Father of the iPod and iPhone on building taste, judgment, and creativity in the AI era | Tony Fadell

24:18But that was the crazy opinion-based decision was, okay, yes, it's going to cost$249, but it's going to save you$800 to$1 ,200 a year. So it could pay for itself literally within a year or two. So that was the big idea. And AI was brought to bear on that old problem. And hopefully solve it in a new way. So it starts with the pain, long-time pain, maybe habituated away pain that you have to discover, and new technology bonded with that to then bring innovation in, revolution in, and then redefine the space in a way, which is what we did, which is not with just the product, but how you installed it.

25:00It was always installed by third-party installers as opposed to yourself. How you bought it, which was you bought it through the installer, You didn't buy it in Best Buy or somewhere else. So we had to reinvent many different pieces of the puzzle to get Nest to be the Nest. It wasn't just the product. It was all the other things. Just like the iPod wasn't the iPod or the iPhone wasn't the iPhone. It was the iPhone plus the App Store, iTunes plus iTunes, iPod plus iTunes, and then the iTunes Music Store. So you have to think about the full thing you're trying to build, not just the one piece, even though that's what you might remember.

25:43You have to remember it's a system that you're going to innovate with.

25:47Tony Fadell:So these two-part kind of formula you shared here, the pain and new technologies. The second part is really interesting. Essentially, it's like, what's the why now? What's like the new tech that has emerged that now allows us to solve this pain? It feels like that's a core part of it. Okay. It's because it's interesting because when you talked about the iPhone keyboard, it was a similar story of like, okay, hey, we can actually sort of do this virtual keyboard for the first time in history. Right, exactly. It could be because of multi-touch. That's really what it was. And then we were just on the verge of having fast enough processors, right?

26:17And we were just on the verge. So it wasn't, you know, if you look at the iPhone or you would Nest, iPhone or iPod, you can see where all these technologies were just coming to light. So in the iPod, it was just now mass storage that was portable and battery operated. That was really what it was. And it was also MP3s or digital music, right? Those were kind of, and we also had high density. We were the first products to have lithium ion or lithium prismatic polymer cells. So it was new battery technology, new mass storage, portable mass storage, and this new generation of digital music. And we had ARM processors, right?

26:59And really, really low power. So all of those things had to come together to do that. um and then on the iphone it was the it was multi-touch but it wasn't just that it was also the fact that now we had wi-fi everywhere and we knew that 3g was coming because we always only two and a half g when that was and that was very slow but we had wi-fi so it was and we had cameras right digital cameras we had the digital camera we had digital video which was we had youtube at the time so it was all of those things just on the verge to say this is what's going to be very different than what just came before it, like a BlackBerry, which was really just a texting machine and nothing else.

27:38Tony Fadell:I'm going to close the loop on your advice on finding a great idea. I'm curious about kind of the flip side of when it's still, when it's not good enough. So there's like so many gadgets out there that are solving some pain level. Maybe there's a new technology that they integrated, but they're still, like, it's not a big business. It's not a real company. What's kind of, what's the threshold? What's like a sign of, okay, this isn't big enough? Well, you know, the iPod wasn't big enough. it took three generations the ipod before it became successful everyone you know well every anyone who knows you know if they remember ipod before iphone because iphone swallowed everything it's like the black hole of everything but you know ipod the first generation was only successful with the mac geeks and the mac geeks were less than one percent of the market and then the second generation was also that way so when we we get we we'd sell everything we'd sell everything we could for the most part in the first quarter and then it would die because it was just the mac aficionados the loyalists who'd come and buy everything and it wasn't until the third generation where we made it work on windows did it actually and we had the itunes music store did it actually start to take off so sometimes you have to say we're on the right thing but we need to make some changes to get this market going and that was a real opinion-based decision to you know we the team at the team uh um that i was running we were really clear that we had to have windows connectivity out of the gate or not out of the gate but just after the first ipod shift and steve said over my dead body no way this is going to help us sell more macs so and then and then you know we're like okay we're making the second one oh we're going to keep it with mac only we just got to fix a few of these things and then all of a sudden it'll take off and it was like it didn't take off so then it was a long story about how that about how we finally got windows connectivity but there was always this skunkworks thing project behind the scenes doing that i did the same thing with um stylus steve never wanted a stylus on the iphone or the ipad he never wanted he never wanted it he's like the finger is good enough when we can't do it with the finger it's like and i'm like we're gonna have the b2b context and we're gonna have form spilling and people are gonna write and and he's like i don't care that means we're gonna get to like windows pen because he thought it was gonna be like windows pen which was you had to use the pen for everything as opposed to using your finger so it was like i want it instead of pen dominant i want a finger dominant but that's what he was saying but then when we added the stylus which was another skunk works project all of a sudden it came out it was like well we had to have stylus Right.

30:14And now it's a big feature of the product. Not everyone uses it, but it is a big feature for certain professionals who really want that in artists and hobbyists and stuff. And so sometimes you have to have those skunk works things that even if the opinion based leader doesn't like it, you're like, that seems like the right thing. Maybe not right now, but it's going you can see it on the horizon. So you just keep working on those things. so but we had to like i said the the iphone wasn't a hit right away it was kind of like a oh yeah i worked on at &t and it was two and a half g and it was this and that and you know it did it only worked in the u.s so we had to get multiple versions till we got out and that's in in my book i have the and uh it's called um a three i think it's three generations everything needs three generations bill there it is three generations i've i've learned you make the product you fix the product then you fix the business so you have there's no i i've never seen anyone get it all right the first time like you want you would like to but you get close but make the product fix the product after you get customer feedback and then make the business which means make the margins like on the first ipods we weren't making any money first iphones we weren't making any money right the second iphone or sain second ipod okay we started getting a little bit better numbers but we got more or less the features sort of dialed third one was like okay windows we got the margins we're getting up the volume we got all the right and like go right reliability whatever else it had to be so you need to stick with your idea even if it's not necessarily going the first time unless there's something really severely your brain damaged about whatever it was you have to restart but sometimes you have to hang in there and same thing with nest We had to hang in there with two generations of the smoke detector and a few generations of the thermostat before we made the business work, right?

32:14Not just make the product work.

32:16Tony Fadell:There's so many directions I can go here. One that's interesting is how often Steve Jobs was actually wrong. Oh, yeah. How many times you had to, you're like, takes years to like, okay, finally. We all were wrong at certain times. But, you know, it's when you hit those, when you hit it big, when you get the right ones, they overshadow all the other stuff. But that's how you have to try and iterate. You know, Jeff Bezos says the same thing. I believe in the same thing. You got to fail a few times till you get to, till you find your way. And, and, but you only fail if you stop. If you keep iterating, keep going, well, then that's not failure.

