Tony Fadell: iPhone, iPod, Nest, Steve Jobs, Design, and Engineering | Lex Fridman Podcast #294

Tony Fadell 0:00 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." And we're like, "God dam-" you know? And so we did it, 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 in risk, and we- we laid out the risks for him. And he's like, "I'm willing to take those risks."

Lex Fridman 0:29 The following is a conversation with Tony Fadell, engineer and designer, co-creator of the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat. And he's the author of the new book, BUILD: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. More than almost any human ever, he knows what it takes to create technology ideas, designs, products, and companies that revolutionize life for huge numbers of people in the world. 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. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's Tony Fadell.

Lex Fridman 1:18 When did you first fall in love with computers? Or let's say computer engineering and design?

Tony Fadell 1:23 I first fell in love, um, with computers and programming, was at a summer school class in fifth grade in Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. Um, it was a simple basic programming class, but the basic programming class was not like you might think it was. It was bubble cards, so literally it was, you know, uh, the- the cards to stack up cards, and you would use a number two pencil, and you would put in, um, your program line by line, and you'd have to make sure it was perfectly stacked, and no errors, and what have you. And you would take that set of cards and you'd put it on this reader, and it was zuh-zuh-zuh, and it would go off to an IBM microcomputer somewhere in the... uh, back then, the cloud. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 2:11 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 2:12 And then, uh, you would sit on a Texas Instruments paper terminal, and it would just... literally, I was just... I could write things, and it would... the- I could program this machine to do stuff, and it was, you know, it was nowhere near sexy. There was no graphics, right? (laughs) Oregon Trail was all in text, right? (laughs) The cards were so cumbersome that if you got one thing wrong or out of order, it- i- y- or a disaster, or you dropped one card, it would all fall apart. So, um, w- just doing that, you know, printf, or w- was it? I can't even remember what that was. It was, uh, you know, what the- what the basic commands were, but-

Lex Fridman 2:48 Oh, so when you say basic, you mean basic programming language?

Tony Fadell 2:50 Programming language.

Lex Fridman 2:51 Okay.

Tony Fadell 2:52 Basic programming.

Lex Fridman 2:52 So, you're- you're writing basic programming language on paper with cards?

Tony Fadell 2:57 On paper.

Lex Fridman 2:58 And you're calling it programming though? It's called programming.

Tony Fadell 3:01 Yeah, you're programming this computer in, you know, in- in a remote location, and it came back. So it was truly cloud computing in a way.

Lex Fridman 3:08 So-

Tony Fadell 3:08 It was really terminal-based computing, though.

Lex Fridman 3:10 Uh, and the input and the program are separate? So the input to the program, or they co- go together, like, um... or is no- there's no input to the program? It just runs and it gives you output?

Tony Fadell 3:22 Yeah, you- you- it goes in and says- it says Ready, and then you can say Run.

Lex Fridman 3:26 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 3:26 And then it would run, but to program it, it- you didn't type it 'cause it was a printer terminal. You would make the stack of cards, and that would get it into the- the computer's memory.

Lex Fridman 3:35 Okay, so where was the magic?

Tony Fadell 3:38 The magic was that you could create. You had a language, and you could create what you wanted to create, right? You could create a world or- or what have you, and have this interaction, and you could compute things. You could, you know, do numbers. You could... I was playing Oregon Trail, right? So, you were less, like-

Lex Fridman 3:55 So, you can play video games?

Tony Fadell 3:56 Well, uh, video. (laughs) That's wha- (laughs)

Lex Fridman 3:58 Right. Without video.

Tony Fadell 3:59 You could play text games, and then imagine 'em in your brain, right?

Lex Fridman 4:04 Oregon Trail. Uh, there's a- this meme I saw recently, "If you wanna feel bad about yourself as a programmer, realize that one person wrote Railroad Tycoon." I think that's the name of the game. It's this cool little builder game. One person wrote it in Assembly.

Tony Fadell 4:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:23 (laughs) So fr- like, from scratch, and i- for people who don't know, it kinda looks like a SimCity type game. It's a city-builder, but obviously centered on railroads, and there's a nice graphics. It's three dimensional, all that kinda stuff. All the things... all the rich, colorful things you would imagine for- for a three-dimensional video game, all written in Assembly, meaning the lowest level code next to binary.

Tony Fadell 4:48 Yup. Exactly.

Lex Fridman 4:48 Which is, uh, fascinating, and that's the- tha- you had to notice the magic at that low level at that time. You didn't have all the graphics. You didn't have all the, like, APIs, and all the-

Tony Fadell 5:01 No.

Lex Fridman 5:01 ... sample codes, no stack overflow, no internet, none of that.

Tony Fadell 5:04 You just had- you had to know registers. You know- had to know the opcodes, and you had to imagine the world in your brain, of w- the memory structures and everything. Now, there's no visualization. You visualized it all yourself, right? 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, and then Electronic Arts came out for the Apple II, so I got an Apple II. And Electronic Arts came out, and I was programming and doing basic and making my own games. But then there were two games that really blew my mind. One was Pinball Construction Set, and the other one was Music Construction Set. And these were both places where I could create pinball games, and I could create musical scores.

Lex Fridman 5:46 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 5:46 'Cause I love music, and I could then play them, right? And so when you had that, you were like, "Oh, there's something very different." So I could create myself, but then there was others that c- create tools so you could create, but at a visual level.... and then you would read the backstories, 'cause Electronics Arts back in the day, it was one programmer who would program those things, you know, each of those things. And you could read their backstories. It was literally, like, like a musician or someone else, like, you could read Rick Rubin, like, here's the thing. They tell you all of that stuff. And there was one guy who wrote Music Construction Set. He wrote it all in Assembly, and he was 16 years old.

Lex Fridman 6:24 Wow.

Tony Fadell 6:25 And I we- and I was probably 12 or 13 at the time, and I went, "Oh, my." If he was able to do this and had it published, right? And this am- amazing tool was created, I'm like, "What could I do?" And so then it, it, it just kept building off of that. But really, it was those seminal things. First, the introduction, and then the, you know, the power through programming and, and turning these things into what you wanted to turn it into. And you didn't have to be 40, 50 years old and have, you know, PhDs, and... And then I was like, "Okay. This is really cool."

Lex Fridman 6:58 I wish we did that with programmers, where we treated them like artists, who would know the backstory these days, t- today. Or we'd, uh... Not just programmers, engineers. Designers.

Tony Fadell 7:07 Engineers. Designers.

Lex Fridman 7:09 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 that had their little inkling of genius that they put in, and I wish we knew those stories. That's always sad to me when I... 'cause I- I- obviously, I love engineering, and I interact with companies, and they, you know... Autonomous vehicles is something I'm really interested about, and I see that companies generally, and we'll probably talk about this, but they, they seem to wanna hide their engineers. Like, engineers-

Tony Fadell 7:40 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:40 ... hold the secrets.

Tony Fadell 7:42 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 7:42 Like, the great secret. We do not speak of the great secret.

Tony Fadell 7:46 Yes. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 7:47 But then the result of that is you don't, you don't get to hear their stories. The, the passion that is there behind the engineers, like, a- and also the genius, the little... There's a difference between the stuff that's patented, like the kernel of the idea-

Tony Fadell 8:03 Right.

Lex Fridman 8:03 ... and, and the beautiful sort of side effects of the idea, and I wish companies revealed the beautiful side effects a little bit more. But, uh, so, so sorry for the distraction. So what,

Lex Fridman 8:14 uh... You mentioned Apple II. What was the first computer you fell in love with? Like, the, the product, the thing before you that was a personal computer.

Tony Fadell 8:23 It was the Apple II. So the Apple II was something I was just lusting over, you know? It was... I think it was, at the time, it was the, um, you know, the Person of the Year. Maybe it was that year? I don't remember what, but, uh-

Lex Fridman 8:37 What, Apple II was the Per- the Person of the Year?

Tony Fadell 8:38 Yeah, for-

Lex Fridman 8:39 Nice.

Tony Fadell 8:39 ... Time Magazine, back in, I don't remember when. But it was around that same time. I was so young. But I had... There was the Apple II, and I didn't know what it was, but I knew about tools, 'cause my grandfather taught me about tools and, uh, creating things, right? And I saw this thing and, and I had the, you know, that, that IBM experience, that terminal experience, and I'm like, "Oh, I could have that at home," right? And so I need to have that at home, and the only thing that was really talked about in, in ou- our circles was the Apple II, and I was just like, "That's it." So I went, jumped up and down. It was very expensive. "I have to have this." My parents are like, "What?"

Lex Fridman 9:14 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 9:14 You know, it was 20 fi- $2,500 back then.

Lex Fridman 9:17 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 9:18 W- in the 1981. It was like crazy, right? So I was like, "I'm gonna make as much money as I can this summer." And my grandfather said, 'cause he, he helped me learn all about tools and build things together, "I will match whatever you make so you can get this computer." So I worked very, very hard as a caddy, golf caddy.

Lex Fridman 9:36 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 9:36 Caddying actually for the, you know, the, the families in, you know, the, at the country clubs in the, in the town, um, where we lived, and, uh, did whatever I could. And that, end of that summer was, got my Apple II. And I, you couldn't tear it away from me. It was my, my friend. It was everything.

Lex Fridman 9:52 From a product perspective, what do you remember that was brilliant? Um, th- 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?

