[Book] Build

Tony Fadell is the author of the book <Build>. Throughout his career, he has navigated the roller coaster and developed innovative products, such as iPhone, iPod and the Nest. I’m in the middle of this book. And this essay is my personal note for a few of valuable insights and lessons he shares, regarding the creation of innovative and impactful products.

Lesson 1: Time             

Tony: Work and life balance matters. But, to build a great product, you need to put in the time. Work late, …

Me: I truly believe this. And nearly all of my (humble) accomplishments have resulted from pouring my time until the very end. During my graduate studies, I participated in machine learning challenges in Interspeech. Interspeech is one of the top speech technology conferences. And I was fortunate to win three times with my PhD lab colleagues, twice as a team member and once as a team leader. When was the lead, I still remember how we achieved the best performance score. Literally 10 minutes before the deadline. And I learned why pouring my time till the end matters. When tackling a new problem, my learning is clearly curved. Very skewed to the end. My learning and implementation are initially not very effective. Many critical pieces of information are still lacking at the beginning. In the end, my work is more aligned with the goal of the project, resulting in a performance boost. This is the case when working with a group of people, too.

One to the other hands, time is something I create, not given. Time comes from routine. “Daily routine wins everything.” I was told this phrase recently. After a month of practicing daily routine, I’ve already found a number of holes in my routine calendar. It’s never easy! Nevertheless, regardless of how many times I've missed, I accomplished a lot more. And my life got better. Daily routine reminds me that every second counts, and that I must utilize my time strategically and wisely.

Lesson 2: Storytelling                  

Tony: Storytelling is how you get people to take a leap of faith to do something new. It’s about believing a story, telling ourselves or by someone else. Create a believable narrative. It’s all that marketing comes down to. It’s the heart of sales.

Me: I think this is a to-improve area for me. When looking at a product, I haven’t really thought of the story. I see the features. 

Story is a narrative why the product exists and how to solve customer’s problems. Tony shares three key elements of a story:  

    It appeals to people’s rational and emotional sides.  

    It takes complicated concepts and makes them simple.  

    It reminds people of the problem that’s being solved. And it focuses on the “why”.  

Appealing to the rational side means that your customers can convince themselves it’s the smart move to buy what you’re selling. The story should tell the actual value of your product, addressing big pain points of your customers. Providing proof, including data, testimonials, and case studies may help. To appeal to the emotional side, the pain points should be big (enough for people to pay for it to solve their problems) and frequent (e.g., daily). Great idea solves problems that people have in their daily lives.

How to make complicated concepts simple? By bridging directly to a common experience. For example, “1,000 songs in your pocket” is a great analogy for iPod.

“Why” Think about why people will want it, and focus on it. "Why" drives what. Features, design, sales, and technical innovations. See the core of the problems people have.