32:53That's called learning.

32:53Tony Fadell:The other interesting part of the story you just shared here, which was one of my favorite stories in your book, actually, the fact you, you kind of implied this, but basically the first iPod was, you had to have a Mac to use it. and ideas. You want to sell Macs. This is a way to get people to buy Macs. And the way you tell it is basically this ended up saving Apple eventually. Not selling Macs, but people buying iPods. And that became the big part of the business. Yeah, the mantra was, Steve, if we don't have Windows connectivity, the iPod doesn't cost$349. It costs$3 ,000 because you've got to buy a Mac and you've got to move all your digital life over to it and everything else.

33:31people are not about to take a risk on this company that's almost bankrupt for three thousand dollars so how are we going to do that like okay let's make sure it is only three hundred and forty nine dollars and that they can try it and once they try the brand they go oh that's pretty interesting maybe i should try other products from this company and give you know give them a shot because that was just such a sublime experience and that's how it you know it all changed and And that's how iPhone was able to be created because without the iPod, I'm pretty sure there would have been no iPhone. There would have probably been no Apple because it was close to bankruptcy.

34:07Tony Fadell:Wow. That's crazy how close it was to that if some of these decisions went the wrong way. Yeah, very close. Remember, there was no retail back then, Apple retailers, none of that stuff. Most people don't know how on the ropes Apple was back in 2001. So many stories, but I want to come back to the customer journey thread that you touched on, which I think is really, really important for people listening to this podcast to hear. Something that you kind of reinforce again and again in the book. And you have this awesome image that we're going to show of the entire customer journey. And the kind of your point that you make is so many product builders focus on building the product and think, build the best product, we're going to win.

34:45Tony Fadell:And you have this very important advice of there's so much more to it. Talk about, especially the marketing piece, talk about what you think builders don't really get, even though they hear this advice in many ways. When we build products, we define products when we build them. We have a good sense of the context when we are defining those things. We are living in that world, okay? And so we're like, oh, we're like this and these are our issues and this is who we are. And, you know, maybe you put on personas. You know, we would strip out and figure out who our target customers were with their personas.

35:20You know, is it a single mom with kids or is it a dual income, no kid family or is it senior citizens or whatever? And we would come up with these personas and we would kind of live inside them as we're thinking about the product. But you have to also remember that these people don't live in those that they live in the context, but they're not aware of your product in their context. And so you have to bring it home to them and meet them where they are. And so your marketing, your website, your Instagram ads, your whatever, your earned and owned media that you do, you really need to put your product in their context and make the visuals and make the words and everything sing to them.

36:10and if not they're not going to get it right and so too many times we just say oh if we just make the perfect product no you have to put all for a consumer thing specifically and it's it's also really good for a b2b product as well is make sure you understand your customer and they go you know and when you say the right word they go oh they get me oh i want to listen to these more and this is before they ever got the product you need to get them to convert in some way and they need to hear that you've already thought about their issues or you know and you're living in their shoes and they're like, yes, yes, yes, more of that.

36:44Is this an emotional point? Is this a rational point? And you're weaving this tapestry to get them to come to some kind of trial or purchase or conversion or something of the product. And the best way to do that is word of mouth, right by other early adopters but you got to do the same thing for the early you know i mean not the earliest early adopters but the early adopters who other people trust to talk to because a lot of other people who are late adopters they know oh that's that that's wacky george he tries everything and then like no no no but if so-and-so's tried it oh i should take notice to that right and so what you want to do is make sure you understand your the gestation of your customer and where they are and where they are in the thing and who who you're trying to i i also updated the cross the chasm uh you know crossing the chasm graphic um in the book saying how we go about this in our in in in in uh in your product developments because you really have to think about who your target user set is and your target marketing based on the version of product you're in and how you're going to get those higher and higher volumes and you and it really means about speaking the context.

38:01So maybe when you first ship, you can speak to those early adopters and you can put it in enough words that they're going to convert. But then the second version of the product, you're getting these narrow later adopters and you've got to speak in their language. And you and the third set adopters who are really laggards, you've got to really speak to them and, you know, go through that. And it could be totally different. And so this was this was a very interesting story that it was so emblazoned in my mind. Back in 2001, 2003, still when Apple had no presence outside of the US, Apple was really, it was selling in the US, some Canada and some in Japan, but that was it.

38:43And that was the max. So we were selling iPods into those areas. and so we had the kind of the early adopter and then we had some other language and then and by the third fourth version of ipod we had some really refined language for those kind of late adopters so then we said we're going to go back and get a push into europe we're going to get we're going to get because ipod hadn't taken off in europe so we're going to push you we're going to push ipod into europe and so we're on i think the fourth generation or something like that And so what did we do in Europe? We ran the same marketing as we were doing in the U.S.

39:25in Europe. And the thing is, it didn't resonate with the early adopters. It didn't resonate with the later adopters because we didn't have the same messages. We were going for a different set of people. And we're like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Sales aren't working. We got to change the marketing. We got to meet those Europeans where they're at because they're slower to adopt technology versus it starts with the coast and goes inward in the U.S., right? And so we're like, oh, we got to change things up. And so, you know, sometimes it's when you get to new areas, you have to rethink your marketing for that area and remember to meet them where they're at and where the – if it doesn't have an installed base for word of mouth, you're going to have to get that word of mouth started.

40:08to work with those people to get that going. Now, it's different with all software products and all these things, and many products can go global right away. But marketing, you still got to tell a story. And you got to, you know, so it just reminds me that even though we've maybe compressed the time for some pieces of the adoption puzzle, you know, because we can distribute faster, doesn't mean we can, the awareness can get accelerated and that we can get people to intelligently understand with this product faster, faster if we just say the words of somebody who might have known about the product for three years.

40:53Tony Fadell:I got to ask about maybe the most famous, I don't know, tagline of all time when a product was launched, a thousand songs in your pocket. Songs in your pocket. Is there a story behind that? back in the day at apple and i think it's still that maybe it's changed now but back in the steve days there was the different functions of apple and because they were all lean because the company was only 4 000 5 000 people and it was already doing max and everything each function was kind of very very functional and so the marketing the marketing didn't get into the engineering and the design folks it was like separate like steve was the it was the hub and he was in each of them putting them together like i said the the uh the um you know opinion based decision maker and so when we heard the tagline for the first time i was like that's genius now how long that happened, what was the behind the scenes.

