Tony Fadell, co-creator of the iPod and iPhone and founder of Nest, explains his leadership philosophy on micromanagement to Lenny Rachitsky.
Opinion
Fadell: Google sidelined Nest due to cultural and business mismatches
“The whole organization was a stepchild for whatever reason, you know, there was cultural mismatch. There was, you know, probably a business mismatch.”
Opinion
Fadell: Investing at 9- or 10-digit valuations cannot yield venture returns
“Well that doesn't work from a venture perspective. Like with those kinds of, you'd never get the venture returns. You can't invest in things. When the valuations are already nine digits or 10 digits, and you think you're gonna, a small portfolio that's got lik…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jobs told iPhone touchscreen dissenters to get on board or leave
“And guess who wins at the end of the day? Steve jobs, opinion. And he was like, if you're not going to get on board, get out of this room and you can go work on another project, but you're not going to work on this.”
Insight
Fadell: Novel V1 products require opinion-based decisions from small leadership teams
“When you're doing a one point O of anything, When you're doing, if you're doing anything that matters, and it's a one point on, it's a new category, or it's a new device the world hasn't seen before. You have very few analogs that you can use to make data driv…”
Insight
Fadell: Relying entirely on data for new products creates undifferentiated offerings
“Because if you try to do data-driven decisions all the way along, You're either not doing a differentiated product because you're taking data from another thing, or you're just getting just bullshit data, right?”
Opinion
Fadell: The market timing is perfect for a 'Nest 2.0' hardware startup
“Oh, for sure. For sure. People keep asking me, what are we going to get? It's like, no, absolutely. It's now's the, I now's the time. If it isn't already happening, I'm actually getting business plans of people who are like, Hey, you know, is this interesting?…”