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Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making Hardcover – May 3, 2022

by Tony Fadell (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,516 ratings
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**New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USAToday Bestseller for May 2022**

Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.

So that’s what this book is. An advice encyclopedia. A mentor in a box. 

Written for anyone who wants to grow at work—from young grads navigating their first jobs to CEOs deciding whether to sell their company—Build is full of personal stories, practical advice and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.

Each quick 5-20 page entry builds on the previous one, charting Tony’s personal journey from a product designer to a leader, from a startup founder to an executive to a mentor. Tony uses examples that are instantly captivating, like the process of building the very first iPod and iPhone. Every chapter is designed to help readers with a problem they’re facing right now—how to get funding for their startup, whether to quit their job or not, or just how to deal with the jerk in the next cubicle.

Tony forged his path to success alongside mentors like Steve Jobs and Bill Campbell, icons of Silicon Valley who succeeded time and time again. But Tony doesn’t follow the Silicon Valley credo that you have to reinvent everything from scratch to make something great. His advice is unorthodox because it’s old school. Because Tony’s learned that human nature doesn’t change. You don’t have to reinvent how you lead and manage—just what you make. 

And Tony’s ready to help everyone make things worth making. 

Previous page
  1. Reading age
    1 year and up
  2. Print length
    416 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Dimensions
    6.12 x 1.17 x 9.25 inches
  5. Publisher
    Harper Business
  6. Publication date
    May 3, 2022
  7. ISBN-10
    0063046067
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0063046061
  9. See all details
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Popular Highlights in this book
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Previous page
  1. The key is persistence and being helpful. Not just asking for something, but offering something. You always have something to offer if you’re curious and engaged. You can always trade and barter good ideas; you can always be kind and find a way to help.
    Highlighted by 1,812 Kindle readers
  2. “I can’t make you the smartest or the brightest, but it’s doable to be the most knowledgeable. It’s possible to gather more information than somebody else.”
    Highlighted by 1,651 Kindle readers
  3. Adulthood is your opportunity to screw up continually until you learn how to screw up a little bit less.
    Highlighted by 1,502 Kindle readers
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From the Publisher

Build
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Tony Fadell is one of the world’s great experts in starting companies and creating insanely great products. He’s distilled his wisdom in this book, providing wildly useful mentorship in a delightfully readable set of stories." — Walter Isaacson, author and biographer of Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci

"Tony Fadell has made more cool stuff than almost anyone else in the history of Silicon Valley, and in Build he tells us how. This is the most fun—and the most fascinating—memoir of curiosity and invention I've ever read." — Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of Outliers and Talking to Strangers

“Based on hard-won, real-life lessons as an entrepreneur, Tony Fadell’s Build delivers priceless advice for any young person who wants to build something great or change the world for the better. I wish I had this book when I was twenty-one.” — Ben Horowitz, founding partner of Andreessen Horowitz

“Insightful. Funny. Instructive. Unvarnished. In a book brimming with energy and enthusiasm, Tony Fadell, builder of epoch-defining products, draws on his experience with failure and accomplishment to coach you through every stage of your career.” — Joanna Hoffman, former vice president of marketing at General Magic and member of the original Macintosh team

“Tony Fadell distills his epic career into refreshingly candid, often contrarian advice that you can put into practice right away. Whether you’re looking to build a great product, a creative team, a strong culture, or a meaningful career, Tony’s guidance will get you thinking and rethinking.” — Adam Grant, author of Think Again and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

About the Author

Tony Fadell started his 30 year Silicon Valley career at General Magic, the most influential startup nobody has ever heard of. Then he went on to make the iPod and iPhone, start Nest and create the Nest Learning Thermostat. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. He now leads the investment and advisory firm Future Shape, where he mentors the next generation of startups that are changing the world. 

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harper Business (May 3, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0063046067
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0063046061
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.55 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.12 x 1.17 x 9.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 2,516 ratings

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Tony Fadell

Tony Fadell

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Tony Fadell started his 30+ year Silicon Valley career at General Magic, the most influential startup nobody has ever heard of. Then he went on to make the iPod and iPhone, start Nest and create the Nest Learning Thermostat. Throughout his career Tony has authored more than 300 patents. He now leads the investment and advisory firm Future Shape, where he mentors the next generation of startups that are changing the world.