41:55We were just a tiny team. We were getting this done in 10 months. So everybody was just running for it, right? Versus iPhone, which we had discussions of, should we call it the iPod phone or should we call it the iPhone? Because Cisco had the iPhone back in the day and there was copyright issues and trademark issues. So we were into that because it was also a two and a half year development and we were in SOM and it was betting the farm and we were going to cannibalize iPod, right? So there was a lot more discussions, but in those early days of thousand songs,

42:26Tony Fadell:it was everybody running in literally not, it less than, it was really five to six months everything got done. Cause we really started it in April and it shipped in end of October. So I think one of the core takeaways from what you shared here is even if you may have the perfect product, the marketing may be the gap that if something isn't working, it may. absolutely and and the thing is i think i think we're starting to see that the cracks of it uh it might be more than cracks now with like open ai what is it it's like oh it's your answer machine whatever you're like well what does it do for me and now i gotta keep paying you like it was fun as a demo and if i but what am i using it for every day and like oh claude it does claude code and it does you know code you know and then what happens open is like oh we have codex now but then And they were Sora and they were, you know, this and they were that.

43:24We're going to do sex chat. We're going to like, what are you? And so it's like, oh, yeah, you're the great first, you know, like Netscape. Everyone went out and bought Netscape Explorer or whatever it was called. Like Netscape Navigator. And then all of a sudden it evaporated. Like, well, what do I use the net for? Like, I got the tool to get onto it, but what do I use it for daily? And it had to develop. And so OpenAI is now shifting like, oh, we got to get product teams and we got to start about product marketing we gotta so so you know that is to me that's it's marketing but if you start if you are already thinking about the marketing you're already going to start thinking about the product and that's the thing is when you're just thinking about the product you're like and it was really just a technology demo that went you know viral and they're like oh yeah and they still keep winning on that they never put product in till it was too late now anthropics where they are and valued more and higher revenue and all the other stuff.

44:18So, you know, it just, it just, even if it's a software only product, yes, there's lots of hardware and servers and all that other stuff. You need to think holistically and you need to think about the entire customer journey, the marketing, the, you know, the sales pieces, the distribution pieces, the product definition piece, the messaging, the target markets early on. You can't leave it till later and then get it yeah and then back calculate it and that's why i say you should you know you should really make the press release before you you before you more or less start the

44:52Tony Fadell:project yeah there's a whole chapter on that uh we had the found the um like amazon's also very famous for that this whole book on working backwards that goes really deep on this approach but the weird thing is it's working backwards see that the the thing saying working backwards i would a movie be created that way is it called working backwards when you say i'm going to make a script and I'm making a treatment and I'm going to really know what it is. I'm going to know what my characters are and how I do character development. Like, is that really working backwards? It sounds like it's backwards.

45:19It's like, no, that's the way you do it. It's just because it's so technology led and technologist. And this is what I thought when I was 20. I was like, yeah, we're, you know, now it sounds backwards. It's actually, no, that's actually insane. It's not working backwards. It's just an insane way of working. Like, come on, let's really think through this.

45:39Tony Fadell:It says so much that you as one of the, I don't know, most successful, insightful builders are so into marketing. I think that's a really important takeaway for people, just how obsessed you are with that piece of building that I think a lot of builders don't think about at all. Well, when you live in that world and you live in the customer, because you're coming from a customer point of view. So you have to see the lens and the customer only sees what they see through the lens of marketing and sales, right? And so you have to be in their shoes and you go, okay, like when I do the press release, I can only have three or four key features.

46:14After that, it becomes gobbledygook for a customer. So you're like, okay, what are those three or four things? Okay, what is that? That's what we're going to focus on. And so, no, we're not going to add five more features. That's not going to make it sell better, right? Or, oh no, we're going to cut these two features and ship it. It's like, well, wait a second. We cut out two of our three key tentpole features. How are we going to sell that anymore? So it's a holistic design. It's not, you know, like, because we think the technology, the technology's in service of the customer, not we're going to jam the technology down the customer's throat and they're going to figure out how to use it.

46:52There's too much noise. You've got to make it frictionless and you've got to fit it in their world and see from their point of view, go, oh, that's why I need it. General magic was the perfect story for that. You know, I don't know if your viewers should definitely watch the movie General Magic because we made the iPhone 15 years too early. And that was a classic case where we were just making the things that were really cool and nobody needed it.

47:14Tony Fadell:Yeah, that documentary is incredible. It's like such a very young version of you. Yeah, very different. People won't recognize me. Yeah, you have a whole chapter about just like not overworking in your career based on that experience. Which General Magic was for me. Yeah. I am so excited to tell you about this season's supporting sponsor, Vanta. Vanta helps over 15 ,000 companies like Cursor, Ramp, Duolingo, Snowflake, and Atlassian earn and prove trust with their customers. Teams are building and shipping products faster than ever thanks to AI. But as a result, the amount of risk being introduced into your product and your business is higher than it's ever been.

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48:31Tony Fadell:And as a listener of this podcast, you get$1 ,000 off Vanta. That's Vanta.com slash Lenny. I want to talk about something else around the evolution of the product management role and builders. What's really interesting, just kind of going in a different direction, but it's all connected. I feel like you were so ahead on this idea that we are builders versus product managers, engineers, design. Like I have your book right here. It's called Build. And this is what everyone's starting to call product managers, people on product teams. I'm curious just what you're seeing with this kind of merging of these roles.

49:06Tony Fadell:Do you feel like everyone just becomes a builder and there's no more designer, engineer, product manager? Do you think they'll continue being these functions but more merged? I don't know. What are you seeing with the discipline of product management specifically? Well, the discipline of product management sits between all of these functional roles, whether that's marketing, sales, distribution, sometimes manufacturing, depends on what the product is, engineering, obviously, and customer support. so when you sit between all of these things you know maybe those roles shift or change especially depending on what it is you're building and and that kind of thing but you have to interpret you know what's going on between all of them and stitch them all together to make this this thing sing and what we're saying and you know is oh i can just today in the ai world i can just make a prompt and all of a sudden it gets spit out and you don't know what all those little functions are.