Tony Fadell 10:07 Yeah, it was that I could actually have this kind of tool in my house, and I could use it anytime I wanted. I could program it anyways. There was no... You know, there was no internet connection. There (laughs) was no... It was all just you. You either loaded software that you got from someone, right? Um, or you created it yourself. And then there was a whole other thing which was started happening, which we were doing, and this was kinda like MP3s and stuff. We were sharing software, right? So you built this community of sharing stuff. You would, you, you would go and pirate.

Lex Fridman 10:35 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 10:35 That was what it was called. Pirate all this software. 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." So you really had a, a sense this, this was your world and you owned it, right? And you could, like, literally go into every register. We didn't have all those security layers like we do now. Like, you could really touch-

Lex Fridman 10:56 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 10:56 ... bits, and you could poke bits, and you could-

Lex Fridman 10:57 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 10:57 ... make this light turn on, and... You know, and the geek inside me just lit up.

Lex Fridman 11:01 Oh.

Tony Fadell 11:01 Now, you c- there's... It's so abstract, you know, people don't even understand. Like, usually, you know, some programs don't even understand memory. They just think it's unlimited, right?

Lex Fridman 11:10 Yeah. And security, it's like now there's all this security that you should have, but it's like the adults all showed up to the, to the party, and now you can't have all the fun. (laughs)

Tony Fadell 11:21 (laughs) Right. It's like, "No, no." You know, this was the thing where if you... If, if the power went out-

Lex Fridman 11:26 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 11:26 ... you lost your whole program. You might've worked a whole day on it, and if you didn't press save at every other line-

Lex Fridman 11:31 Right.

Tony Fadell 11:31 ... and you would just save, save, save, and it would like ƒrrɑɑɑ, ƒɾɑɑ... The wh- the disc drive or the tape drive, ƒɾɑɑɑɑ. Like, it... Every single step was contemplated.

Lex Fridman 11:41 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 11:41 Because if you didn't, you lost maybe a ton of work. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 11:45 So a lot of the magic was in the software.... the fact that you could have software, the fact that you could share software, the, and the community around the software. It wasn't necessarily the hardware.

Tony Fadell 11:55 Well, that was the first step. The second step around the hardware was I got things like the mocking board, which the mocking board, paired with the music construction set, you could now generate all kinds of tones and notes and s- it was a synthesizer in the Apple II. So you would plug in this card and you'd go, "Oh my God, look at this." And it would, you know, you could start generating cool sounds, and you're like, uh, like it was a Moog, you know, like a, a Moog in a way, early Moog.

Lex Fridman 12:20 What, uh, year are we talking about?

Tony Fadell 12:21 This is '82, I think?

Lex Fridman 12:24 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 12:24 '81, '82.

Lex Fridman 12:25 And I bet you could make all the kind of synthetic sounds that are very cool in the '80s.

Tony Fadell 12:30 Yeah, yeah, eight-bit, you know, chip tunes, right? Chip tune... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. And then, um, and then, you know, when you wanted to add a joystick, you had to pull a chip out and you had to, like, plug in a dip socket-

Lex Fridman 12:41 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 12:41 ... to put in a joystick.

Lex Fridman 12:42 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 12:42 And, and then I was like, "Oh, and then I had to get more memory. How do we do that?" And now I wanted to speed up proc... So, so then that turned into a company actually (laughs) from that, but it was... And a hardware software one at that. Um, but it was all about, you know, modifying this thing in every way. First with software, and then you started gaining confidence, and then I got a little bit more money (laughs) and stuff, and then you could get into the hardware and, you know, wire things, and then the Apple II came with all the schematics, right? So in the back, in the early Apple IIs, you could open up and all the schematics were there.

Lex Fridman 13:14 So you, you purchased the Apple II and the schematics come with it?

Tony Fadell 13:18 Yeah, it came with it. You can see everything.

Lex Fridman 13:19 That's an interesting choice. That's an interesting choice from a (laughs) from a company perspective.

Tony Fadell 13:25 Right?

Lex Fridman 13:25 So interesting.

Tony Fadell 13:25 So it was like a real maker kind of thing.

Lex Fridman 13:27 Right. Huh. I wonder what the... So that was intentional. Like this is-

Tony Fadell 13:33 Absolutely intentional.

Lex Fridman 13:34 ... the, this is the, we're... This is for the cutting edge folks too, or especially for the cutting edge.

Tony Fadell 13:38 It was only the cutting edge. It was geeks, for geeks.

Lex Fridman 13:41 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 13:41 So we were like, "Oh, how did they make it?" And w- and then we got to learn through that. Apple I did the same thing, right? It just, Apple II became more packaged up and had, you know, a little bit better software (laughs) , right? It came with Basic and then, you know. So, so it was really, it was, it was what we might think of as a Raspberry Pi today or something like that, but not with so much software. It was literally... And all the chips were out there, so you could inspect the buses and the... right? 'Cause everything was just broken out.

Lex Fridman 14:08 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, it's kind of a product, but I wonder why more companies don't do that kind of thing. Like, "We're going to release this, um, 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." Like, in some way, what, uh, Tesla is doing with r- the beta for the full self-driving-

Tony Fadell 14:45 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 14:45 ... is kind of like that. It's like selecting a group of people, 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. I wonder, is that, is that a crazy idea to, to do for really cutting edge technologies? Especially you're interested in ha- like hardware stuff. Is that, is that crazy? Why don't pe- more companies do that kind of thing, you think?

Tony Fadell 15:10 I, I think back then w- it was about a community and serving that community of builders.

Lex Fridman 15:15 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 15:15 Now this is about people who want to take, uh, get the experience and want it really simple and easy. And they're like... And so it d- there's the, the, the audience, or they believe the audience is small who would value those other things that we're just talking about.

Lex Fridman 15:28 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 15:29 But if we look at things like Raspberry Pi and all of these other little boards, right? There's a whole world more than any, uh, that I've seen. Like, it's amazing what you can do now with these little kits, um, and, and, and, and the software that's created and, and, and so there's a whole nother, I think, another batch of makers and builders that are coming up through the ranks. And if you, we look at YouTube channels and stuff, right? They take these little boards, they hack 'em, then they print out, uh, you know, parts on their 3D printer, assemble them, and they create robots and what have you. So I think it's happening. Um, it's just not as, you know, as... it's just not as, I guess, r- raw as it used to be. Um, but it's there, and it's really expanding around the world. And that's really nice to see, 'cause, you know, it's a whole new generation, uh, uh, who can... who are empowered.

Lex Fridman 16:17 I think there's a semi-dormant genius amongst millions, so like Raspberry Pi is revealing that a little bit. There's probably... I w- I wouldn't be surprised if it's several million Raspberry Pis that have been sold-

Tony Fadell 16:30 I think more than that.

Lex Fridman 16:30 ... and shipped. And it's kind of this quiet storm of genius brewing of engineers, and we don't get to hear it because they're not organized. I mean, we get to hear it through inklings here and there, like I said, YouTube, there's little communities that are local and so on. But if they were organized... (laughs)

Tony Fadell 16:49 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 16:49 If a leader would emerge... No. Okay,

Lex Fridman 16:52 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?

Tony Fadell 17:05 Well, in high school, there was a company that, um, a friend of mine founded, and I was the second employee. It was called Quality Computers. And it was a mail, mail order, mail order, 'cause there's no e-commerce then. There was no internet again.

Lex Fridman 17:21 (laughs) Yeah.

Tony Fadell 17:21 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, you know? Turnaround time on this stuff was like, from the time you want it to the time you bought it was maybe eight to 12 weeks. That was just the normal way of getting things. Um, so Quality Computers was a mail order, um, uh, uh, uh, for Apple II, and it was software and, and all kinds of accessories, so hardware accessories, so hardware plug-in cards, joysticks, all this stuff. And what, um, we noticed was, um, there were accelerator cards or memory cards-And to be able to use those cards, you had to actually go and change the software you used to access this new memory. So, you literally had to go and you took the program that you had, let's say it was AppleWorks, which was, like, an early Microsoft Office or something like that. And you had to literally change the code, and you would install these patches to then take advantage of the hardware. So, what we started creating was software on top of it to au- do the automatic installation of all of these patches.

Lex Fridman 18:27 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 18:27 So, we made it much easier to take new hardware and then, and, and the existing software you have, and expand it into this new world. So, it was creating tools, and then really great customer support, and we, we started getting a lot of orders, 'cause we had the software to make it easier to install, to give them the superpower. And, at the same time, um, uh, you know, they, they would be able to change their software and, and have a new world that wasn't existing from the companies that were creating the initial products. And so it was more of that, and then that happened with, uh, uh, hard drives. So, I wrote a hard drive optimizer for the Apple II to, like, read, 'cause it, you could get really fragmented. 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. So, that all happened in 12th grade of freshman year of college.

Lex Fridman 19:19 So, (laughs) you wrote a hard drive optimizer in 12th grade for the Apple II?

Tony Fadell 19:23 In ole'... Yeah, uh, between 12th and freshman year.

Lex Fridman 19:26 What, what programming language? Do you remember? Was it Assembly? Is this, was it-

Tony Fadell 19:29 It was, uh, there were, certain inner loops were Assembly, and other loops, actually they were really early Pascal, no, C, um, um, C, C, uh, compilers.