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
2,516 global ratings
An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making: I’m Not A Builder/Maker And I LOVE This Book
5 Stars
An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making: I’m Not A Builder/Maker And I LOVE This Book
So - as the title suggests I am neither a builder nor a maker… of electrons or atoms. What I am is a 55 year old self-professed geek who has lived through the technology revolution. I went to a video arcade as a kid. I had a TRS-80, a Kaypro computer, a Channel F gaming console and (of course) every iPod, iPhone, iPad… just keep it coming. I LOVE technology.What fascinated me about this book is that it is not just about creating the next great thing and trying to disrupt the world. It teaches us about things like inspiration and drive and setting goals and thinking clearer…As the aforementioned geek I have to admit that I LOVE knowing the history of some of the most disruptive devices in our near history… I had a Sony Walkman… world changed with the iPod. I had a Motorola Q - which was so killer… then came Apple and Steve Jobs and (of course) Tony Fadell with the iPhone. As an early adopter of course I got one… Life changed.This book is so insightful. It encourages all of us to follow what guides us. Whether it’s an MP3 player or a phone or a thermostat.Fantastic book. Cannot praise it enough.
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Top reviews from the United States

Asim Ghaffar
5.0 out of 5 stars Starting Up? Read 'Build' from the Man Behind the iPod and Nest
Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2024
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Tony is the co-founder of Nest and many consider him the father of the iPod and, to some extent, the iPhone.

This book is essential for anyone interested in startups building tangible tech products. Authored by a builder, "Build" spans from startup to scale-up phases, covering ideation, marketing, hiring, design, and much more. At around 400 pages, it offers just a brief overview of each topic, making it a great first read for newcomers.

Despite its title suggesting unorthodoxy, it's more or less a straightforward read. It doesn't delve deeply into any single topic, but for those already versed in startup literature, "Build" effectively connects the dots among various concepts. The author's real-world experiences add valuable insights, making the concepts more relatable and easier to understand.

I'd rate it 9/10.
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Dr Ali Binazir
5.0 out of 5 stars The Podfather speaks: hard-won wisdom on risk, invention, leading humans & rising after falling
Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2022
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Let's say I told you that you could sit down to chat with the inventor and designer of some of the most successful products in history — things so crazy innovative, useful, and cool that they generated *hundreds of billions* of bucks. Heck, one of those products may even be in your pocket right now. And let's say the guy has a lot of great stories to tell — working with the geniuses of his age, taking mad risks, making huge mistakes, scoring epic wins. And he's a pretty good storyteller to boot.

Interested? Well, Tony Fadell is that guy — the man behind the iPod, iPhone, Nest Thermostat and and much more you may not have heard of. If you didn't know his name or story till now, here's your chance to learn from one of the greatest inventor-entrepreneurs of all time, and drink in his hard-earned, often counterintuitive wisdom.

Fadell divides his book into six parts: Build Yourself; Build Your Career; Build Your Product; Build Your Business; Build Your Team; Be CEO. Each part comprises a few chapters telling stories from his career along with the lessons learned. Each chapter begins with a nugget of concentrated Tony wisdom which is basically incompressible. Heck, the entire *book* is pretty incompressible — I highlighted almost a third of it. Here's one about mentorship:
"A good mentor won’t hand you the answers, but they will try to help you see your problem from a new perspective. They’ll loan you some of their hard-fought advice so you can discover your own solution."
This is straight-up Buddha talk, the 'ehi-passiko' of "Yeah, I've got some ideas to share but I want you to go figure it out on your own" — if the Buddha were a world-class coder, designer, manager, fundraiser, and CEO. Here's another one on what kind of company to join:

"If you’re going to throw your time, energy, and youth at a company, try to join one that’s not just making a better mousetrap. Find a business that’s starting a revolution. A company that’s likely to make a substantial change in the status quo has the following characteristics:
1) It’s creating a product or service that’s wholly new or combines existing technology in a novel way that the competition can’t make or even understand…
2) This product solves a problem—a real pain point—that a lot of customers experience daily…
3) The novel technology can deliver on the company vision—not just within the product but also the infrastructure, platforms, and systems that support it.
4) Leadership is not dogmatic about what the solution looks like and is willing to adapt to their customers’ needs.
5) It’s thinking about a problem or a customer need in a way you’ve never heard before, but which makes perfect sense once you hear it."

What would I have given to have known that as a kid! There's a lifetime of wisdom scrunched down into those five bullet points there — and several more in the rest of the book. Really you'll want to read it for the stories of both epic triumph and epic failure, sometimes happening at the same time. Fadell tells the tales of brilliance and fallibility, the geniuses you may have never heard of, and how the success of no venture, no matter how innovative and well-planned, is ever foreordained.