50:11If you are not aware of each of those functions, even in the AI world of what those things are, they are very clear definitions of certain points of view for the customer and you have to consider them. And to say that they're going to get washed away and an AI is going to come up with it it reminds me a lot of how software coding is getting done with um like something like claude today you know i don't know maybe it was a month ago when the claude source code leaked right claude source code leaked and everybody's like oh my god it leaked and then if you and and at the time and i'm and me i don't maybe they changed it maybe they didn't but at the time dario was saying you know 90 to 100 of all our codes written by you know our you know claude and you know we just monitor it and watch it and we're like oh well that's really interesting and then the code leaks and then if you looked at the code anybody who looked at the code who's a real software architect and engineer threw up they were like it made what they're like this stuff is brittle engineers we're looking at like this should be layered in four or five you know actually 12 or 15 different sub functions this is the main loop of of of of anthropics clod the main loop not not just something off in the this is the main loop and people are like how can you do this this looks brittle there's like it's unreadable it's and they're like well the ai knows it but when you think about it and you have to maintain it You can have an agent make code for you and it could work and it could test, but is it secure?

52:00Is it maintainable? If there's something going wrong, can you roll things back and understand what's going on? Like there's so many other aspects to writing code and delivering a product thing that you still need humans in the loop. And so when I think of product design, I think of software code with AI. and when you look at AI and if it's not architecting things and it's not segmenting things and looking at each of those things, like I was saying, you know, like there's software architects and then there's software optimizers and then there's just general coders and then there's security reviews.

52:35And if you don't have those different mixture of experts around the code structuring it so that subsequent generations can get better and better and it just kind of devolves into this mass of things you don't know, you're getting short-term gain for very, very long-term laws. And that's, you know, that's called software debt, right? Technical debt. Everybody hates technical debt. So it might be fixing something, but it might, it most likely is giving more technical debt, especially when you're at the high level. So now how does that map to product management? So if you're a product manager and you type this in and you get some results, but you don't have a really good marketer, a really good marketing communications person, a really good salesperson, a really good channel salesperson, a really good architect, a really good manufacturing manager, all these different things in this thing that you're getting.

53:31you're not going to be able you might be able to make the first one but when you go to version five six how does that work you're building on a a really crusty foundation and people are like well my ai is going to be smarter it's not proven to do that what's proven is if you properly architected and have code claude code go into certain sub segments or have claude help you build the architecture you modify refine it lock it in and say just work on these few things and you know when these more limited scoped things yeah you can make that work and i think that's the way we have to consider how we use these tools in a product management capability as well to just say it's all abstract away it's all going to be better and when you ask specific pointed questions you want this thing fixed in your marketing thing or whatever and then they're going to like well I should just figure that out too.

54:20It's like you have given up so much. Like that's to me, sure. You can write code, but there's going to be the difference between, you know, it's like the difference between H and M and a luxury brand. You can go get certain things that look like that and copies that and like edit, but it doesn't last more than one washing or one season. And it's this, and you throw it away and it's cheap and blah, blah, blah. Or you go to the luxury thing and you pay more and it's crafted, it's handcrafted, it's da-da-da-da-da. And you know it's going to be around for a while. There is this dichotomy of fast and throwaway.

54:55So it's called fast fashion. We've got fast software. But software, if you're going to build a real company, can't be throwaway. Maybe it can, but I don't think it can be if you're really going to do this because you get just technical debt and you've got to start over again. So you've got to really understand how you're using these tools. And a lot of these things that these AI coders can do, agent coders can do, can make you incredible prototypes. Do more prototypes, do more of those things to help you get that informed gut to say, we're going this direction, architect that in, and then work on the sub-segments below it and all the expert systems, expert things that you need in each of those domains.

55:34Yeah.

55:34Tony Fadell:And I think what you may also be saying here, which I think is really, really important, is that because it's so easy to build, people can just build all these features and additions and the value accrues to build something awesome and the product mind becomes more important to help push this stuff from just a sloppy every feature every checkbox to something awesome that people actually use because at the end of the day if you're building it for yourself whatever go have fun but if you're going to build it and you want to sell it and like you know and you only need three key features to sell it to someone like it's going to have to be boiled down it's going have to be figured out because you're still selling it to a human who needs to understand it now do you think you could vibe code flighty probably maybe now that flighty exists you could copy this like you could do version two of flighty maybe vibe coding because you say look at flighty but the original flighty like that's to me that's luxury software.

56:36Right? It was understood how the pixels are done. So you've got to remember, is it version one? Or is it version two, three, four? Because an opinion-based thing on highly innovative, differentiated stuff, it doesn't have a model for that. There's not that stuff in there. You still need the version one to be done. So maybe you can prototype with these things. So I just, you know, I could go on for hours, but whatever. That's just one old guy's point of view.

57:02Tony Fadell:I think it's really important, this insight, that as it becomes easier to build, the things that stand out are the things that are really well thought through and great and luxury, almost as you described. And you can feel it, right? And you go, oh, my God. You know, I'm like one of the biggest proponents. I'm like telling him, flighty, flighty. Because, you know, all the people in my sphere, they're all flagging. I'm like, have you tried it? It's insane, you know. so it's you know and then you get the word of mouth and you know things take up because there has been that level of care and craft to it and yeah maybe a lot of the sub functions of flighty could be built and whatever from cloud code or whatever but the whole thing and the architecture and everything i don't think so and if someone hasn't tried flighty clearly downloaded and play with it uh this is yeah i love that this is the example of an amazing product that's like a really cool.

57:57Tony Fadell:Yeah. And it's all software. It's all software. Yeah. Something along these lines, as people hear you talk, clearly you are an amazing storyteller. And in your book, you often come back to the power of storytelling, the value of storytelling for product builders. What's, I guess one is just, why is that so important? Do you think? And two is what's like one tip you could give people to get better at storytelling? Storytelling. That's how we passed information down or, or got people to commit to doing something like stories are so who we are we go to the movies for stories we have books we have all this stuff it's just so essential to who we are because we like to be taken on a journey we like to you know and hopefully when you're buying a product or you know licensing one or whatever it is you're subscribing you're taking on a journey that meets your expectations or out you know is better than the what do your you know your the expectations were set it's much it's outsized that and so you know dave chapelle is he just you know when it comes to comedy and storytelling the way he weaves it he can weave a story for 20 minutes to get to the punchline and you're just you're you know just in it right i just love his comedy as opposed to the punchline guys who just you know Sorry, excuse me, the short ones.

59:20It's something in our nature, human nature. You know, we were told stories when we were a kid. You know, we read the same or watched the same movies a hundred times when we were kids. There's something about being taken on that journey that we love. And people love to be educated that way, right? Your best college professors, high school teachers, whatever they taught you why you should love you know certain math or certain physics or whatever and took you a journey of why it mattered and you're like oh now i get it you know you can learn all the the basics of you know how to do something but that doesn't really tie it into something that's meaningful and so when you tie it to something that's human right that's when it becomes uh and accessible for humans and it's relatable that's when it goes and it can be for anything and that's when great marketing great sales um um happens you know and and great story telling through the product design that's even better right because it wasn't just perfuming this pig and you put some you know on this bad product and you say oh yeah try it and you're like oh and then it doesn't meet the expectations but when it sings from the depths of the product like you were bringing up with um you know the nest protect the thermostat or the the smoke detector itself.

