10 Startup Lessons From The Inventor Of The iPod – Tony Fadell

When Steve Jobs envisioned putting a 1000 songs in your pocket, one of the key people he turned to, was a design contractor — Tony Fadell. Over the years, Fadell designed the iPod and was later hired full time by Apple to oversee the design and production of the iPod and iSight devices.

Fadell would go on to co-founding a company that made energy efficient thermostats, Nest, which recently got acquired by Google for over 3 billion dollars. And now, at Google, he’s designing the next iteration of Google Glass.

Udacity hosted Tony Fadell last week in an hour long chat with our founder and chairman, Sebastian Thrun. This Q&A session saw Fadell come into his own and sharing valuable advice to technologists and entrepreneurs, drawn from being a top innovator for over 20 years in Silicon Valley.

Here are 10 top pieces of advice from Tony Fadell –

Learn by doing — know what you want to learn, because you want to build/do something with it

“The way I knew I wanted to go to school, is because of the roadblocks I kept meeting. Right from my high school days, I kept co-founding companies, which were engineering based, and I kept realising that I needed formal training. I think that’s the right way to learn. You want to do something, go ahead and do it and learn the things that you need to know.”

Be persistent and do things

“I had a startup company in Michigan, where I felt like I was big fish in a small pond. I had heard of Silicon Valley, and in my heart, I just knew that I had to be there and work with amazing people whom I can learn from. I literally knocked on the door of General Magic (an Apple spinoff), wearing a tie, asking them to hire me! And I eventually did get hired, only because I was persistent and the fact that I was a young guy, who had done things in programming. It was not because of my college degree, or my recommendations.

Always be learning

“In this field, things keep evolving so fast — I started off writing programming programs in FORTRAN and COBOL and now you’ve got things like JavaScript, Perl etc — you always have to continually learn. If you’re in a well settled job, do Nanodegrees, because you have to constantly learn. This technology field moves very rapidly.”

Know when to say no

“I learnt this from Steve Jobs. People always went up to him and asked him, ‘oh you could be doing so many things’ and his main job was to say no to anything that wasn’t absolutely important. You can only do something great, if you can focus your efforts, your emotions, your passion into the things that really matter, and that means saying no to many things.”

Wear your beginners hat and give your users superpowers

“Often, engineers and designers, who’re building B2C companies, design and build products and features that impresses the person next to them. That’s geeky, but how does that make a difference to the common person who might want to use this product? As designers and engineers, it is our job to take powerful and robust software, and simplify it, so much so, that users feel like they have a new superpower they can use. Google is a great example. Your product team needs to always wear their beginners hats and think of how the end customer would look at this product.”

There’s success in failure, if you know where to look for it

“General Magic was one of the biggest failures in Silicon Valley, because we spent 4 years building many features into a product. We lost a billion dollars in that time. And at the time, it’s going to feel like the end of the world. But you need to focus on the future. There’s a learning moment that happens during failure, and you need to project yourself in the future, and see what you can learn from here so this never happens again.”

Keep asking questions and listen to others

“I changed 15 schools in 12 years. This meant that I was never a master of my environment and I had to keep learning. And to keep learning, you need to be curious and to listen to others. Curiosity is one of the main ingredients for innovation. Keep asking questions, and you will learn. Also, you don’t have to always take a course to learn. Most of our learning happens because of the people around us. Keep listening.

Seek critics — Don’t ask your parents for validation, ask your spouse

“When you run something by your parents, they are more often than not going to encourage you and tell you how great your idea is and how you’re going to be awesome. That’s not going to help. Ask your spouse! When I told my wife about NEST, she told me, ‘that’s nothing like an iPod!’ But 5 minutes of explaining what we were trying to do, and she said ‘I think that’s a great idea!’.

It’s better to startup with a little experience

“When you’re starting a company, you need to know if you have the vision and the expertise to build what you want, but you also need a set of people who will help you get there. Through life, you’re collecting experiences and making connections and these will help you build a better startup. Keep looking for different experience and keep learning. If you’ve started up or worked at a startup, work at a bigger company and see what that’s like. Even in a bigger company, don’t just stick to the job that you’re doing, keep talking to others. See what they’re doing and that’s how you learn.

Don’t do it for the money

“Innovation is a result of frustration and curiosity. Problems will frustrate you and you have to channel that frustration to figure out why you’re feeling that way. Then curiosity kicks in and you start asking questions about why the problem exists in the first place. That will help you build a great product, and a great company. Don’t do it for the money — do it because it a problem that frustrates you, and you’re curious about it. That’s the only way you can build a top startup.

Watch the entire interview :