Build, by Tony Fadell is a tome to Fadell’s career while at the same time a field guide for founders, inventors, entrepreneurs, and product managers alike. Fadell uses his real-world experience to shed some light on how to build a successful product, team, and ultimately company.

My quantum takeaway is the following:

1. Marketing: Fadell emphasizes that marketing cannot just be figured out at the very end. When building a product, product management and the marketing team should be working together from the very beginning. As you build, you should continue to use marketing to evolve the story and ensure they have a voice in what the product becomes. Steve Jobs often said, “The best marketing is just telling the truth.” You connect with people’s emotions so they’re drawn to your narrative, but you also appeal to their rational side so they can convince themselves it’s the smart move to buy what you’re selling. We can dive a little deeper into this idea over the Story Brand review.

2. Engineering: Fadell suggests that examining the product in great detail and caring deeply about the quality of what your team is producing is not micromanagement. That’s exactly what you should be doing. It helps to agree on the process early. To define it up front—here’s our product development process, here’s our design process, our marketing process, our sales process. Here’s our schedule and how we work and how we work together. Everyone—manager and team—signs off on it and then the manager has to let go. They let the team work.

3. Sales: Fadell mentions that sales is just one of many critical teams, all working together to make something great. But if sales is off to the side, doing their own thing, barely part of the company but steadily meeting their monthly goals, that can breed an insulated, transactional culture. And the way customers are treated in that kind of culture can be brutal—even in places where you’d assume customers must be treated well in order for salespeople to make any money. Rather than focusing on rewarding salespeople immediately after a transaction, Fadell suggests to vest the commission over time so your sales team is incentivized to not only bring in new customers, but also work with existing customers to ensure they’re happy and stay happy.

4. Product Development: Fadell is a product guy at his core, and this is where his thinking really shines…and it is Chapter 5.5 that you really need to dig-in and make it a part of your mantra if you’re a founder or a part of the product team. Remember that building a product isn’t like assembling an IKEA chair. You can’t just hand people instructions and walk away. Building a product is like making a song. The band is composed of marketing, sales, engineering, support, manufacturing, PR, legal. And the product manager is the producer—making sure everyone knows the melody, that nobody is out of tune and everyone is doing their part. They’re the only person who can see and hear how all the pieces are coming together, so they can tell when there’s too much bassoon or when a drum solo’s going on too long, when features get out of whack or people get so caught up in their own project that they forget the big picture.

And to dive a bit deeper into this Product Manager role…

According to Fadell, they are pivotal in the journey of a product, from conceptualization to its launch and subsequent market performance. They act as a bridge between multiple departments, ensuring seamless communication and alignment toward a common goal.

To reiterate and expand on some of Fadell’s points:

1. Product Specification: Product Marketing Managers are involved in defining the product’s features, benefits, and overall user experience. They do this based on market research, user feedback, and competitive analysis.

2. Messaging & Positioning: They develop product messaging that differentiates the product from its competitors and resonates with the target customer base. This messaging informs all marketing, sales, and customer success materials.

3. Go-to-Market Strategy:They create and execute a go-to-market (GTM) strategy that outlines how the product will be launched and marketed, including pricing, distribution, and promotional strategies.

4. Cross-functional Collaboration: They work closely with various departments like engineering, design, sales, customer support, etc. They ensure that all these teams are aligned with the product vision and customer needs.

5. Voice of the Customer: They represent the customer within the organization, advocating for their needs, and ensuring the product provides value to them.

6. Product Performance: Post-launch, they monitor and analyze the product’s performance in the market and use these insights to make informed decisions for future product development and marketing strategies.