Tony Fadell
42 statements across 4 episodes · 13 bullish · 11 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Mar 15, 2021 by Tony Fadell · said 32 times in 14 episodes since 2016 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Tony Fadell's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Harry Stebbings (16), Hugo Barra (7), Wesley Chan (3), René Haas (2), Trae Vassallo (1), Niccolo De Masi (1), Jessica Lessin (1), Jamie Siminoff (1)
tap a year for its mentions
2023 4 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
2022 21 mentions in 7 episodes 3 per episode
- Hugo Barra: How I Built Hardware for Android, Xiaomi, and Oculus | 20VC #947 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: Arm CEO Rene Haas on How The Best Leaders Make Decisions and The Trade-Off Between Speed and Quality | Leadership Lessons from 7 Years at Nvidia | How Companies Can Retain Speed, Innovation and Agility at Scale
- Semil Shah: Lessons Learned Scaling from a $1M to a $50M Fund | 20VC #951 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Spotify CTO Gustav Söderström: TikTok's Music; How Olivia Rodrigo Gamed the Algo | 20VC #936 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Kevin Weil: Lessons from Leading Product at Instagram & Twitter | 20VC #934 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- 20VC: WTF Is Going On? 3 Outcomes for What Could Happen From Here; What Needs to Happen To Avoid Recession? Why Stagnation is Most Likely and What This Means for Startups and Venture & Why Catastrophe is More Likely Than Ever and Switzerland Could Be a "H
- 20 Product: Scott Belsky on How to Hire Your Product Leader and Team, 3 Questions All Great Product Leaders Ask, How To Structure and Run Effective Product Reviews & Is Product More Art or Science?
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
2018 1 mention in 1 episode
2016 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
- 20VC: Felicis' Wesley Chan on The Rise of IoT, Getting Recruited by Larry Page & Creating Google's Biggest Success Disaster
- 20VC: The Information's Jessica Lessin on The Future For Online Journalism & The Benefits Of A Subscription Based Business Model
- 20VC: Niccolo De Masi on The Bursting Of The Tech Bubble and What It Takes To Be A Celebrity Partner with Glu Mobile
- every mention in 2016, scene by scene →
Everything said about Tony Fadell, oldest first
Mar 15, 2021 bullish
Fadell: Cannabis is a better investment than e-bikes or plastics
“Cannabis is actually medicinal, and it's a vice. It's both. And so when you can have those two dynamics together, when you can actually help people, whether that's recreationally or medically, and you can have all of the uplift of the recreational side for the…”
Mar 15, 2021 bullish
Mar 15, 2021 negative
Mar 15, 2021 bullish
Fadell: FutureShape backs startups that mine urban waste landfills
“We're finding at FutureShape all kinds of businesses that literally go and mine urban mines. Instead of mining the earth, let's go mine the stuff we've already extracted and get it out of those things into valuable mineral streams again so we can reuse them.”
Mar 15, 2021
Mar 15, 2021 negative
Mar 15, 2021
Fadell: Pitching requires upfront transparency, not fake friendship
“If you are selling someone, you gotta be upfront and say, look, I'm talking to you about this. This is why I want your time. I think you could be helpful with this, but be upfront on what the game is about and what you're trying to discuss with people.”
Mar 15, 2021
Fadell: Earning respect by being direct beats striving for popularity
“You got to be respected and you got to speak your mind and be damned if people don't like you for a little while. Typically, they'll come around and respect you. So it's like, say the tough things, because we're only on this planet for so long, and stop all th…”
Mar 15, 2021 bullish
Mar 15, 2021 negative
Mar 15, 2021
Mar 15, 2021 positive
Fadell: Randy Komisar was the best board member he ever had
“Official board member, I would say, would be Randy Komisar. Randy Komisar, he's straight. He and I both had Bill Campbell as a mentor. He saw things that other people didn't see. He backed you up. He stood behind you. He told you when you were screwing up. And…”
Mar 15, 2021
Jun 6, 2022
Fadell: Paying customers provide far better product feedback than free users
“I think as you go through successive versions, you get better and better data from people who are actually paying for whatever it is you're doing. You know, you're getting revenue in some form. So those people have real opinions because they're using it and th…”
Jun 6, 2022
Fadell: Founders scaling past 20 people must hire dedicated product managers
“When you start growing past your, you know, 20 people, There is so much work to do product management, right? You need a person who's at least one person who's the voice of customer watching over all of this because as a founder, CEO, leader, you have so many …”
Jun 6, 2022
Jun 6, 2022
Fadell: Stated customer feedback often contradicts actual retail purchasing behavior
“So you can't always just trust what the customer says because What happens is our framing of it, you know, when we're asking them, we're asking the questions come with all the other, oh, well, if you bought it would be like this, and this, and then here's the …”
Jun 6, 2022 positive
Jun 6, 2022 bullish
Fadell matches book proceeds 5x to fund climate startups
“All proceeds, all net proceeds that are coming to me or what have you are going to a fund called the build climate fund. I'm going to match all of those proceeds five X, and we're only going to be investing in climate crisis companies, startups doing real stuf…”
Jun 6, 2022 neutral
Jun 6, 2022
Fadell: New product projects should begin with a mock press release
“So you have to start when you start a new project. Is you have to start early days in, and what I always say is build the mock press release. What is that page, page and a half press release that you're going to, you know, send out six months, nine months, a y…”
Jun 6, 2022
Jul 6, 2022
Fadell: Adding one step upfront can eliminate ten steps downstream
“Too many people stay so inward about this step, that step, this step, that step. They don't step back and they go, well, what's a different way of doing it? Where can we remove steps? Where do we actually add one step, but we can remove 10 steps down the line?…”
Jul 6, 2022
Fadell: Products must optimize around a single primary customer path
“And sometimes we'll like go, it's a third. I'm like, well, then we're going to try to please everyone and please no one. So pick one. There's always got to be a one priority path. If not, you probably not structured your product right. So you pick that primary…”
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Fadell: Remote employees lacking face time will be fired first during downturns
“Two in, especially now in a financial disaster that we have on our hands, who's going to be the first one to get fired? The ones who don't come into work are the ones who do come into work and have some face time and show value beyond just coming to a meeting.”
