Tony Fadell: How to build real taste (and why AI makes it matter more)
Tony Fadell, designer of the iPod, iPhone, and Nest, talks with Lenny about why taste and product discipline matter more as AI makes building easier.
The gist
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When no data exists for a new category, a small taste-maker team must make opinion-based calls, then test and iterate to refine them.
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Fadell says marketing and storytelling are product decisions: Steve Jobs refined the iPhone's narrative over 10,000 times before launch.
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Plan for three generations: gen 1 makes the product, gen 2 fixes it, gen 3 fixes the business model and margins.
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Hardware plus software together create durable advantages because pure software gets commoditized as AI tools improve.
"Company like Simbi Robotics, you know, it's Simbi Robotics. We were doing robotics way back 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..."
▶ Play at 1:17:19"For folks that haven't read your book, I just want to uh 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..."
▶ Play at 1:32:22What they recommend · 5 picks
"You know I'm like one of the biggest proponents of I'm like telling flighty flighty because I you know all the people in my in my sphere they're all flying all this I'm like hav..."
"For folks that haven't read your book, I just want to uh communicate how great it is. There's very few books that are both tactically useful that give you like here's how to do ..."
"Company like Simbi Robotics, you know, it's Simbi Robotics. We were doing robotics way back now, it's not a humanoid, but it does inventory inventory of retail stores. And we've..."
Tony Fadell
4 picks · guest
"You know I'm like one of the biggest proponents of I'm like telling flighty flighty because I you know all the people in my in my sphere they're all flying all this I'm like hav..."
"Company like Simbi Robotics, you know, it's Simbi Robotics. We were doing robotics way back now, it's not a humanoid, but it does inventory inventory of retail stores. And we've..."
"We're doing the same thing at Great Parrot with AI and tech and uh recycling like it's literally figuring out what things should go in this recycling bin versus that and doing i..."
Lenny Rachitsky
1 pick
"For folks that haven't read your book, I just want to uh communicate how great it is. There's very few books that are both tactically useful that give you like here's how to do ..."
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