“The ultimate job of marketing is to find the very best way to tell the true story of your product.”
A comprehensive look at the confluence of ideas, people, and corporate politics, "Build" does a nice job of using concrete examples. Tony Fadell includes useful diagrams and anecdotes, never shying away from hard truths (a chapter on assholes is particularly insightful).
“As a manager, you should be focused on making sure the team is producing the best possible product. The outcome is your business. How the team reaches that outcome is the team’s business.”
Some of the concepts feel a little dated and tend to lose sight of work-life balance at times as he documents starting, building, and losing companies. Fadell also tends to focus on more, more, more, making portions of the book feel pretty finance bro-coded.
“To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail. You have to be there when it falls apart so you can put it back together.
“You have to actually do the job. You have to love the job.”
Overall, however, this is a fascinating and instructive read. At a seminal moment for the technology industry, "Build" serves best as a catalog of the questions we should be asking ourselves, one another, and our customers.
“What you're building never matters as much as who you’re building it with.”
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