1:00:40When we had all that and that you could feel the love and care, that's when people go, oh, I love this and I want more from that brand or from that company or that team. That's what they want. And so to get better at it, I've learned it because I watched my dad, he was in sales, right? So I watched how he would sell Levi's and I would watch and he would be like, and he wasn't always selling to sell. Sometimes he was convincing them not to buy something because that wasn't the best product they had. Buy this one instead. And actually, you go to my competitor down the street because he was building a relationship and storytelling because these people loved what it was.

1:01:17So it sometimes is not just setting expectations and telling a story, but it's also saying, hey, maybe I'm not for you. And that's truth. That's also truth. And so like Steve always said, the best marketing just tells the truth. Now, it might put nice words around it, nice creative and everything, but it's telling the truth. And so when I watched Steve prepare for, and like I said, when we did the two and a half years with the iPhone, he was honing the story of the iPhone every day. He didn't give it to marketing. He knew what that thing was and what those key features were, like we talked about, and micromanaged those features because he knew those were the things the world's going to take notice to.

1:02:03and he would refine the story and then tell other people who were unwashed by like friends who are really smart and say i'm going to give you the pitch and give you the pitch and he would refine refine refine and um and so when you saw him come on stage it was just because he had done it you know a hundred thousand times or at least ten thousand times right and he knew it like boom boom boom boom boom just it just came off and so i watched and learned from that and that's what we did for like the Nest Learning Thermostat. That's what we learned, you know, we did for each of those things. It was just that same storytelling over and over.

1:02:39What does it matter? Why does it matter? Why does it matter? And because too many times when we're technology led, we talk about the what. We don't talk about the why. And the why is where the storytelling is. Because you want to take a journey of why it matters to you. You know, if you're talking about the what, you're just talking to another geek. Love geeks. No problem. I'm one of them. And we can relate on that level. But general, most people who are not in the technology world, they want a story and they

1:03:11Tony Fadell:want something that touches them in some way. One lesson I'm hearing from what you just described is telling the story over and over and over and refining it over time is where the best stuff comes from, not just here. I just came up with this and it's going to be amazing. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Because you need, and telling it to other people who don't, to see if it resonates. I remember the number of times I told the Nest story before Nest came out, because I was like, this is crazy, this thermostat thing. You know, I'm like, okay, let me set up the virus of doubt, which was, do you know how much you spend on your energy bill every year for your heating and cooling?

1:03:47Don't you hate your, you know, thing? Now, there's another way, there's another way to look at the storytelling. and this is i put this in the book oh no i didn't put this in the book we all have seen infomercials right you know those ones that drag on for a half an hour an hour at late night tv you know on some random on every channel now right and they just sit there and they tell you the story from all the different directions they give you the virus of doubt they're like oh here's this cheese grater and you know when you you have this bad cheese grater you're and your knuckles bleed and you know whatever and it's hard to clean and and they over exaggerate everything and they show you all the pain points of it and then they show how wonderful easy it is to use in this whatever they're selling and then it's easy to buy and then it's easy to return and it's overly dramatic and we all know you know it's like wrestling it's all an act and whatever or it's not, you know, there's probably no realness there.

1:04:47But it is storytelling in a way. And not that you should do that because they overhype the expectations, but look at the techniques that are used, the psychological techniques, the emotional techniques to get there, and then dial it back and go, okay, I'm going to do that, but with truth. And that's when things start to go pop, pop, pop, pop. Or at least that's what I've seen. And so I always use that as another metric. It is not just telling the story over and over. It's what story you are telling. And so I try to think of that as well. But not obviously clowny and cheesy and everything else.

1:05:22But it is a caricature of doing good marketing.

1:05:26Tony Fadell:I feel like this is a really interesting lens into the press release first or working backwards idea is create the infomercial first and just go extreme. Sure, you could. Oh, my God. No, which you don't want to do for sure. But it's like a cool lens to go really far and then kind of pull back the best parts and make it honest. I think we just came up with a really good idea here. I want to come back to the iPhone. So I think it came out like 20 years ago, almost at this point, right? It launched 27, 2007. Yeah, 2007. So what's crazy is people are still trying to build the next iPhone, especially with AI.

1:06:01Tony Fadell:Everyone's just like, we've had this thing forever. What the hell? Why has nothing changed? I'm curious. I imagine people ask you this question. I'm curious just like what you think the next iPhone may look like with AI. What's like the device that you think emerges over time? You have vision. Okay. There's the, what it could look like long-term and there's what it could look like soon. And so a lot of people like, okay, there's the long-term thing. And, and when we can trust the models and when they have memory and when they do this stuff, then we're still going to need a display because, sorry, people, unless we're plugging it into our brain like a bci brain computer or there's some laser thing going into our retina we're going to need a display so so barring those kinds of technologies we're going to need a display and so the best display that we have is a smartphone like thing okay it's not going to be this tiny thing we saw what happened with humane all that so you're going to have some kind of Because the best way to visualize visual information is with a display, right?

1:07:09So we're going to have some kind of small slab. Maybe it's foldable like we see today, whatever, so that you can access it. Maybe many things you don't need a display for, but a lot of things you still do, right? Because you might not be tapping and swiping and all this stuff. so i am of the opinion that long term if you look at how a device is layered today and this is many many devices and iphone specifically started this which was you know tapping and swiping right that was that was the first thing is you know you use your finger then after that was keyboard. And then after that, the tertiary thing was a voice input.

1:07:59We need to flip it. We need to absolutely flip it. And we have to say, and this is what I always wanted to do at Nest, which is I want to remove displays and we need to have voice as the number one primary feature and you build around voice. then we have keyboard if necessary, and then we have tapping and swiping, okay? It should go exactly the opposite. And the problem why most of us don't go around talking to our phones and everything, and we saw this also happen with cars, there was tactile buttons, and then there was the touchscreens, and then they also added the voice in. But nobody really uses voice in the car unless it's some accessibility thing, right?

1:08:43Because voice was always added at the end because it was always like, well it sort of works and it's it's a gizmo but it's you know it's like a like alexa was for version 1.0 or siri was but but when we actually have really good voice input with not just it understand it's like whisper flow or something because that's great what i'm saying is the intelligence behind it with memory and everything else so it's then we can start to say and and uh We can start to use that much more specifically and then deprecate those other things. But we've always had to have them there as a crutch for voice because voice has never been able to deliver.