Lex Fridman 19:39 What was the motivation behind these? Is it to make people's lives easier? Is it to create a thing, experience that is simpler and simpler and simpler, thereby more accessible to a larger number of people? Like, what... Or did you just, like, like to tinker? (laughs)

Tony Fadell 19:53 No, no, no, it was two things, really.

Lex Fridman 19:54 Okay.

Tony Fadell 19:54 'Cause one, we wanted to sell more hardware and software, right?

Lex Fridman 19:57 Yes.

Tony Fadell 19:57 So, it was like, oh, make it easier for the user. And then the other thing was, because I was also manning the customer support line-

Lex Fridman 20:04 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 20:04 ... people would call in and go, "This doesn't work." And I'm like, "Oh, I gotta go fix the hardware and software," right?

Lex Fridman 20:09 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 20:09 Or I gotta fix the software to make the hardware and the installation process better. So, my whole world was out-of-box experience from when I was in high school.

Lex Fridman 20:17 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 20:18 'Cause I had to man the customer support line, 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 m- mail order, making sure we were running the credit cards, right?

Lex Fridman 20:35 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 20:35 (laughs) 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? And it was all in his parents' basement.

Lex Fridman 20:46 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 20:46 Right? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 20:47 As you were scaling exponentially.

Tony Fadell 20:50 (laughs) Scaling, right. Exactly.

Lex Fridman 20:51 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 20:51 Bootstrapping.

Lex Fridman 20:52 So, we'll jump around a little bit, but what were the, you said you love music.

Lex Fridman 20:56 What were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod? If we jump forward. Uh, and how far back do those ideas stretch? Um, 'cause, you know, if you look at the history of technology, there is, I mean, not just the product, but the idea is, is truly revolutionary. Maybe it, its 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.

Tony Fadell 21:30 Right.

Lex Fridman 21:30 And to be able to put that in your pocket, make it truly portable, is, is fascinating in, in a, in a way-

Tony Fadell 21:37 Right.

Lex Fridman 21:38 ... that's truly portable. So, it's digital, uh, as opposed to sort of, uh, like, a Walkman or something like that. So, w- what were the ideas that gave birth to the iPod?

Tony Fadell 21:49 You know, I've, I was in love with music since I was a kid. L- just loved music from, I think, second grade when I got my first albums and stuff like that.

Lex Fridman 21:58 What kind of music are we talking about there?

Tony Fadell 21:59 So, this was, um, this was, uh, Led Zeppelin. This was The Stones, Hendrix, uh, Aerosmith, uh, uh, Cheap Trick, Styx, Ted Nugent, you know, just the real-

Lex Fridman 22:15 Yeah, yeah.

Tony Fadell 22:15 ... you know, the real American r- and s- and British rock and roll.

Lex Fridman 22:19 There's, there's a bunch of people listening right now, "Who? Ten... Who is that?"

Tony Fadell 22:21 "Who, who's that?"

Lex Fridman 22:22 "Led Zeppelin? What is that? Is that some kind-"

Tony Fadell 22:25 Oh, yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 22:27 Um-

Tony Fadell 22:27 It drove my parents crazy.

Lex Fridman 22:29 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 22:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 22:30 You just blasted loud-

Tony Fadell 22:31 Loud, just rah. And this was second, third grade, fourth year, I just, I fell in love. And then, uh, we, um, we moved back to Detroit, and I loved listening to the radio station, 'cause there was all kinds of crazy music, 'cause you'd have a, a, um, amalgam of rock and then funk and R&B, and I loved to listen at night, so I had a clock radio. But if I had the clock radio on, everyone would, like, the parents would go, "Go to sleep! Stop that! Turn that stuff off!" So, I hacked the clock radio and put a headphone jack in it.

Lex Fridman 23:02 Nice.

Tony Fadell 23:03 Right? So I t- I said, "Oh, they're ƒwah!" Like, "Okay, wha-kiss-kiss." And then, and then I could listen to it all night, and no one could hear me, right? And I could just sit there and r- r- you know-

Lex Fridman 23:12 Just huddling around the radio, just-

Tony Fadell 23:13 Groove out.

Lex Fridman 23:14 ... just listening to Zeppelin.

Tony Fadell 23:16 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:16 Stairway to Heaven.

Tony Fadell 23:18 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:18 What's, what would you say is the greatest, uh, rock, uh, classic rock song of all time?

Tony Fadell 23:23 Greatest classic rock song of all time? Oh my God.

Lex Fridman 23:25 What pops into mind? Well, no, you know what? I mean, this has to be objectively number one.

Tony Fadell 23:29 That's really hard, dude. This is so hard. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:30 No, you have to... This is a, this is a serious journalistic interview.

Tony Fadell 23:34 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:34 You're not going to back down from these kinds of questions.

Tony Fadell 23:36 Oh my God.

Lex Fridman 23:37 No, no, no.

Tony Fadell 23:38 It's a challenge.

Lex Fridman 23:39 Yeah, it's hard t- it's hard to pick. But I, it, I, to me, Stairway to Heaven is a safe fall. It's like, it's so often considered to be one of the greatest songs of all time that you almost don't wanna pick it.

Tony Fadell 23:51 Right, exactly.

Lex Fridman 23:52 But then, but you return to it time and time again, and it's like, "Yeah, this is, this is something pretty special." This is a rock opera, eh, of sorts.

Tony Fadell 24:00 Well, the rock opera that really blew me away and still continues to blow me away is all of Dark Side of the Moon.... like that. I love Zepp- yeah, I love Zeppelin, and I, 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? The whole thing from soup to nuts, plus all the synthesizers, all of those things.

Lex Fridman 24:21 (laughs) Okay.

Tony Fadell 24:22 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:22 So, back-

Tony Fadell 24:22 So, back (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 24:22 ... back to the iPod. So that's, you, from the early age, you loved music.

Tony Fadell 24:26 Loved it. Absolutely loved it, and, you know, always was just around it, and always, I just, it, it was always playing, you know? Um, I, I l- played it so loud that I actually hurt the earring in my right ear. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 24:39 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 24:39 And I still suffer from that today. Um, and then, um-

Lex Fridman 24:42 No regrets?

Tony Fadell 24:43 No regrets whatsoever, going to concerts in downtown Detroit, and all that crazy stuff. So, moving forward, um, so I, in college, I was a DJ. So I would DJ, and hang out, and play all the tunes I love, and whatever for, for the, for the crowd, and then I continued to do that in Silicon Valley, when, when I moved w- uh, right after school. And so I was be lugging all of these CDs around with me, a thousand CDs to... Right? And, and at the same time, um, and so those were heavy. And at the same time, I was doing the Philips Nino and Velo. Those were Windows CE-based mobile computing products. The Nino was the first device to actually put audible books on tape. So we, I, uh, worked with Audible. We met in a conference, and they were like, "We don't wanna do hardware. We just wanna do content." I was like, "Well, we have this device. Let's get it together." And we got Audible on that, and this was in '96 or '7, first audible books. And it, you know, it was like, I was, "Oh my God, that's audio. Well, what if we put music on it?" Right? And so I, I... Uh, and the memory was very small at the time, right? There was almost, there was almost no flash. It was all DRAM. When you did Audible, you stored it in DRAM (laughs) , right? So-

Lex Fridman 26:03 Which was okay probably 'cause, uh, how much s- books do you need is the idea. By the way, brilliant, I mean, just putting books... I know it's probably not the sexiest of things, but putting books on s- uh, on a m- mobile device is a brilliant step. I, I, I don't know. You sometimes can't measure how much human progress occurred because of an invention. Like, there's the sexy big products, but you never know. Like, may- like, Wikipedia is one of those things that doesn't get enough, I think, credit for the transformational effects it has. It's not seen as the sexiest of products, but maybe it is. When you look at human history, Wikipedia arguably is one of the big things that, that basically unlocked human knowledge.

Tony Fadell 26:52 Human knowledge. Uh, and human editing, and human, you know, just the human n- human nature of building something together.

Lex Fridman 26:59 Yeah. So, it's, it's fascinating. Sometimes you can't measure those things, maybe until many, many decades later. Anyway, sorry. So that was, that was the Nino, that was... So, the-

Tony Fadell 27:08 So-

Lex Fridman 27:08 That was there, and then there was Audible. So, you put books. Why not put music?

Tony Fadell 27:13 Music, and I'm carrying around the music for the DJ gigs, and you're like, "Wait a second, uh, two and two together," right? Like, "Get, let's get rid of this." And so, and then MP3 show up.

Lex Fridman 27:23 The, the actual, like, encoder-

Tony Fadell 27:24 The format, uh, the format. MP3s showed up around '97, '98.

Lex Fridman 27:29 So MP3 is ha- is compressed so you can have, um, like the storage is reduced significantly?

Tony Fadell 27:35 Right. So you could go from a, a, you know, a large, full, full, uh, lossis- lossless, um, you know, digital track into something that can be stored in 4 to 8 megabytes, something like that, for the audio. Now, you know, that's a reduced quality, but you could get it down there, and you're like, "Oh, okay." And now if we have enough flash or DRAM, we can put 10, 15, what have you all in, 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.

Lex Fridman 28:07 Yeah. That's, that's also another brilliant invention. But, like, people don't realize... I think pe- I think people would be surprised how big in terms of storage raw audio is. And the fact that you can compress it, like, uh, I don't know what the compression is, but it's like 10X. It's very significant compression-

Tony Fadell 28:26 Significant.

Lex Fridman 28:26 ... and still it sounds almost lossless.

