Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

“Traditional schooling trains people to think incorrectly about failure. You’re taught a subject, you take a test, and if you fail, that’s it. You’re done. But once you’re out of school, there is no book, no test, no grade. And if you fail, you learn. In fact, in most cases, it’s the only way to learn—especially if you’re creating something the world has never seen before.”

“You should always be striving to tell a story so good that it stops being yours—so your customer learns it, loves it, internalizes it, owns it. And tells it to everyone they know.”

“Before he told you what a product did, he always took the time to explain why you needed it. And he made it all look so natural, so easy.”

“If you’re going to pour your heart into creating something new, then that thing should be disruptive. It should be bold. It should change something.”

“The most wonderful part of building something together with a team is that you’re walking side by side with other people. You’re all looking at your feet and scanning the horizon at the same time. Some people will see things you can’t, and you’ll see things that are invisible to everyone else. So don’t think doing the work just means locking yourself in a room—a huge part of it is walking with your team. The work is reaching your destination together. Or finding a new destination and bringing your team with you.”

“Every decision has elements of data and opinion, but they are ultimately driven by one or the other. Sometimes you have to double down on the data; other times you have to look at all the data and then trust your gut. And trusting your gut is incredibly scary. Many people don’t have either a good gut instinct to follow or the faith in themselves to follow it. It takes time to develop that trust. So they try to turn an opinion-driven business decision into a data-driven one. But data can’t solve an opinion-based problem.”

“In the end, there are two things that matter: products and people. What you build and who you build it with. The things you make—the ideas you chase and the ideas that chase you—will ultimately define your career. And the people you chase them with may define your life.”

“Mission-driven “assholes”: The people who are crazy passionate—and a little crazy. They speak most frankly, trampling the politics of the modern office, and steamroll right over the delicate social order of “how things are done around here.” Much like true assholes, they are neither easygoing nor easy to work with. Unlike true assholes, they care. They give a damn. They listen. They work incredibly hard and push their team to be better—often against their will. They are unrelenting when they know they’re right, but are open to changing their minds and will praise other people’s efforts if they’re genuinely great. A good way to know if you’re working with a mission-driven "asshole" is to listen to the mythos around them—there are always a few choice stories floating around about some crazy thing they’ve done, and the people who’ve worked with them closely are always telling everyone that they’re not that bad, really. Most tellingly, the team ultimately trusts them, respects what they do, and looks back at the experience of working with them fondly, because they pushed the team to do the best work of their lives.”

“People won’t remember how you started. They’ll remember how you left.”

“That’s why analogies can be such a useful tool in storytelling. They create a shorthand for complicated concepts—a bridge directly to a common experience. That’s another thing I learned from Steve Jobs. He’d always say that analogies give customers superpowers. A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful. Everyone had CDs and tapes in bulky players that only let you listen to 10–15 songs, one album at a time. So “1,000 songs in your pocket” was an incredible contrast—it let people visualize this intangible thing—all the music they loved all together in one place, easy to find, easy to hold—and gave them a way to tell their friends and family why this new iPod thing was so cool.”

“To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail.”

“The best marketing is just telling the truth.”

“The danger with traditional commission-based sales models is that they create two different cultures: a company culture and a sales culture. The employees in these two cultures are compensated differently, think differently, care about different things.”

“And as always when you’re presenting numbers, it becomes much more important to craft a narrative. You have to tell a story. [See also: Chapter 3.2: Why Storytelling.] Your board isn’t in the business every day like you are—they can’t immediately understand the nuances or what the numbers actually mean unless you give them context.”

“It’s poison to think great ideas can only come from you. That you alone can hoard them in one place. And it’s stupid. Wasteful.”

“Why did you leave your last job?” Not the most original question, but the answer matters. I’m looking for a crisp, clear story. If they complain about a bad manager or being the victim of politics, I ask what they did about it. Why didn’t they fight harder? And did they leave a mess behind them? What did they do to make sure they left in the right way? [See also: Chapter 2.4: I Quit.] And why do they want to join this company? That reason had better be completely different from why they left their previous job. They should have a new story, a compelling story, about what they’re excited about, who they want to work with, and how they want to grow and develop.”

“The key is to find the right balance—not so disruptive that you won’t be able to execute, not so easy to execute that nobody will care. You have to choose your battles. Just make sure you have battles.”