1:09:25So that's the long-term thing. So it'll have some kind of display, but it's going to be much more voice primary, and then you're going to have the other things as secondary and tertiary. In the middle now, or sometimes soon, it's going to look much, much like the smartphone is because we're not going to get away from the all app interface anytime soon. We're not going to get, you know, we're going to remove some things, but we don't trust it yet. It's going to take a while till we trust it. And we are literally turning over a lot to this trusted thing, right? Because tapping and swiping, we know what that is for the most part.

1:10:03We know that we can trust ourselves when we're tapping and keyboarding or whatever. This other thing we don't know. And so it's going to take a lot of time. It reminds me of kind of general magic in a way for us to be able to get en masse to trust it. And we're already seeing this with coding agents and everything else. You know, oh, they deleted my source code. And again, I'm not trying to be an old guy who's saying it's not going to work. Sure, it's going to work in certain things. I'm saying for consumers every day and the things they want. And it's cheap enough so it doesn't cost them a lot.

1:10:35Right? Today, people are like, yeah, I'm going to try ChatGPT or whatever. It's$20 a month or$200 a month. that is unsustainable for if you think consumers are going to pay that there's just no way unless it's incredible but they're not gonna do you know what i mean like they tried it and now they're getting kind of their siri a lot of them are getting their siri 1.0 with this like i paid for it but it's really not all that yet and it's like full self-driving i paid for full self-driving It's 15 years later. I'm still waiting for full self-driving. So I think we, again, understand what we think we want, but where the technology is and the social adoption and the social trust that needs to be created around that is going to take a lot of time.

1:11:21It's going to take a lot of iterations to get there, especially if you're going to have to pay for it.

1:11:26Tony Fadell:It's really interesting to hear you say that long-term, even we're going to need a screen. Because I think a lot of people are trying to go to just like an AirPod or like some kind of magical AI. How are you going to look at a map? If you want to look at a map, you're going to just, you're going to listen, like put on the voice stuff in your car and never look at the map on your car and say, oh, turn left in 200 feet. Turn left in 100 feet. You're like, shut up. I can't hear you anymore. Like I just want to glance over. So I don't buy it. Like unless you have it jacked into your brain or into your eye or some other way, it's getting into your cortex.

1:11:58Tony Fadell:That is so interesting. And you're not a fan of like the humane approach. I think it was like a little projection on your hand as a screen replacement right yeah why what it's just it it it's different not better so funny i guess the advantage obviously is it's like a small little device you could just put somewhere versus like a screen but yeah yeah and you're like oh it's like you know it's like uh the the hologram projections of star wars or something you're like yeah that's cool but you still need to you still need a you know a screen or something to you to project on so it is a screen at the end of the day you got to still project it onto something yeah it's well because everyone keeps saying how is it possible that the end ideal product is a piece of glass that we look at and you're what you're sharing here is just like that's actually maybe the ideal product and like i said you fold it up you put it in your thing and it rolls out or whatever else but i still think there's going to be that thing if you look at her if you remember the movie her they had they had glass there was glass there for certain for certain things wow and i completely yeah you have to go back and watch the movie it's there oh my god that movie i nailed it oh man go spike spike spike jones right yep um i wanted to ask also just it's interesting that basically everyone is getting to hardware now it's like you've been at this for so long building hardware in ai and And now it's just like the hottest thing.

1:13:26Tony Fadell:Everyone's building hardware. So funny. Thoughts? I don't know. How does that feel? Look, I was building hardware when it wasn't in vogue in 1995 and 96. Everyone's like, Tony, you're in this was in the Valley. Tony, you're crazy. It's all about the Internet. We don't need any hardware. And then iPod comes like and I was pitching new businesses in 99 and 2000. Like, well, that's the stupidest idea ever. Then the iPod comes out. Tony, you want to leave Apple and start that business you wanted to do with hardware? you know and then and then it was like yeah okay then it was all software mobile stuff again like okay we don't need anything because but we we can't get to the next level of software if we don't make the next level of hardware and it has to the revolution has to happen completely like you got to have the mobile network and the mobile network software for the mobile network to work you had to have the mp3 player and the mp3 you know format bits to make that work we're seeing with AI, we got to have AI plus all the data centers and edge compute to make that work.

1:14:29So, and then over time, the hardware becomes less, it becomes more mundane. Like, okay, it doesn't change as much, but all the software starts to then, you know, great. So I've always just been continually going through the things that I love to do and doing the things that the, the, the, the, the full stack level, because that's where I know is innovation. That's what We had to do it Nest. We had to innovate at the software level, the hardware level, the network level to get the first thermostat out and then the Nest Protect and all that stuff. If we look now going on, people are like, if you're a SaaS company or if you're a software-only company, your software company is worthless because anyone can vibe-code it into the thing.

1:15:12And they're like, we're only funding companies that have atoms in their business plan with software. I'm like, duh. Like, where have you guys been? So it's just funny to watch these cycles go and happen. And it's like, okay, all right, you guys can go chase your tails. I'm going to just keep here doing these full system kind of products and businesses. Yes, they're a lot harder. And yes, they cost more money. And yes, they're going to take longer to scale and adopt and blah, blah, blah. But they have staying power for years, right? and and they bring and they bring new new features that you could have never had if you just did software only because you need especially let's say in robotics i mean you need new sensors and you knew this and that what have you right look at waymo you know it's like it's an electric car what you know electric car with tons of sensors and and everything it was it's a hardware platform maybe it doesn't look as streamlined as maybe a smartphone but it's an incredible hardware platform with an incredible software platform and that is something that we're going to be able to innovate on and it'll become a platform for something else i'm sure you know delivery or

1:16:17Tony Fadell:this or whatever else when evan spiegel's on the podcast snapchat founder he said exactly this this is why they're they've spent so much money on these specs and he's just like this is the only way to survive in software is you need to have a hardware component now yeah just very interesting everything old is new again and and and you know i've been in this game 35 40 years i just you just see it. You're like, okay, I was there at 99 when the bottom fell out. And, you know, AI is different, but it's, there's a lot of similarities and, you know, we're going to have the gen one companies, the gen two companies.

