obviously you',re very supportive for the concept of failure and the value therein. It's it's a big part of the book, uh, the do, fail, learn cycle. I I think it even relates back to watches in kind of a pretty special way because the the converse of that is fr as an audience standpoint, we praise people who take risks. We praise people who climb mountains that no one else has ever climbed or in a manor that's never been climbed or go deeper into the ocean or go to the moon. And a lot of that is tied to to watches as little totems to the risk that somebody usually in a mid-century context took. Maybe it's it's seeing what what we're capable of, right? |
| Tony Fadell | Yeah, it's it's crazy. Like, yes, you you're right. All the explorers, the adventurers, what have you, as you say, market with a watch, just like every single thing that's worth doing is you mean to really gonna take a risk on it. And so I think that you're right that we we need to remember it's that risks we honor risks and people who are successful at risks. But the same time is if you make a take a risk and you fail at it, you really are only a failure if you give up. Not if you try again. Well again, SpaceX. How many times did it blow up on the pad or in the air before SpaceX became SpaceX? Probably four or five, six times. And the Elon almost lost everything. And we're like, oh, is he going to make it? Is he going to make it? And he kept trying. And then all of a sudden he did it. Now we're number one in the world for space. Right. Right. And same thing with the EVs. You're going to fail along the route. And sometimes it's public. But guess what? Keep going |
| James Stacy | . That's what we have to say. Just keep going. Absolutely. So we've got a few more minutes with you. And I want to make sure that uh, you know, especially since we were just talking about kind of the hold that the past has on us. Uh let's talk a little bit about Future Shape and what you're up to uh these days and and maybe some of it's even loosely in the watch space. I don't know. Yeah. W |
| Tony Fadell | ell, as it's well known, uh, you know, we I am an investor in Hodinka have, been from the very beginning, and I, you know, I couldn't I try to help support you guys as much as we can. For sure. Um that said, uh, you know, we're doing you know more than you know, uh investing in Hodinka. We have 200 companies that we directly invest in. We call ourselves mentors with money. We don't have LPs or third party money. So no one tells us what we can and can't do with it in it for the long haul. And what we really try to do besides the fun things for that I like, like you know, watch collecting and and hodinky and stuff like that, which you know have a few of those types of investments. But really where we spend our most of our time is on disruptive technologies to help the planet, help societies, and help you know individuals with their health. That's what we care most about. So we try to find these crazy, crazy entrepreneurs with big ideas that can unseat the incumbents, literally knock over the incumbents because you're using technology they don't know anything about. You know, they're not usually the innovators anymore. They're maintainers of whatever it is that they were in they inherited, you know, decades before. And so we try to find companies like, you know, there's impossible food. So impossible foods is one of the companies we invested in years ago, eight years ago now, something like that,. W wellell before plant-based and alternative meats were a thing. Now they're everywhere. Everybody's talking about them. Right. But we did it before it was in vogue in fashion. So we find more and more products at companies like that. Like we're in Diamond Foundry. So Diamond Foundry makes diamonds without mines, right? No blood diamonds, terrorist diamonds, child labor, forced labor diamonds for mining and tearing up the earth. We go and make the diamonds right and so i'm hopeful that these diamonds are going to be able to be put on all kinds of watches over time so that we have much more ethically responsible you know production of the things that we love. And I, in fact, I would even see it as a, you know, like we have different carat gold and this kind of, you know, we should have different different grades of diamonds based on where they came from, not just if they're, you know, clarity and color and cut it's also about you know was it ethically produ |
| James Stacy | ced yeah that that's fascinating i mean there's there's uh obviously we said 200 companies so that would be a whole other show for you to uh list even a handful more yeah i think as a closer, I I'd just love to know kind of aside from or or including watches or other hobbies, what what what are you excited about in sort of the the non work mode of your of your brain? What's what's captivating your attention? In the non-work mode, |
| Tony Fadell | which always usually comes back to work, I have to say, because I start investing in it anyways, because I'm so curious. He's so curious. I really love mobility. So when I I think about mobility, I think about things beyond four wheels. I think about things in two wheels. I think about things in three wheels. I think that if we're gonna go and get past this climate crisis that we have, we're gonna start rethinking the way we do things. Just like we're now in hybrid work environments, right? And I don't think that's going to change. You know, maybe there's some variations on a theme, but I I love looking at how we're going to change because the 150 years that we've created this planet or parts of the planet in one way, some of those things don't work anymore. So what are we going to do to mix and change things up to our lifestyles every day that makes it better for the planet and for us, as opposed to just saying we're going to be different but it's only good for the planet but we are inconvenienced in some way. I just don't see that. I see there's a lot of abundance. You know, we waste 60% of all the energy we produce on this planet. We're talking about we need to go green. How about we just go and stop wasting? How about the 30 per 30 to 35% of food we waste on this planet? 35%? Look at all the energy, all the all the things that go into making food and then we're just wasting it. If we just get rid of so much of this waste, how much better can we live on the planet without hurting it? Right? So these are the kind of things that get me up every day and it gets me excited and and and so so you know food I care about food I invest in it I care about watches I invest in it you know because it's fun I care about bikes so invested in those and two-wheelers, you know, I'm doing design, you know, gravity sketch is another company, you know, it's doing 3D native design in VR and making really cool stuff. So I whatever it is that's fun usually becomes something that I get involved with |
