I read a lot of books. I love books about science, technology, psychology, learning, making great teams, design, computers… The list goes on. In the last year or so I also got into audiobooks, listening to them mainly on my daily bicycle commutes (much safer than paperbacks). I like to listen to stories that inspire me – some of the biographies written by Walter Isaacson are great examples. These are the sorts of stories that you can get totally absorbed by, seemingly transported to another time and place. Sometimes this can actually be a bit of a safety issue; I once nearly broad-sided a bus while imaging how I might implement Leonardo’s sfumato technique in my own day-to-day life (yes, that is the type of person that I am – sorry!). I was almost dismounted again when Leo attempted to alter the course of the Arno river.
Well, Walter Isaacson’s biography of Da Vinci has lost its spot of most dangerous commuting book. There is a new kid on the block: Build, by Tony Fadell (UK readers can grab it here).
If you aren’t familiar with Tony (and I wasn’t – the book was recommended to me by a VC I know) then he is probably best known for his work on three revolutionary products: the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest thermostat. Before he worked at Apple he had started his own company and then gone on to work at the crazy-ambitious company, General Magic. General Magic was founded by the core team of mega geniuses that had formed the Macintosh team at Apple (check out their story here). In short, he has seen a lot of stuff. He was worked at small, humble startups, he has worked at huge companies. He is a designer, and a programmer, and a builder.
So what makes his book so dangerous good? Well, as an integration engineer at a biotech startup I have the opportunity to see a lot of different aspects of how a business operates. There is so much to learn that every day feels like you are drinking from a firehose. The pace is fast. Often there is not enough time to pick the minds of the leaders around you; even when there is, its not obvious what question to ask. This is where Build comes in.
Build is marketed as a “mentor in a book” and it really delivers. I got so engrossed in this book because at times it was like Tony was talking directly to me, about a problem I had actually faced that day. The rest of the time he was giving me advice on what might happen next, what to focus on, how to think about what it means to make a great product that your customers are going to enjoy from the moment they order it.
I am now obsessed with this last theme: product. My start-up journey so far has really be one of understanding the core of our technology, then how to manage multi-disciplinary technical projects, and then how to development strategies that can deliver on those key technical demonstrations. But the next chapter for me is definitely product. What is the market that you fit into? Who are your customers and what doe they really want? How can you engage with them and have them help sculpt your company’s story?
Time to find out!