1:16:50And, you know, when people really understand product instead of selling technology platforms that people have to figure out for themselves. So, you know, it's, it's,

1:16:59Tony Fadell:it's fun to watch. It's a game. Okay. Maybe one more question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. What are you, what are you most excited about these days in terms of, I don't know gadgets or hardware or technology that's emerging is there anything you're like oh pay attention i've been doing this ai plus hardware thing now not just at nest but in many of the startup companies that we funded at build and so company like simbi robotics you know it's simbi robotics we were doing robotics where now it's not a humanoid but it does inventory inventory of retail stores and we've been at it i don't know eight years now seven years and now it's just taking off right and it does have ai and it has a robotic platform and it's like and it really solves real pain points for the retailers of inventory and the workers hate doing inventory counting everything on every shelf and all that stuff so it really works and like i love seeing that stuff you know i we're doing the same thing at gray parrot with ai and and uh recycling like it's literally figuring out what things should go in this recycling bin versus that and doing really fast with cameras and all this stuff.

1:18:04It's like, and we've been at that for a few years. And we have AI plus textiles. Like most textiles, you know, have weaving errors and color errors and defects and things like that. And so people still make all of these products, but then they have to incinerate them because they're not perfect at the end because they don't catch the quality problems early enough in the product. And we're doing AI plus cameras to spot all this stuff. And again, another thing, and we're doing this, we've been doing AI and drug, drug design now for 10 years at Orionis and that's taking off. And it's like, so I'm really interested in not just these frontier models and this whole thing is really good AI that you can trust.

1:18:49Scoped correctly with this solving real problems every day, as opposed to pipe dream AGI, you know, okay, you can go solve that. I'm going to go and build all these businesses that really matter right now. And we're finally getting traction because people are like, a lot of AI and, oh, we're robotics. And now all of a sudden we're in vogue. And we've been here really working on our product market fit, working on our marketing, working on version 3.0 of the device and everything. And people are adopting them. And that's what's wonderful to see. And so I'm excited by all that. We have another one like AI infusion, you know, and doing that.

1:19:24or finally doing tons of software with chemical reactions. And now we have a clean agricultural fuel and oils company that is cleaning up farms all around Central America. So like, and we're almost all atoms plus software in some way. And so it's just nice to be sitting here and, um, and knowing that we made these bets a long time ago and we're doing it now. We're not necessarily, you know, I was early on in grok that, you know, right. Cause I was like, and it was cheap then. And it was like, yeah, that's the right way to go. And, and my friends were in cerebris and I got into that. And then, you know, it's like, but these are long-term plays and they're finally coming to fruition, but we did invested it, not when it was hyped.

1:20:18And it's, you know, we were doing it back when unicorns valuations were billions of dollars today. If you don't have a$5 billion round raised, you're not anything. It's like, okay, well that doesn't work from a venture perspective. Like those kinds of, you'd never get their venture returns. You can't invest in things when, when the valuations are already nine digits or 10 digits. And you think you're going to a small portfolio that's like uh-uh that's not the kind of game i want to play so i'm glad that we have well positioned in the all these companies that have real good product market fit that came in the right valuations that that we can really help and make big change and deliver painkillers and we'll let everybody else over there play so that's what's exciting to me oh man there's this

1:21:04Tony Fadell:quote that i i used the other day on a different podcast um that i think applies to you it's a quote from the bible that you were made for a time like this feels like all the things are converging around the things that you have been doing for so long and the technology is finally getting exactly as described to actually something amazing the same thing happened to general magic right general magic iphone too early and then i just kept at it and at it and then then doing the iphone so it's just you just you stick with it like there's too many people who chase their tail and chase whatever the hottest thing is when it's already hot it's already too late to be in it.

1:21:39Tony Fadell:For people that don't know what you do these days, you talked about all these companies you work with, help people understand what it is you spend your time on in case they may want to try to work with you on this stuff. I think the first thing to know is that we invest in deep technology. So that could be hardware, it could be software, software plus hardware, it could be chemical, it could be all kinds of different stuff. Remember, we talked earlier about what's the pain and is there new technology that comes out to solve that pain in a new way or and so what what we do is i've learned that i invest in the deep technologies that are going to unseat the incumbents because it's going to change the market or the product in such a dramatic way that customers will choose this so we're not we're not just feature competing on features or better marketing or whatever, we're fundamentally a different product.

1:22:35Now, it might take longer to get the market to shift to it, but it's fundamentally different, just like I brought up Grok and Cerebris and these kinds of things. It's fundamentally different. And so at Build, what we do is we invest in those technology companies that can be that seed that can unseat things. And maybe they go the distance, or maybe they are the key enabling tech that allows another startup to go to the distance, that kind of stuff. And so that's what we invest in. And we do it in the environment, in societal benefits and health benefits. That's where we focus. And at times we've had a portfolio of over 200 companies and we do that, but we don't just invest.

1:23:15When we get involved, many of the companies we advise and that we come in, help them with product management, operations. We help them with financing. We help them with org development, uh you know just all kinds of different ways that a lot of times in marketing and communications right because we talked about storytelling storytelling is really important and a lot of deep technology people they're incredible you know engineers scientists researchers what have you they have a really good idea but they don't necessarily know how to form the product around it or form the marketing around the product they're building or help the marketing to inform the product and vice versa.

1:23:56And so we try to encapsulate that and really bring that to bear so they don't hit it on the fourth version. They try to get very close to the first or second version so they can get on that three version cycle to get to a great company. And so that's what we do. So we get to have a lot of fun. We get to play in all these different spaces, health, medicine, drugs robotics uh um you know chips these kinds of things so that's what's that's just what's wonderful to us when we get to just be kids in the candy store and work with all these incredible smart entrepreneurs and everything so that's one thing i do the other thing i do is i'm a designer at residence at mit so i just finished up my first year there um with the mit media lab in architecture and design and help to, you know, give lectures and, and, and work with, work with students, amazing, amazing, smart students on with a great technology, but help them with the customer journey.

1:25:01Like try to make sure that they see this stuff early on in their career, not after 10 years. And then they finally understand, Oh, wait a second, what am I really building? Who is it for? Not just what is it I'm building, but why am I building it? And for who? And so we're trying to get that into some of the later undergraduate and graduate students so we can watch them change the world more quickly. Incredible.

1:25:23Tony Fadell:I love just all the levels of ways you are helping people. There's the investing, there's this book, there's MIT, there's these conversations. It's fun. It's just so much fun. I love how much fun you're having. Is there anything else you wanted to share that we didn't cover? We should really just talk about ethics and morals and your your point of view on that and as a product manager as a product designer you need to really consider these things i understand we have lots of big questions about ai and is it going to be a disaster for the for the you know for the next generation and for societies and all other stuff but i think that you really need to be well grounded and have real principles when you're designing something.