I won't give away too much so you can fully experience the joy of discovering this book on your own. This is obviously required reading if you're a budding entrepreneur. But if you're at all interested in leadership, innovation, management, resilience, or just the origins of miraculous gizmos, you need to read this book. It's about as close as you're going to get to living inside the head of one of our modern-day entrepreneurial legends.
-- Ali Binazir, M.D., M.Phil., Happiness Engineer, startup coach and author of  The Tao of Dating: The Smart Woman's Guide to Being Absolutely Irresistible , the highest-rated dating book on Amazon, and  Should I Go to Medical School?: An Irreverent Guide to the Pros and Cons of a Career in Medicine
55 people found this helpful
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chun elsy li
4.0 out of 5 stars a good guide for emerging designers
Reviewed in the United States on October 11, 2023
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funny, candid advice
3 people found this helpful
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Greger Teigre
5.0 out of 5 stars The book I wished I read when I was 25
Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2022
Verified Purchase
"Many times you just need someone to confirm your gut feeling and give you the confidence to follow it." - this quote from Tony's Acknowledgements chapter summarises my feeling throughout the entire book. When you are starting out your career, there is so much "wisdom/crap" that you need to parse through and figure out whether you believe in or not. It is so refreshing to read such a no-nonsense, detailed description of what matters and what doesn't from someone who has real battle scars and victories.
Starting out my career in Silicon Valley in the late 90s, I was never fortunate enough to meet Tony, and when moving back to Norway I met a start-up world that was 20 years behind Silicon Valley. This was right around the time Tony got the call from Apple to work on the iPod. I would have loved coming along for that ride!
For every single decision you need to make to build a great product, a great company, a great team, you have to also decide who am I? what do I believe in? what kind of values are important to me? what kind of culture is a great product culture that I will thrive in and want to work in? And many, many more hard questions. Tony takes you through his career and points out the learnings that he believes were important, not only to his successes, but also to his failures. Brutally honest and with a personal, and down-to-earth language.
There have been so many points throughout my life where I have felt something should be the right thing to do or believe in, but where I haven't really dared. And where I haven't had enough conviction to push through, ignore nay-sayers, and just do what I believe in. Tony goes through most of these and more, one by one and also explains why it is the right thing to do. And then there are the hard to come by experiences, like how is an effective board supposed to work for a VC-funded, highly innovative product company. Or how important it is to have a mentor who has been there before and what you need a mentor for.

The title says this is an "unorthodox" guide. To me this sounds like title was determined by the publisher's desire to make it a bestseller. Tony is seeing beyond the fuzz and the pretenders and focuses on the deeper fundamentals of human behaviour and the fundamental dynamics between technology, market, individual drive and motivation, and the sometimes harsh realities of starting a new company (or startup within a company). It's nothing unorthodox about what he is writing about. It cuts through the crap and gets you to focus on what is important.
Also, in many of Tony's advice, it is evident that he is spoiled by living in the Bay Area. Examples are: always have a "seed crystal" on your board or you absolutely need to have a great mentor before considering starting a company or you should be relentless in pushing your employees to perfect the experience. The Bay Area has huge competition for talent, but the wider Bay Area also has the population of the entire country of Norway. That means that if you have a name in the Valley, know the other big names, and have built up a network over years, you can tap into a talent pool and a culture that is just there. You mostly need to carefully build this yourself outside the valley. Don't let that discourage you though, what Tony points out is fundamentally human and fundamental to building great product anywhere in the world. Just think carefully about what you might need to build yourself before directly following Tony's advice.
32 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Luiz Eduardo Duarte
5.0 out of 5 stars great content.
Reviewed in Brazil on October 31, 2023
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Priceless content from someone who made really impressive products. Really good book for every founder, a “must read”. Believe me.
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Martin Oviedo
5.0 out of 5 stars Gran libro
Reviewed in Mexico on June 8, 2023
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Gran libro
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wilson tang
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone building world class products, teams, and companies.
Reviewed in Canada on June 8, 2022
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So many people want to be entrepreneurs but only a few of them are true builders - of products, teams, cultures. I’ve heard of Tony Fadell’s name mentioned over the years and knew that he was one of those people who was really behind the success of Silicon Valley - brilliant, driven engineer/designers with the war stories that comes with it. When I saw that Fadell’s had a book I instantly ordered the hardcover for me and a few of my employees because I knew that it was one of those books that we’d want to keep on our shelves as we are building our company. It’s packed with backstories about the most iconic products ever to emerge from SV, as well as a lot of what I would consider “insider” knowledge of how to build world class products, brand experiences, teams, and even careers in technology.
I’ve got Tony’s book right beside the Steve Jobs biography where it belongs.
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SABRINA V.
5.0 out of 5 stars Molto apprezzato
Reviewed in Italy on January 20, 2024
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E’ stato un regalo per un giovane designer. E’ stato molto apprezzato
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Adrian
5.0 out of 5 stars Thank you for writing this. Wonderful book
Reviewed in Germany on January 18, 2024
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One of my first books I red, when I started reading again. I can't remember if someone recommended it to me or if I just found it here, but this is a book, that Im 100% going to read multiple times throughout my life and journey.
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