Tony Fadell 28:29 Much to the chagrin of Neil Young, who-

Lex Fridman 28:32 Yes.

Tony Fadell 28:32 ... yeah (laughs) , who does not like that.

Lex Fridman 28:33 But even, even Neil Young, even the stuff he talks about is still tiny files relative to the raw.

Tony Fadell 28:40 Right.

Lex Fridman 28:40 So, he, he wants us to increase it just a little bit more, a little bit more-

Tony Fadell 28:44 A little bit more.

Lex Fridman 28:44 ... but it's still... That's an invention. That's a thing that unlocks your ability to carry around a device like a Nino and listen to music 'cause without that you, there's no way you can carry around a gigantic hard drive.

Tony Fadell 28:56 Right, exactly. And so, so then that... So it was MP3s, the Nino, and my, you know, my (laughs) , my hatred of carrying around all this heavy stuff that then spawned, you know, um, Fuse, and then ultimately, you know, became, w- a lot of that, the ideas and things of that nature were... And, and my passions were born into the, the iPod. You know, it was two... Apple needed something, and I wanted to fix something, and it, it all kinda, you know, came together at this right, right place, right time, plus the right technology came at this. It was just like the stars aligned.

Lex Fridman 29:31 So how did it come to life? The details of the stars aligning, but the actual design, the actual engineering of getting a device to be small, the, uh, the storage of the, you know, the interface, how it looks-

Tony Fadell 29:47 Sure.

Lex Fridman 29:48 ... um, the storage, the details of the software, all that kinda stuff, what, what are some interesting memories from that design process? What are some wisdoms you, you can- (laughs)

Tony Fadell 29:59 (laughs) Well, yeah, well-

Lex Fridman 30:01 ... uh, impart-

Tony Fadell 30:02 Okay.

Lex Fridman 30:02 ... from that process?

Tony Fadell 30:03 Well, uh, the... Uh, you know, how long do you wanna go? 'Cause I have... I can go deep. Uh, so, uh-

Lex Fridman 30:09 (laughs) Let's go at, at least 20 hours. Let's go-

Tony Fadell 30:11 (laughs) Okay, 20 hours.

Lex Fridman 30:13 This is, this is one of those lengthy documentaries that will make you have a-

Tony Fadell 30:14 We're gonna turn it into episodic, uh, you know-

Lex Fridman 30:16 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 30:17 ... binge-

Lex Fridman 30:17 On Netflix.

Tony Fadell 30:17 ... binge listening. Um-

Lex Fridman 30:18 Yeah, it's Game of Thrones.

Tony Fadell 30:20 So let's just start with, uh, you know, after I was asked to be a consultant to put this thing together.So, I had already had knowledge of, you know, the, the space and the technology and all that stuff. But I had to very quickly... And, and a lot of the suppliers, because of what I was doing at Fuse, trying to create that thing. So at, at, as a contractor, I was like, "Okay, what is the first thing that we need to do?" So, so after I showed a, you know, a, a, um, 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. And as I was, was I told, uh, given very good advice, give two, the two options you really do not like, but they're options and give the best option last, 'cause Steve will sh- you know, shoot all those down and give the, the, the best option last, and then you could talk about that.

Lex Fridman 31:12 Right.

Tony Fadell 31:12 And so that was the one, um, that had a, uh, 1.8 inch hard drive and a small screen. Uh, like we, this screen, you, you, you know it, uh, on the, on the original iPod, classic iPod. And, uh, and then I had enough of the i- idea of the three or f- three or four different, uh, CPUs and processor suppliers and kind of systems that were out there that I had gone and found and, and put together on power supplies, you know, uh, disc drive interfaces, FireWire interface, all that stuff. So, I put together all of those, those schematics or, you know, block diagrams. They weren't schematics yet, 'cause it was just me. 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, uh, make a better headphone jack, um, that was also on there. Screen suppliers, tearing apart calculators. So got all k- and calculators and all kinds of electronics to get the, the right size, um, uh, different sizes of small LCDs.

Lex Fridman 32:14 Oh, wow.

Tony Fadell 32:15 So I got all kinds of different battery types. I got different types of, uh, you know, and different battery sizes, double As, triple As, working through all the different p- uh, and there was lithium-ion, nickel-metal hydride. So I took all the battery types, I took all of the, um, memory types, processing types, LCD types and, um, and, and connectivity and all that stuff, um, not wireless but wired, and laid out these things as Lego blocks. So literally had all of these things as just... And so I, I made them so I could like, you know, put them together and figure out what the compact fac- form factor would be.

Lex Fridman 32:53 Oh, like, how do we shove them together? What's the smallest possible box you can get? So the, the questions was on storage, so the hard drive, battery (laughs) double A, triple A...

Tony Fadell 33:03 Right.

Lex Fridman 33:04 (laughs) Screens, so screen size, and then for that, you're tearing apart calculators.

Tony Fadell 33:10 Calculators, digital cameras, whatever, and getting little things, right? So, so you can make it physical, right?

Lex Fridman 33:14 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 33:14 If you can make the intangible tangible, like, and so I can say, "Look, we can make this." And I could... and I brought this whole bag of goods and I was like, "Ch, ch, ch," right?

Lex Fridman 33:23 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 33:23 And like, "Here's this, here's this. This is why double As won't work and 'cause it makes it too fat and everything." So you just educate everybody through, "Here's the parts that we can use."

Lex Fridman 33:32 It's a notched sheet of paper, it's physical. You're playing in the physical space, yeah.

Tony Fadell 33:35 Oh, well, I, I would go back and forth. So truth be told, because there weren't good enough graphical tools on, on, uh, uh, on the Mac, I was using a PC with Visio and some-

Lex Fridman 33:45 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 33:45 ... 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?" 'Cause you have to go from, you know, the details and then the rough and you go back and forth and you iterate, right? And so it was just a lot of fun, and then I'd ultimately ended up with a styrofoam model and printouts that came from Vi- Visio that I glued together and put my grandfather's fishing weights in, 'cause I also modeled the weights, right? So I'm, I said, "Oh, this is this many ounces, this is this many ounces in grams." And then I went and got all that and m- made the... weighted these styrofoam models to then match that, so when you picked it up, it felt more or less form factor right, and it also you felt the f- how much, you know, was it gonna d- be dense enough? Is it gonna feel solid and rigid in your hand, right?

Lex Fridman 34:34 Why does it need to feel rigid?

Tony Fadell 34:35 'Cause it has to feel substantial. It has to feel like I have like a, like a bar of gold in my hand, right?

Lex Fridman 34:41 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 34:41 You know, y- m- 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." And then you get this tinny car that's like, "Ding," and you're like, "Does this feel safe?"

Lex Fridman 34:54 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 34:54 "Does this feel like of value?" And so you, when you have a device like that and you, you wanna make sure that there's not too much air in it, that, that you've distributed the density of the masses in the right way.

Lex Fridman 35:05 That's, that's it.

Tony Fadell 35:05 ... so it feels like it's the right thing. So you have to model battery life, costs, uh, you know, um, mass, uh, sizes of different things, and then you have to also think about what the UI is gonna look like, right? So you have all of these constraints you're working, variables you're working with, and you have to kind of, you know, you can't get the perfect of everything. What's the best, you know, m- local maximum of all of these components that come together to provide an experience?

Lex Fridman 35:32 Local maximum. It's always trade-offs. What about buttons?

Tony Fadell 35:35 Buttons, oh, well, there was also the buttons, too, right?

Lex Fridman 35:37 Oh, by the way, a lot of these battles fought inside your mind, or is it with other people? Is it, uh, is it with Steve? Is it lower? Like what?

Tony Fadell 35:44 This was all independent. This was me before being able to present to Steve, 'cause I had to feel really confident.

Lex Fridman 35:50 Sure.

Tony Fadell 35:51 That if I was gonna put this in front of him, that it could be made, right? So I had to convince myself and go th- work through all the details, through the like, the r- very, very rough mechanical design, electrical design, software things, because I didn't wanna present something that was gonna be fictional, right? My credibility would be like trashed, right?

Lex Fridman 36:10 So you mentioned convince yourself, you're painting this beautiful picture o- o- of a driven engineer, designer, uh, futurist. How much doubt were you plagued by through that, like this, this is even doable? 'Cause it's not obvious that this is even doable.Like to do this at scale, to do this kind of thing, to make it sexy, to, uh, shovel (laughs) the screen, the batteries, the storage, to make the interface, the hardware and the software interface work, all of that. 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.

Tony Fadell 36:51 Like we, at that point, I wasn't getting into any of those details or anything, you know? There's the, there's the basic stuff that you have to put together, and then you have to... You know, through my learnings at General Magic and my learnings at Philips and del- del- delivering, you know, m- multiple, you know, large-scale programs and 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. Like, when I was early in my career, I worried about everything in the engineering details, so much so that, you know, I would be a nervous wreck.

Lex Fridman 37:19 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 37:19 Sooner or later, you learn how to filter out and figure out what to prioritize, and so 10 years later, you know, I was able to much, do a much better job of filtering out the things of like, "We'll get to that in a, you know, in weeks to come." But right now, we gotta like solve, you know, the- the very important things, which is, is, could this actually be something real? And that you could deliver, you know, enough battery life, right? Enough of an interface, um, of the right cost, right? And the right, right, uh, right price point.