1:26:15And don't let those things go astray. Just like you wouldn't go astray with a bad user interface or something like that. Make sure you're not trying to addict your users. And if anybody is, there's always other jobs and there's always other better companies. And don't chase the money for tearing apart what it is, the fabric of this society that we've built. Obviously, there's gonna be innovation and there's gonna be change. But when you're really doing it and you can see that you're doing it and you're like trying to get people hooked or you're like, oh, I get more dopamine or what have you. That's when, you know, you have to start really looking at things.

1:26:50And a lot of times people are young and they, they think, oh, that's great. That's what I want. But when you start to have kids and you start to have families and you start to see the, and you're not just about you, you're, you're, you're not trying to just get out of your family, you know, uh, out of your, when you were growing up, you know, I'm an individual and I want what I want. You know, you really need to start thinking systemically about how, what the benefit that you're bringing to the society as a whole, not just to the business that you're in and trying to bring in whatever revenue you're trying to do.

1:27:21Um, because at the end of the day, users will feel that. And then I think, and we'll, we'll reward that as we see with Apple with privacy, right. And people say, oh, they're behind because they're so private and there's this, but it's a double edged sword. You know, i remember when we had a very pointed discussion when the itunes music store and when it was turning into video um was being specified and when we're thinking about it and everyone's like oh this is going to be great we're going to do movies we're going to do tv shows that's going to all be great we're going to make a lot of money with this in the studios everybody's behind it and then somebody goes yeah when we should have porn of course steve was like what is that the kind of world you want your kids to grow up in and apple is related with that and apple's about that is that what we want to do and it was very clear it was shut down and we need leaders like that you know we need leaders who are very clear as opposed to i'm going to make a huge service for everyone and they're all sex chat sex chat bots for everyone i just think you know when you start normalizing those things and you start telling other generations that's a value and you start and i understand that everyone has their own what's right and what's wrong and here i am the old guy you know again uh i i think we you know we can go a little too far i'm for individual rights for everyone to be a thing but when major companies are are doing this in the guise of certain kinds of behaviors they're trying to achieve um you know when we're selling we're turning uh personal connection into a product with ai chat bots and making them really you know uh devolve uh you know social interaction to the point where i'm going to have a perfect interaction with this thing because the world is so messy it's like we're we're losing humanity with that and we're just for for for gain so i i wish that the other product designers out there really take it to heart.

1:29:24I'm not saying you've got to be lily white and being in a church every weekend and Bible bang. I'm not saying that at all. I'm not MAGA. I'm not any of that stuff. Just saying, hey, think about it.

1:29:37Tony Fadell:A lot of people look at the iPhone as this thing now that everyone's hooked on. It's so good. We're just like, it's too good. And there's all this data showing all the impact it has on people and things like that. Just how do you think about that and the impact the iPhone has had on people? Well, the first thing is the iPhone wasn't set out to be that. There's unintended consequences, and the unintended consequence was social media happened. And social media, Apple's not a social media company, right? But it does distribute the apps or make available those apps, right? And so the way I think about it is we have lots of junk food, and we have an obese nation or obese world because of all the junk food, and it takes us to regulate our consumption to do that and get healthy tools.

1:30:26And, you know, there's nutritional elements on the back of things. And if you want to make a better decision, you can. And I hope AI and these assistants will help people be able to get better control of those kinds of things where our lizard brain is being, you know, stimulated in a way that like consume more, consume more of physical food, right? And now the same thing's happening in digital food. But we have digital food that doesn't have the nutrition labels, doesn't have the warnings, doesn't have the regulation that it needs to have just like we do with our physical food. Because, oh, you can't let innovation, you know, whatever, you know, be slowed down.

1:31:07I think there's, I'm not saying, again, being a nanny and all that other stuff, but we got to have some balance. And it's just swung too far. And I still think that the platform companies like Google and Apple could be doing a lot more around digital consumption tools and information to help people make better decisions for themselves, for their families, and what have you. Because, you know, you could go to the refrigerator. iPhone's just a refrigerator. You can put in junk food or you can put in good food. And even if you put in good food, you could go to the good food every five seconds, right?

1:31:41You have a refrigerator in your kitchen. You can put good food or bad food. You can open it all the time and keep consuming. So we need to learn habits. We need to teach habits. We need to put in regulations. We need information. We need tools to help us monitor and manage that stuff. And they need to be supplied. And just like we have rules around who can buy something when they're 21 or under 21. We need all those kinds of things. And it needs to happen. Because why? Sure, you could have a short-term gain and no customers, but if you make your customers unhealthy, you're not going to have customers.

1:32:18Tony Fadell:Let me just say for folks that haven't read your book, I just want to communicate how great it is. There's very few books that are both tactically useful that give you like, here's how to do a thing and also just inspire you to build and make great things. And Build does that in such a great way. I think everyone knows about it. I don't know if everyone's read it, so highly encourage you to read it. two final questions where can folks find you online if they want to maybe learn about the stuff you're up to now and how can listeners be useful to you great well let's see well thanks again this was fun interview i really enjoyed it i think if you want to interact with us we're at buildc.com so build collective but we're buildc b-u-i-l-d-c.com you can go and see the companies we invest in and you can find ways to contact us there um and how can uh viewers help me um or help us.

1:33:09I think learn about the companies, see if you can model whatever you're doing and some of the learn from insights. You know, there's a lot of websites that we helped to create a lot of the marketing created for deep tech through those, through those, those investments we made. So you can see some well done marketing. I hope you like our, our website for build seed to show you how, what we think is a really great website that, you know, only doesn't sell things necessarily, You know what I mean? Like, you know, point and click and purchase. But I just I just get the get the rebuild and apply. You know, that's I think that's the most thing is rebuild, read other things like that and really hone your craft.

1:33:53Make better products, make a better world, because the world only gets better by the things we make and how what we bring. And so that, to me, that's the most important way to help me is by making other cool products like Flighty or other things. They're like, I love this thing. So make great stuff, people, and don't think the AIs will. Use them for the tools that they can help with. But don't have cognitive surrender. Don't allow your – don't surrender to the machine. We can use the machines, but don't cognitively surrender and make better stuff. make better stuff than myself or any of the teams that we back can make because we do have better tools now.

1:34:31So please do.

1:34:32Tony Fadell:Amazing. Tony, thank you so much for being here. Hey, Lenny, that was great. Really appreciate it. Looking forward to seeing what your audience creates. Same. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us rating or leaving a review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast you can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lenny's podcast.com see you in the next episode