Jul 25, 2022
Fadell: Leaders must balance roles as parent, coach, and CEO
“A leader has to, in, in, has to be a parent sometimes. They have to be a coach sometimes. And then they have to be a CEO sometimes. The CEO will hire and fire people. The coach will believe in and push you and believe in you. Okay. And say, we're here for the …”
Jul 25, 2022 bullish
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Jul 25, 2022
Fadell: Waiting for consensus data means the opportunity is already overpriced
“Everybody else wants data. And the only way to get data is when everybody's there, Getting those hard numbers and saying, okay, now I'm convinced to go in there because everyone else is there. But guess what? Everyone else is there already. You got to trust yo…”
Jul 25, 2022 positive
Tony Fadell: Consumer startups require product marketing and technical co-founders
“Well, that's in a B to B company. You know, if you're in, if you're more consumer, you're going to have more marketing or product marketing plus technical. Okay, because what you're talking about is SA, I think you referring to SaaS business, where you really …”
Jul 25, 2022
Fadell: Incumbents react to disruption by laughing, suing, then joining
“Every single, almost every single thing I've ever done, the first thing is the incumbents laugh at you. So whether it was an iPod, what happens? Microsoft laughs, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. IPhone, iPhone comes out. Nokia, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Nest, Honeywell, ha, ha,…”
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Jul 25, 2022 bullish
Fadell: Climate infrastructure startups will become blue-chip monopolies like Standard Oil
“These kinds of things are big money. And you know what? What's even better is once you build them, They are one of these blue, they will be a blue chip in 20 years, in 30 years, because they're gonna be the new standard oils and the, you know, what have you, r…”
Jul 25, 2022 positive
Tony Fadell: Every startup founder needs a co-founder with complementary skills
“You need a co-founder. Because there's, one, they should be complimentary with your skills. Two, you need a partner who you can share all the things you can't talk to the board about, or you can't talk to the management team about. You can't go talk to your si…”
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Fadell: Overindulged kids who avoid productive struggle become spoiled
“I think any kids that are doted upon too much, who do not have the benefit to find their way, the struggle, the productive struggle to find their way in the world, and their parents are always like yeah, no, they don't. These kids either are, you know, they're…”
Jul 25, 2022 positive
Fadell: Effective startup leaders stay in details rather than just delegating
“Second thing is that the leader is in it, and they are not just delegating. They're in the details. They'll talk to different people at different levels. They can see that if they're the leader can see problems and they'll go and address them right away too.”
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Fadell: Resistance to office returns stems from poor executive leadership
“And this whole hybrid work week thing, and everyone's like, I don't need to be in the office anymore. I think it's just a backlash to how leaders are trying to bring workers back into the office. It's exactly the wrong way. They're not even thinking about the …”
Jul 25, 2022 negative
Jul 25, 2022 positive
Fadell: Top missionary startup operators follow a narrow Gaussian distribution
“At all cases, it's a Gaussian distribution, right? And the people at the top, it's a small, narrow set, right? And companies there as well. So there's a lot of wheat, a lot of chaff with the, and, you know, scarce wheat, so to speak. And so of course you can f…”
Jul 25, 2022
Fadell: Startups fail from team execution defects, not wrong directional vision
“There's very few times when the direction was wrong. It was that this team wasn't up to the challenge that they had, the mission they went on. The mission was right, but the team was not up to the challenge and they could not, you know, be mature enough or bec…”
Jul 25, 2022 negative