Lex Fridman 37:49 So you already, you're sitting on, on a track record of successes and failures in your own mind where you had, sort of already a confidence, a calm, a calmness. Uh, but still, was there a doubt that you could get this done? Like-

Tony Fadell 38:03 Always.

Lex Fridman 38:04 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 38:04 Always.

Lex Fridman 38:05 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. Like what, what, do you remember when you-

Tony Fadell 38:15 Yeah, that moment?

Lex Fridman 38:16 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 38:16 I think it was after I triple checked, I couldn't, I couldn't bring anyone in, right? I couldn't let anyone in on this. So it was just me.

Lex Fridman 38:25 Are they gonna trample on it? That kind of thing? Why?

Tony Fadell 38:27 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. There was like four people who knew about it.

Lex Fridman 38:35 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 38:35 Right? And so I couldn't bring anyone from Apple because, uh, I was a contractor. I couldn't bring anyone else from the outside world. I'm working for Apple and I'm under this n- get crazy NDA, right? In this contract.

Lex Fridman 38:46 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 38:46 So it was just, it was... So I'm, I'm-

Lex Fridman 38:49 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 38:50 ... I'm doing this. Oh, and at the same time, I'm also buying every competitive product, MP3 player and tearing them all apart.

Lex Fridman 38:55 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 38:55 Right? Tore 'em all apart and looking at 'em and, and trying to learn from those as well. So it was all of this stuff in six weeks. So I didn't sleep. (laughs) Right?

Lex Fridman 39:05 Yeah, yeah.

Tony Fadell 39:06 But I w- I was like, 'cause I was trying to make this from, I was, I was envisioning this since the Nino, right? And I was, "Oh my God," right? But there was another doubt that I had and it wasn't just, could you make the product? But could act- Apple actually have the, um, the balls to make it? Because Apple was not the same company that you know it today, in 2001.

Lex Fridman 39:31 Really? It was cautious, conservative, careful?

Tony Fadell 39:34 No, no, no. It was barely break-even. It was worth-

Lex Fridman 39:36 Oh, the cost.

Tony Fadell 39:36 ... four or five billion dollar company.

Lex Fridman 39:39 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 'cause it'll be a f- a flop."

Tony Fadell 39:49 It, well, well, there's not just that, but there's only the Mac.

Lex Fridman 39:52 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 39:53 And the Mac wasn't doing very well.

Lex Fridman 39:54 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 39:55 There was less, it was about a 1% only in the US market share for the Mac.

Lex Fridman 39:59 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 40:00 Right? The company was in debt. Bill Gates had to give them a loan.

Lex Fridman 40:06 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 40:07 Right? Michael Dell at the time was saying, "Shut down the company and give the money back to the shareholders."

Lex Fridman 40:13 Okay.

Tony Fadell 40:14 So this is not the company that, you know, uh, that people go, "Oh my God, the iPhone came out." It's a very different level of confidence and financial s- uh, situation that the company was in versus the iPod.

Lex Fridman 40:25 So given that, what was the conversation when you finally presented to Steve? What was that conversation like? (sighs)

Tony Fadell 40:34 The conversation was... Well, we went th- we went through it, the presentation and all, all that stuff happened, and he, he was just like, and he, you know, he never... He, he would flip through it real quick, throw the presentation aside and said, "Okay. Let's talk about this." (laughs) Right? And so we went through it all and, um, one was a big conversation about Sony. And Sony was the number one in all audio categories. Home, portable, what... In the world, okay? I had been already gone through 10 years of failure and I was like, "Wait a second. How are we going to compete with Sony?" 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.

Lex Fridman 41:19 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 41:19 Right? And so I was like, "Steve..." And, and this is why it took me f- four weeks to finally sign on to join Apple after he green lighted the iPod program in that meeting, was because I had built other things in the past at Philips, the Nino and Velo.

Lex Fridman 41:36 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 41:36 But they didn't know how to sell it or market it. They didn't know how to retail it, right? So I was like, "We could build this." And I was like, "Steve, I'm pretty sure I can build this. I've done this before, but how are we gonna sell it? You have all your marketing dollars on the Mac." And he looked at me and he goes, "You build this with, you know, a team, and our team in Apple," and this, this isn't me, right? "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."

Lex Fridman 42:09 Wow.

Tony Fadell 42:10 Right? That was, Mac was the lifeblood of all revenue of the company.

Lex Fridman 42:14 So Steve saw something special here?

Tony Fadell 42:17 Exactly, and he said, "I'm going to commit all the marketing dollars if you can deliver the experience that we're all talking about, if we can do that..." And that was Jeff Rubin as well 'cause i- iPod would have never happened without iTunes. You know, people don't understand, that was a bundle. You couldn't do one without the other and vice versa. So Jeff and I were, you know... If Jeff and you can present and bring that-... um, bring that experience to life, I will put all the marketing dollars behind it.

Lex Fridman 42:42 When did the marriage of iPod and iTunes sort of, uh... W- what was that, uh, birth of ideas that made up iTunes?

Tony Fadell 42:53 iTunes existed before the iPod, okay? And so Jef Robin had his company, oh man, I can't remember the name of it, but it was bought. He was making a MP3 player app for the Mac.

Lex Fridman 43:04 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 43:05 Steve saw it, because there was MP3 player apps like Winamp and other things-

Lex Fridman 43:09 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 43:09 ... that were on the PC, RealPlayer. And Steve saw that going on and he saw that Jef and h- and his small team had this, this... I can't remember, sound something. Anyways, he bought that, and that became the basis of iTunes, and then Jef ran all of iTunes. And so what happened specifically there was they were starting to hook up to all these third-party MP3 players, 'cause there was a lot of Korean... The MPMan, like Walkman but MPMan. All these... And they were trying to hook them up, and they were like, "These are horrible experiences." And through that... And they said th- it... iTunes was something that was gonna help grow the Mac base, because we were trying to get more in people w- e- on the Mac. So this program would be a great new thing you could add to the Mac. And there was also internet connectivity at the time for the iMac. And so they did that, and then they're trying to do these, these hookups. They weren't going well, and that's when they said, "We need to build our own." Or Steve said, "We need to build our own since these are such horrible experiences. People don't wanna just burn CDs from iTunes, we need to get that music on the go, but in an Apple fashion." That's when I was called to come in to do that, the iPod thing after the six weeks. Then he already v- envisioned, I- I'm sure he had it envisioned 'cause he- they were trying to do this thing. Okay, now that's it. iTunes, w- what... You know, it wasn't called iPod yet. You know, what would become the iPod. 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, their n- n- next generation or Sony Walkman version 2.0.

Lex Fridman 44:46 So when you look at, again, m- apologies to linger on iPod, but it's one of the great inventions-

Tony Fadell 44:53 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 44:54 ... uh, in, in, in tech history.

Lex Fridman 44:58 What wisdom do you draw from that whole process about spotting an idea? This is something you talk about in your book Build. How do you know that an idea is brilliant? At which stage? When did you know it was a good idea? Um... (laughs)

Tony Fadell 45:17 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:17 And ma- maybe is there, like, some phase shifts?

Tony Fadell 45:22 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 45:22 First, you have complete doubt, then maybe, "Hmm." And then maybe it becomes more than a hmm and becomes, like, a little more confidence, that kinda stuff. And also, wisdom about who to talk to-

Tony Fadell 45:34 Right.

Lex Fridman 45:35 ... uh...

Tony Fadell 45:35 Right.

Lex Fridman 45:35 ... so they don't trample the idea in the early stages, that kinda stuff. Any- any- any thoughts about this?

Tony Fadell 45:40 Sure. We could go on. Again, how long do you wanna go? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 45:43 (laughs) 20... This is a Netflix series, I told you. Multi-season.

Tony Fadell 45:47 So, uh, a lot of lessons learned, uh, over those years of failure and, and success. But the first thing it starts with, um, there's a whole chapter called Great Ideas Chase You. And so it kinda goes into... In Build, and you can go... And it goes through kinda chapter and verse about all of those, how Nest became into being. But let's talk about it specifically for iPod, right? So for me, I always had pain, the pain of carrying these CDs everywhere, right? And I had the joy of music, right? 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 it might be 10 or 15 CDs, right? And then I can have the joy of all this music uninterrupted. That was, 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." So when you can actually s- focus on a pain, not a v- not a- and, and get a painkiller for it, not a vitamin. So the difference between a painkiller and a vitamin is very clear. One, you need.

Lex Fridman 47:01 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 47:01 I gotta get rid of this pain. A vitamin, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, maybe somebody needs it, maybe not. It's all marketing story, right? 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. That is always... And that's the way to, to, to know that you're hitting on something that's really powerful.

Lex Fridman 47:23 The pain and the joy.

Tony Fadell 47:25 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 47:26 Um, are you always aware of the pain?

Tony Fadell 47:30 Mm...

Lex Fridman 47:31 So it seems like a lot of great products, 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. Like with merchant autonomous vehicles, we all assume we're supposed to be driving.

Tony Fadell 47:45 Right.

Lex Fridman 47:46 Like, and it doesn't... You don't think of it as a pain. (laughs)

Tony Fadell 47:50 Right. Well, you've, you've habituated it away.