“It’s a miracle,” they said. “He’s so calm, so collected. No prepared speeches, slides with almost no words—he just knows what he’s talking about and it all hangs together.” It never felt like a speech. It felt like a conversation. Like a story. And the reason is simple: Steve didn’t just read a script for the presentation. He’d been telling a version of that same story every single day for months and months during development—to us, to his friends, his family. He was constantly working on it, refining it. Every time he’d get a puzzled look or a request for clarification from his unwitting early audience, he’d sand it down, tweak it slightly, until it was perfectly polished.”

“If you make it, they will come” doesn’t always work. If the technology isn’t ready, they won’t come for sure. But even if you’ve got the tech, then you still have to time it right. The world has to be ready to want it. Customers need to see that your product solves a real problem they have today—not one that they may have in some distant future”

“To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail. You have to be there when it falls apart so you can put it back together.”

“Try to understand what their roadblocks are and what they’re excited about.”

“sometimes the people you don’t expect to be amazing—the ones you thought were Bs and B+s—turn out to completely rock your world. They hold your team together by being dependable and flexible and great mentors and teammates. They’re modest and kind and just quietly do good work. They’re a different type of “rock star.”

“La llamada de Apple se produjo la primera semana de enero de 2001. • Un par de semanas después me convertí en el consultor al mando de la investigación del iPod. Aunque aún no era el iPod. El nombre en clave era P68 Dulcimer, y no había equipo, ni prototipos, ni diseño, ni nada. • En marzo, Stan Ng y yo presentamos la idea del iPod a Steve Jobs. • La primera semana de abril me convertí en empleado a jornada completa y me llevé al equipo de Fuse conmigo. • A finales de abril, Tony Blevins y yo encontramos a nuestro fabricante, Inventec, en Taiwán. • En mayo contraté a DJ Novotney y Andy Hodge, las primeras incorporaciones al equipo original de Fuse. • El 23 de octubre de 2001, diez meses después de haber empezado, el iPod, nuestro gordo bebé de plástico y acero inoxidable, apareció en el mundo.”

“The critical thing is to have a goal. To strive for something big and hard and important to you. Then every step you take toward that goal, even if it’s a stumble, moves you forward.”

“Tu producto no es solo tu producto. Es toda la experiencia del usuario, una cadena que empieza cuando alguien oye hablar de tu marca por primera vez y termina cuando tu producto desaparece de su vida, devuelto o tirado, vendido a un amigo o borrado por una explosión de electrones. El cliente no diferencia entre la publicidad, la aplicación y la atención al cliente. Todo forma parte de tu empresa. De tu marca.”

“Como ha dicho la brillante, empática, perspicaz y humilde diseñadora Ivy Ross, vicepresidenta de diseño de hardware de Google: «No se trata de datos o intuición. Se trata de datos e intuición».”

“Tienes que dar un primer paso hacia lo desconocido. Tienes que reunir todo lo que has aprendido y suponer lo que sucederá a continuación. Así es la vida. La mayoría de las decisiones que tomamos se basan en datos, pero no están hechas de datos.”

“Tienes que contar a tu equipo por qué. ¿Por qué soy tan apasionado? ¿Por qué esta misión es tan relevante? ¿Por qué este pequeño detalle es tan importante que ahora mismo estoy volviéndome loco cuando nadie más parece pensar que importa? Nadie quiere seguir a una persona que lucha contra molinos de viento sin motivo alguno. Para que se unan a ti, para que de verdad se conviertan en un equipo, para llenarlos con la misma energía y el mismo impulso que hierve dentro de ti, tienes que contarles por qué.”

“Analizar el producto con todo detalle y preocuparte por la calidad de lo que produce tu equipo no es microgestión. Es exactamente lo que deberías hacer. Recuerdo a Steve Jobs sacando una lupa de joyero y mirando píxeles uno a uno en una pantalla para asegurarse de que los gráficos de la interfaz de usuario estaban bien dibujados.”

“Porque en cuanto eres gerente, ya no eres contable. Ni diseñador. Ni pescador. Ni artista. Ni cualquier otro trabajo del que disfrutabas. Siempre tengo que andar recordándoles a mis clientes que si están haciendo lo que les encantaba de su antiguo trabajo, probablemente algo va mal. Ahora diriges un equipo de personas que hacen aquello en lo que tú eras tan bueno. Por lo tanto, debes dedicar al menos el 85 por ciento de tu tiempo a la gestión. Si no es así, no lo estás haciendo bien. Tu trabajo es gestionar. Y gestionar es difícil.”