| Jack Forster | in some some way, somehow. You know, Tony, you were t you were talking just now about um energy efficiency and about working for positive change in the world, especially the issue of climate change in particular. And I just read a really interesting book, uh, The Way the World Actually Works. And it's written by a quantitative quantitative scientist, quantitative climatologist. And he said, he says his one of his theses is look, and the vast majority of uh people living in this world right now, they want to burn fossil fuels because of the benefits that fossil fuels but bring. You know, they're not going to stop wanting to burn fossil fuels. So if you do want to have a positive effect on the world, if you do want to do something about climate change, the first thing you have to do is you have to be realistic. And I s sort of I was sort of while you were talking, thinking about that in the context of the sort of the overall theme of build and some of the things that you were saying about, you know, ideas need to be ready for society, society needs to be ready for the ideas. It's not just it's just not the way the human brain works. Like we're not wired to say, I'm going to sacrifice indefinitely and for the rest of my life for the sake of some possible benefit for people who aren't going to be around for another 150 years, right? Like we have to, it has to be something that we gravitate toward |
| Tony Fadell | s now. Exactly. And look at look at EVs. Everybody said, no, no, the big industry, no, no, no, no, EVs. Tesla came along and proved us all wrong. And now everybody's moving that way. And people are starting to go, oh well it doesn't have that cool engine noise anymore and oh well what about range anxiety and oh what about you know it's all the incumbents saying all of these things and then when you get in it and you go oh it's fast it's quick, right? It stops faster don. I't have all these problems at the fuel tank, especially with you know our fuel pump. You know, it's quiet, all these things. You're like, oh my God, it's great. Like you're like, it's so much better. You know, so a lot of this stuff is a lot of people not wanting to change, but I'm with you. But you gotta make it rational and emotional. The story you told, like we talked about before, you gotta tell a great rational story, but you gotta train a great emotional story, not just one where you're gonna sacrifice. It should be something that you're going to embrace and say it's better, not just different, but better for me as well as the planet. That's what we try to do at Nest, right? Make a beautiful thermostat that saved a ton of money, right? And made it more convenient for you. And you liked it when you saw it on the wall as opposed to hiding it away. And the products that I look for and the companies we look for is something that has that win-win-win, not this huge sacrificial trade-off of something. Because Because that's when you're gonna just run into friction, right? But we also have to understand that everything we do today, just like moving from horses to cars, like no one could have predicted that. And they said, Oh, why do I want cars? And remember, there were cranks and it was it was smelly, more smelly than a horse. They broke down all the time. We'll do the same thing with all these other technologies. We just have to have the will to adopt them and to keep learning through failure. We're not going to get it all right the first time and we're going to keep trying. I've looked into the future with a lot of the companies that we have invested in and see we've seen. I can't be more optimistic, cautiously optimistic, that we have the technology |
| James Stacy | . The question is, do we have the will? And and you know, the the the the concept of timing and failure and and maturity really comes up, especially when you start talking about cars. Electric cars have been around for since 1880s. Exactly. Uh this is this is an idea that people have been trying for a long time and and you know we we all have to kind of get in line to make it work 'cause it I think it makes sense for the the massive use of cars. I'd love to end with a call to action. If someone finishes your book and would like to start another one. What what would you recommend they read? Another book? Well |
| Tony Fadell | , uh something that everybody should understand, especially given that we're going through all of this, is A Changing World Order by Ray Dalio. It's a really good book about talking about the trajectory of nations and how they go through all their fiscal issues and coming down and everything. T |
| Jack Forster | ony, I have one last very, very deep cutting question that I need to ask you before we go. Uh-oh, here it comes. Brushed or polished? |
| Tony Fadell | Oh. Look, my nautiluses have both, right? I I would say polished first, but brushed is a is a is a close second. On |
| James Stacy | a long enough time scale, they're all brush. Look, Tony, this has been an absolute treat. Thank you so much. You're welcome back on the show, literally anytime. And one other thing I'd like to mention about the bo |
| Tony Fadell | ok. All proceeds from build to honor my mentors, are going to a climate solutions fund. So any proceeds that I get, I match five times that go into a fund that are funding climate solution businesses around the globe to help us with the climate crisis and any profits from those investments go directly into philanthropic entities that are climate related. So this is all about honoring my mentors and to give back and give back at scale, both from a uh advice point of view, mentorship point of view, as well as the money to help our plan |
| James Stacy | et that we all live and enjoy. There you go. A good book and put some money into a good uh a good fund that uh certainly needs the cash. Uh Tony, thank you so much for this. What a treat. Thank you guys. This is awesome. Thanks, Tony. And if you're listening and enjoyed the episode, and you know what I asked. Just send a link to a friend. Tell him you liked it. Let him give it a listen. Maybe they'll go ahead and get the book, which I think they should. There's a lot to learn there. And otherwise we'll chat to you in about a week's time. |