Lex Fridman 47:53 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 47:54 You've habituated it away. It... For me, you know, when I go, uh, to other places, l- uh, living in Bali or living in Paris or whatever, and I'm not driving, I'm walking or I'm using a scooter or what have you, different thing. And you go, "Oh my God." When you've left that environment because everyone else is driving all the time, you're like, "That's what you do." 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." So there's, there's something in the book that's called out, and I, I, I deemed it the virus of doubt. 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 r- to bring people back to that initial experience they had or the initial experiences they had of that pain. "Do you remember when the first time you did blah, and it felt like this?"...right? And then you reawaken that habituated pain. And people g- and it get, becomes visceral, and then y- they're like, "Oh, yes, I hate that."

Lex Fridman 49:01 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 49:01 And then you go, "Now I have the painkiller and the joy for you."

Lex Fridman 49:05 Yes.

Tony Fadell 49:05 That's when it all comes together and it goes (snaps fingers)

Lex Fridman 49:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 49:10 Let me, on this, on the pain and the joy-

Tony Fadell 49:12 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 49:12 ...that's brilliantly put, uh, you mentioned, um, selling and marketing.

Tony Fadell 49:18 Right.

Lex Fridman 49:19 Marketing dollars. Uh, I have a love-hate relationship with marketing, like with a lot of things that require artistic genius. To me, the best marketing, I suppose, is the product itself and then word of mouth. So, like create a thing that people love. And-

Tony Fadell 49:40 Oh, absolutely, that's fundamental.

Lex Fridman 49:42 Yeah. But, so any other marketing requires genius to be any extra thing 'cause, uh, every... Uh, uh, to me, I don't... It, it, yeah, uh, maybe you can, uh, by way of question 'cause you're... (laughs)

Tony Fadell 49:56 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 49:56 You're s- I'm, I'm just speaking off the top of my head as a consumer, uh, what is great marketing? What does it take to, to, to reveal the, the pain and the joy of a thing?

Tony Fadell 50:08 Okay. (laughs) It all starts at the beginning. And let me give you... I'm gonna give you a couple of different ways of looking at it, okay? And it, again, we're gonna... might go a little long here. So, um, just stay tuned in.

Lex Fridman 50:22 (laughs) Yeah.

Tony Fadell 50:22 So, the first thing is-

Lex Fridman 50:23 Start at the beginning, right?

Tony Fadell 50:23 ...let's start at the beginning. In the early part of my career, you know, like General Magic and Philips and what have you, I... and especially when I was, you know, a teenager, when I was like doing, making my own chips and stuff like that, I really worried about just putting cool things together. I'm like, "That... When I put those two cool things together as an engineer," you go, "that's cool."

Lex Fridman 50:48 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 50:48 And then I would talk to my other friends who might be geeks too, and they go, "Yeah, that's cool."

Lex Fridman 50:52 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 50:54 Because we knew the bits, so we put them together, and that's a new way of doing it, and you're like, "Wow." That's all what. It's not why. Why are you doing this? We know what we're doing, but we don't know why we're doing it 'cause we're not articulating it for ourselves 'cause it's just something we're like putting it together and like, "Yeah, that's cool," because, because we think we're solving some problem we have, but we're not really articulating it. So, what normally happens, and this happens, uh, 'cause we invest in so many companies around the world, you have these brilliant engineers, designers, scientists, researchers. They put together these, these whats, 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? What happens then is marketing's like, "Well, why do w- why do people need this? Tell us why people need it." And so they create a story around this product, but the product was born out of whats, not whys. And so they start tell... marketing starts telling a story, and it turns out to be a fictional story usually. They say, "Oh, this is going to do these things." 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, right? There are whats when you create a product, but there's a lot more whys, and the whys help inform the whats, and the whys also inform the marketing.

Lex Fridman 52:27 So, at the, at the... That's what you mean deeply at, we should start at the beginning, so it... the designer should be also the marketer, the engineer should be the marketer.

Tony Fadell 52:38 Exactly. Stop impressing the geek next to you, what is the superpower you're bringing, or the pain you're killing for the, your, your, the end customer, right? Now, let's get... let's contrast that. Think about a movie. A movie starts with a treatment. It has an audience. This has the audience, here's the characters, here's the storyline, the plot, here's the, here's the, here's the arc of the story, right? It pulls that all out. Then there's a script that's cr-... written, 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? And then it comes out, and then there's the marketing of the movie, and that story was created at the beginning. What you need to do, if you're gonna do a great product, is create that treatment for your product, and I call that the press release. Do the press release, like the treatment, who's the audience? What, what features do you have? What pains are you solving for peop-... 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, and you use that as the bar, the measuring stick for what you do during development because what happens at... along the route, you know this, "Oh, we're not gonna be able to get that feature done on time. Throw that one overboard, we gotta hit the... we have to hit the date. Oh, we're not sure this product's right yet. Add another feature. Add another fea-... Feature creep."

Lex Fridman 54:04 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 54:04 Right? If you don't have that story you know you're gonna tell at the beginning, you don't have that bar, right? And then at the end, you don't know when you're done if you don't have that story. So, you can actually look at that p- press release, you might, you might mod... you know, you, you change it over time, um, that draft. But then when you're done, you know, the whats and the whys, you have all the thi... uh, the audience and everything, and then you can give that to marketing and say... Well, and marketing's been along the way, be- let's be clear, 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.

Lex Fridman 54:42 So, in the drafting from the beginning to the end of the press release, what does a successful team look like? Who is part of the draft? Is it engineers, designers? What, what, what's the purpose of a marketing department in a company, small, let's say small company, but more than two people?

Tony Fadell 55:02 Okay.

Lex Fridman 55:02 So-... uh, from where does the why come from? Should it always come from the designer or should there be a marketing person that, yeah-

Tony Fadell 55:11 Okay.

Lex Fridman 55:11 ... steps in and asks the question?

Tony Fadell 55:13 Okay.

Lex Fridman 55:13 So I'll just keep asking random questions, so.

Tony Fadell 55:16 (laughs) No, these are great questions.

Lex Fridman 55:17 Okay.

Tony Fadell 55:18 So it's like, 'cause you're just like, I'm like, "I can't wait to tell you the answer."

Lex Fridman 55:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Fadell 55:21 Um, so it's in the book as well-

Lex Fridman 55:23 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 55:23 ... but you have to separate out the various functions of marketing. When, that's what I thought, I was like, "Marketing's marketing." You know, when I was, and, and it's really not. There's so many disciplines, just like in engineering, mechanical, electrical, software, and even software it's, you know, I use cloud services, firmware, applications. Marketing has that much diversity as well. Okay? And you have to honor that. And so there is marketing communications, like PR, press, press. There is, um, social marketing, there is marketing creative, right? There's marketing activation, um, but there's another thing that also comes out and people, uh, confuse it with marketing, which is called product marketing or product management.

Lex Fridman 56:13 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 56:14 And product management or product marketing is the voice of the customer. 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, right? So that, um, and they're creating the messages, not the marketing. 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-

Lex Fridman 56:52 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 56:53 ... and brings that message across. Maybe it doesn't say that, but it comes maybe visually or some other way. So product management does that and, uh, and, and holds that press release along the route in making sure that we're tracking. And then also marketing is tracking with that press release to make sure they're not telling a fictional story, right? 'Cause they could also add extra adjectives or something and then the product can't deliver that. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. Keeps everybody in check-

Lex Fridman 57:19 Has to be grounded to the press release, to the roars and the idea-

Tony Fadell 57:22 Right, to the customer needs.

Lex Fridman 57:23 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 57:23 Right? 'Cause they're always representing the customer. So you have to have a product manager, typically that's the founder, right? In the beginning. And then over time, you hire a product management team to then really, uh, you know, watch over this the whole way, 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. And it's the hardest thing to hire for.

Lex Fridman 57:52 Ooh, yeah. So it's, they have this very important job of developing and maintaining the why.

Tony Fadell 57:59 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 57:59 Why is it the hardest to hire for?

Tony Fadell 58:01 Because you have to understand, you, first, nobody reports to you.

Lex Fridman 58:06 You're alone.

Tony Fadell 58:06 You, so you're alone, and you have to build great ties with all of these different, these different functions.

Lex Fridman 58:13 Yes.

Tony Fadell 58:13 You have to understand what they do, uh, be empathetic with what they do, and you have to get, have to project em- 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, and so that they learn more. They're not just doing, but they learn about the customer's point of view and sit in their, and, 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 the, even if they're not the customer that it's intended for, they start to live through and through their eyes and see through their eyes of that customer so they make better decisions.

Lex Fridman 58:55 And there's probably fascinating, beautiful tensions between that and sort of the, the, the engineers, "Oh, that's cool," sort of the, you know, developing the what. Uh-

Tony Fadell 59:08 Exactly.

Lex Fridman 59:08 ... yeah, and which makes it an extra hard job I'm sure.

Tony Fadell 59:11 Well, exactly.

Lex Fridman 59:12 Can, can I ask a sort of, uh, a little bit of a personal question on the-

Tony Fadell 59:15 Sure.

Lex Fridman 59:15 ... one subfield of marketing? You mentioned comms and PR.

Tony Fadell 59:21 (sighs)

Lex Fridman 59:22 How do I ask this?

Tony Fadell 59:23 I, I, I can hear your struggle-

Lex Fridman 59:25 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 59:25 ... in your, in your sigh. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:26 Um,

Lex Fridman 59:28 why, or do the comms and PR folks sometimes kill the heart and soul of, of, uh, uh, of the magic that makes a company? Or is that, is that wrong to say?

Tony Fadell 59:44 Uh, give me an example.

Lex Fridman 59:46 I will say the spirit of the example which is, um, it feels like often the jobs of communications is to provide caution.

Tony Fadell 59:57 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 59:58 It almost, it almost works together with legal to say-

Tony Fadell 1:00:01 A shield.

Lex Fridman 1:00:02 Yeah, "We should, probably should not say this."

Tony Fadell 1:00:05 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:05 "We're prob- let's be careful, let's be careful." Now, that makes sense except in this modern world, um, authenticity-

Tony Fadell 1:00:17 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:18 ... uh, is extremely valuable and revealing the beauty that is in the engineering, the beauty of the, the ideas, the chaos of the ideas I think requires throwing caution to the wind to some degree.

Tony Fadell 1:00:34 I agree.

Lex Fridman 1:00:35 And I just find that, boy, I mean, it's a really, so to, to push back on myself, I think it's an extremely difficult job because people hold you responsible if you're doing communications when, (laughs) when you take risks.

Tony Fadell 1:00:51 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:00:52 Um, uh, and especially when they fail, so, like, the, it's, it's a difficult job, so I understand why people become cautious, but to me, communications is about taking big risks and throwing caution to the wind at its best-

Tony Fadell 1:01:06 Me too.

Lex Fridman 1:01:06 ... because your job is to communicate...... in the long term, communicate the genius, the- the joy, the- (laughs) the- the genius of the product.

Tony Fadell 1:01:19 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:01:19 So, and that-

Tony Fadell 1:01:20 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:01:20 ... sometimes is a tension with caution. Sorry. So I- I, uh, because I've gotten a chance to meet a lot of very interesting people and-

Tony Fadell 1:01:28 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:01:29 ... 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. It's like there's something very, like, just straight up boring about the way they're communicating because of caution.

Tony Fadell 1:01:49 Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:01:50 And you think-

Tony Fadell 1:01:51 You have just teed me up for another diatribe.

Lex Fridman 1:01:54 (laughs) .

Tony Fadell 1:01:54 Okay? I'm gonna get on my, I'm gonna get on my podium here.

Lex Fridman 1:01:58 Yes, please.

Tony Fadell 1:01:59 Uh...

Lex Fridman 1:02:01 (laughs) .

Tony Fadell 1:02:01 It all comes out of the leader. If the leader doesn't know how to storytell or the leader doesn't know how to do bold storytelling, then you get even more cons- uh, conservatism from the PR and communications folks, because they're always... So if you have a, not a- a bold leader, they- they're always going to be a filter, right? 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. Why? Because they wanna keep their jobs.

Lex Fridman 1:02:38 (laughs) .

Tony Fadell 1:02:38 Okay? It's really simple.

Lex Fridman 1:02:39 Yes.

Tony Fadell 1:02:40 They gotta keep their jobs. If they say one wrong thing-

Lex Fridman 1:02:42 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:02:43 ... it could be the end of it. So if you have very con- conservative leader, they're going to be even more conservative. If you have a bold leader, they will be, uh, oh, they'll always take a- a little more conservative bend-

Lex Fridman 1:02:53 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:02:54 ... but you're still gonna have bold communications.

Lex Fridman 1:02:56 Yeah. That's brilliant.

Tony Fadell 1:02:57 Okay? So it starts with the leader. Now, that said, when you- you- you think about the messages and the joy and revealing things, right? Many of these leaders don't tell great stories. So what we do at FutureShape, our investment firm, is we take those scientists, all of... and the great minds and everything, and what do we surround them with? Marketing and communication people and storytellers to give them the confidence to tell a much broader story about the impacts of what they're creating and how big the global change can be with those technologies. 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.

Lex Fridman 1:03:52 Yeah. So the, uh, it's interesting 'cause stories, and I'm a huge fan of stories.

Tony Fadell 1:03:57 Have you ever read the book Story-

Lex Fridman 1:03:59 No.

Tony Fadell 1:03:59 ... by Robert McKee?

Lex Fridman 1:04:01 Mm-mm.

Tony Fadell 1:04:01 You should read this. And this is what I read when I was 26. Story by Robert McKee, and it's a book all about the ways to do script writing, the prototypical n- types of scripts, drama, comedy, and how it's been shown over, you know, millennia how these stories are done. It's- it's a fascinating thing and it gives you an insight to... And it's, it's you, it's written for, you know, obviously Hollywood and- and- and- and movies and things like that, but it's incredibly useful for what we do, um, as designers and engineers and- and technology, you know, leaders.

Lex Fridman 1:04:38 The, there's some aspect in this modern day where, you know, the- this podcast and so on, it, the, um... What I love is the humans behind the story too. So some part of the story is the human beings. Um, so humor, drama-

Tony Fadell 1:04:55 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:55 ... heartbreak, hope.

Tony Fadell 1:04:57 Emotions.

Lex Fridman 1:04:58 Emotions. That's not just about a s- a painting a beautiful story that's flawless. It's, uh...

Tony Fadell 1:05:05 Vulnerability.

Lex Fridman 1:05:06 Yep. It's, uh, you know, being a dreamer, like overpromising and then, uh, failing, reali- so changing your mind, realizing sort of just the whole of it. And then also being like, uh, depending, of course, what your personality is, um, embracing the full richness and the complexity of the personality of the leader or the different people involved. I mean, that- that's all part of it. Like you can't just present this beautiful always pleasantville view of a product. There has to be this, um, this humanity that's part of it, the- the full rollercoaster of the humanity, which I- I think is, um, been very difficult for companies (laughs) to embrace.

Tony Fadell 1:05:50 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:05:50 I'm not sure why. I'm not... Maybe it's just an old school way of doing things that people think, you know, that we present a facade and, uh, you know, we generate the story and we tell the story as opposed to sort of, um...

Tony Fadell 1:06:04 Well, we- we learn in, especially in the technical world, we present the story as it's faster, it's smaller, it's longer battery life.

Lex Fridman 1:06:12 Yeah. Right.

Tony Fadell 1:06:12 It's- it's bits and numbers and, uh, you know, and- and metrics. That- that resonates, sure, with other geeks. What resonates with the- th- the, you know, the planet? It's all emotions, right? 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.

Lex Fridman 1:06:41 And there's personal drama too, like the- the human.

Tony Fadell 1:06:45 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:06:45 The- the human-

Tony Fadell 1:06:46 Here's the pain I had.

Lex Fridman 1:06:47 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:06:47 Remember that thing?

Lex Fridman 1:06:48 And like, uh, I mean, just, I mean, just, you know, uh, you're... (laughs) . You're obviously this extremely well-known human being that's behind a lot of these, uh, great inventions as the technology world, but you're also just a human being. You have a clearly, uh, like a- a distinct personality that comes through the... Like your eyes light up. Just the way you communicate is- is you.

Tony Fadell 1:07:13 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:07:14 Uh, um...

Tony Fadell 1:07:15 Thank you.

Lex Fridman 1:07:16 Some people are more stoic, some people are-

Tony Fadell 1:07:18 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:07:18 ... like, uh, Elon is, you know, all over the place, the chaos. Uh, S- Steve Jobs, you know, there's a very... I mean, uh, it's hard to put into words, I can be poetic and so on-

Tony Fadell 1:07:29 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:07:29 ... but there's a very distinct, comes on stage, you know.

Tony Fadell 1:07:32 Personality.

Lex Fridman 1:07:32 That personality is-

Tony Fadell 1:07:33 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:07:34 ... right there. That's not just the product, that's something else too.

Tony Fadell 1:07:37 Correct.

Lex Fridman 1:07:37 And like you have to reveal that a little bit, and allow people to reveal that a little bit.

Tony Fadell 1:07:43 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:07:43 And just let them be themselves.

Tony Fadell 1:07:45 Well, look, why- why do I think your podcast is so amazing? Because you are yourself. You talk about-

Lex Fridman 1:07:54 There's-

Tony Fadell 1:07:54 ... yourself, you bring your emotions into it, and you don't modulate it. You- you're you, right? You're-

Lex Fridman 1:08:00 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:08:00 It comes through, it's- it's true. It feels right. You are you, that you- you dress the way you wanna dress. You say, "This is me and this is all of me." And you- and you become vulnerable, right?

Lex Fridman 1:08:11 It's much easier to do a podcast like that than run a very large company-

Tony Fadell 1:08:15 Correct.

Lex Fridman 1:08:16 ... where a lot of people would feel the pain if you make- if you say something stupid.

Tony Fadell 1:08:20 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:08:20 If you... So, um, there's a- it's much more easy to be afraid-

Tony Fadell 1:08:25 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:08:25 ... and be careful. So but nevertheless, the same applies. Um, authenticity and risk-taking is- is- is the only way, unfortunately, uh, to be successful in the long term. Uh, let me, just 'cause we're jumping all over the place-

Tony Fadell 1:08:41 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:08:42 Uh, i- just linger on the iPod.

Tony Fadell 1:08:44 Sure.

Lex Fridman 1:08:44 One of the great designs, um, broadly speaking in the word design of all time. What- what does it take to design a great product? If you look, we can jump around, we can look at Nest, we can look at iPod, we can look at, uh, iPhone, and many of the- the great things, uh, you design. But just looking at that one transformational

Lex Fridman 1:09:07 thing, what can you say about what it takes to do a great design, or maybe what makes a great design?

Tony Fadell 1:09:20 Well, we talked about, you know, a painkiller, and we talked about the- we talked about that, you know, joy that comes from it. 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. If you have a great story and you know the why, then you can communicate it to those people who are working on it, and then they bring their own thing into it, right? It becomes emotional for them too. It's not just a job, it's a mission. And so many of the details that c- are born out of these early prototypes, these things that you still haven't given full form to. They're maybe 80% done or maybe even 60% done, but you can see enough in there. Then you take those great ideas and you give the whys to the team and so that they feel it, 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, um, you know... It- it could be just a pixel change, 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 f- you know, feel this thing. They're not just doing something that someone told them to do. 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. Everyone comes together in a special way and, um, and the magic is created. You put the love into it, the customer feels the love on the other side.

Lex Fridman 1:11:02 So the (laughs) making the team, like taking 'em in, onto the vision, onto the why-

Tony Fadell 1:11:12 Ownership.

Lex Fridman 1:11:12 ... now they feel the... All the little details we think of, uh, the original, uh, iPod and all the many generations after, all those little details are in them as the emotion of the engineers and the designers. That-

Tony Fadell 1:11:29 It's their baby. It's like a-

Lex Fridman 1:11:31 Working nights, struggling, this isn't right. Like you said, changing little pixels here and there. Changing- changing the shape of things-

Tony Fadell 1:11:39 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:11:40 ... changing the feel of things, like, uh, the materials, the... I don't know, just everything on the software part of the packaging.

Tony Fadell 1:11:49 Packaging. The- the words on the packaging.

Lex Fridman 1:11:51 Just everything, yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:11:52 The words on the website.

Lex Fridman 1:11:53 And always jumping from the very specific detail problem to the big picture, how the thing feels, the overall feel, yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:12:00 Always jumping back and forth. What does it look like to the customer? How are we gonna implement it in the most, um, you know, efficient way? 'Cause, you know, a lot of the stuff you don't s- know is some of that stuff is hacked in, maybe hacked in at the end. It might- it- it- it may or may not be the most beautiful architecture that a geek would look at and go, "Oh my God, that's so beautiful." 'Cause we can look at and visualize this incredible software stack or hardware stack. Some of it could just be hacked in. 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.

Lex Fridman 1:12:35 Maybe this is a good moment to- to draw a distinction between design and engineering, and does such a distinction even exist? Are- are these distinct disciplines or no?

Tony Fadell 1:12:46 I don't think they're dis- distinct. I think they're different types of design. I think there's... You know, there's always this, you know, this idea of this, ooh, on the mount designer, and it all comes down and it all flows down like some magic.

Lex Fridman 1:13:01 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 1:13:01 It's not... There are electrical designer, there's AI designers, there is data scientist designers. Everybody has design. And there's a chapter in the book all about that actually. That it's not just...... you go to the mount and it comes down, and you're enlightened.

Lex Fridman 1:13:17 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:13:17 It's each person brings their f- their form of design and their craft 'cause what, if they're really good, they're artists in their own right. They're not just engineers, they're not just design, they're artists. They're empathetic. They really wanna bring their best. 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. They're the artists. They came from music or they came from other things, and they s- they see that, right? When you work with very rigid engineers, "This is the way, the only way," la la la, those are not the engineers I wanna work with.

Lex Fridman 1:13:52 They're all, like, a bit artists at heart.

Tony Fadell 1:13:54 Right. They, they, they understand the practical practicalness.

Lex Fridman 1:13:59 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:13:59 They, they don't have to have the rigidity of, "This is the way it's done." You know, like,

Tony Fadell 1:14:04 mm-mm. Where if you're building something new, all new and revolutionary, none of us are experts at it. And if you come with that expert mindset, just tell me, and I can give you a story. I should probably give you that story, um-

Lex Fridman 1:14:17 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 1:14:18 ... 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.

Lex Fridman 1:14:25 Hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:14:25 Because we all are learning about something that has never been in existence before, and we have to bring that level of vulnerability and openness to new ideas and new ways of doing things throughout the team.

Lex Fridman 1:14:39 So, you want people that are able to have, like, beginner's mind or whatever, like-

Tony Fadell 1:14:44 Beginner's mind.

Lex Fridman 1:14:44 ... don't, don't come in as an expert. What's the story?

Tony Fadell 1:14:47 Okay, here's a story.

Lex Fridman 1:14:47 You're not allowed the... Okay, all right.

Tony Fadell 1:14:48 No, I, I can tell it, for sure.

Lex Fridman 1:14:49 All right.

Tony Fadell 1:14:51 So, (laughs) so, you know, you asked what were these risks, you know, like on the early iPod, and there's o- there was, there was a few big risks. Like, one, and this, this doesn't go in the story, but, like, putting rotating media in your pocket and it could drop at any time-

Lex Fridman 1:15:05 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:15:06 ... what happens there? And, like, you can damage, 'cause the heads and the hard drive media are so close, it smacks, the... It's dead, right?

Lex Fridman 1:15:13 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:15:13 So, that was one big one, like, is, holy shit, right?

Lex Fridman 1:15:16 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 1:15:16 So that was something we, and we had to design special tests and everything and special software on that. But then there was another one which was, at the early days, the way the first generations of iPods, I had to hack the, I had to hack the IDE interface to the hard drives.

Lex Fridman 1:15:32 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:15:33 So I was like, "Okay, what we're gonna use is we're gonna use this chip for hard drive, um, um, hard drive..." To make a hard drive, you had to have a chip that did FireWire to a hard drive.

Lex Fridman 1:15:43 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:15:43 Okay? And then that would become a portable hard drive. Well, then there... We had a, a, uh, um, we had the MP3 player and, and the user interface and everything. So, there was times when it was just this hard drive, and there was times when it was a MP3 player, and I had to hot switch between-

Lex Fridman 1:16:00 (laughs)

Tony Fadell 1:16:00 ... wi- w- what the hard drive thinks it was talking to.

Lex Fridman 1:16:03 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:16:03 Right? So, designed this thing, tore it apart, da-da, all this stuff, and I was like, "You know, maybe I'm gonna screw up IDE. I'm, there's something, there's some holes I'm gonna see."

Lex Fridman 1:16:12 Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:16:13 So, I go, "Who's the expert at Apple who understands IDE and everything?" So, this person comes over, the mass storage specialist comes over, and I put on the whiteboard and said, "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." He's like, "That's never gonna work."

Lex Fridman 1:16:30 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:16:31 And I was like, "What?" He goes, "Never gonna work." I said, "Well, let me go over here and show you this right here. I have it prototyped and it's been working for days. I just wanted to see if you were gonna have it find any holes in the thing."

Lex Fridman 1:16:41 Right.

Tony Fadell 1:16:42 Didn't even, di- and he just stormed out of the room and never, never even-

Lex Fridman 1:16:45 Yeah.

Tony Fadell 1:16:46 ... right?

Lex Fridman 1:16:46 That's hilarious. I've had a lot of experience like this with experts. Like, uh, for example, this ridiculous room. Um, I had, uh, I had a person, and there's many people like this, that I, I showed them, "Here's the situation." You know, it seems to be-

Tony Fadell 1:17:03 For acoustics or something?

Lex Fridman 1:17:04 For acoustics, yeah. They're like, "N- n- n- no. This is horrible."

Tony Fadell 1:17:07 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:17:08 "This does, this, this does not, this is not gonna work. The reflection, the c- the curtains are not gonna stop. Uh, the refle..." There's a bunch of terminology they were telling me. Um, it's a similar kind of situation as the IDE, which b- I was like, "No, I, l- listen. (laughs) I just need to see, is there major issues?" And they're like, "Oh, low-hanging fruit that are fixable and major holes I should be aware of," not like, "Let's, let's-"

Tony Fadell 1:17:33 $100,000 to upgrade.

Lex Fridman 1:17:35 To upgrade for what exact purpose? The-

Tony Fadell 1:17:38 What, not why.

Lex Fridman 1:17:39 Y- yeah, exactly, exactly. The why, the focusing on the, on the story, on the content, on the, the, the why, the why, the why. And that, that actually, I've experienced that, unfortunately, in the artistic realms too, which is, like, photography and videography, cinematography. Uh, it's interesting. I talk to photographers that are, quote-unquote, experts, and it's always about the... So much of the focus is on the equipment. Mm-hmm.

Tony Fadell 1:18:08 The equipment behind the sensors and the lighting.

Lex Fridman 1:18:12 The what.

Tony Fadell 1:18:12 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:18:12 And it's like, "All right, all right." But, um, what about, what about the feeling of the story you create visually?

Tony Fadell 1:18:25 Mm-hmm. The difference between a, a s- a movie that's really well told 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 g- and CGI, right?

Lex Fridman 1:18:41 Well, that's, that's right. And that, and, and there's also value to the, to, to those, right? CGI-

Tony Fadell 1:18:47 Oh, sure.

Lex Fridman 1:18:47 ... uh, superhero.

Tony Fadell 1:18:48 Can tell a better story, but you have to have a good story to begin with.

Lex Fridman 1:18:51 Sure, exactly. But it, it, it's, if you're focused on the story, I guess you need to start with the story. You need to f- start at the story, and if you bring in experts, they can often be, uh, detrimental, I guess, to the why. They're, they're too good at doing the what. (laughs)

Tony Fadell 1:19:09 Well, w- you can bring in experts for why. There's lots of experts for why. Too many times, we get experts for what. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:16 (laughs) Yes.

Tony Fadell 1:19:17 And then they only focus