Thread by @knowledgenets

Last week, @HarryStebbings hosted an exceptionally insightful podcast with @tfadell. In the spirit of the “20” in The Twenty Minute VC Podcast (@twentyminutevc), here are 20 highlights from the podcast:

🧵 💡 👇

thetwentyminutevc.com/tony-fadell/

1) Tony Fadell is often referred to as “the father of the iPod”. Previously, he was the Founder & CEO of Nest Labs.

Currently, he is a Principal at Future Shape, which is a firm that delivers “mentorship with money”.

Fun fact: Fadell has filed for 300+ patents in his career.

2) Future Shape is a global investment & advisory firm that focuses on coaching engineers & scientists who are working on deep foundational technology. Unlike most venture capital funds, Future Shape does not have LP’s and has long-term committed capital.

futureshapellc.com

3) Fadell’s business outlook: Helping other people and companies succeed is a winning business strategy that generates recurring happy customers.

4) Currently, Fadell describes his relationship with money as the following:

“Money is just a means to make change happen”.

5) Fadell and his wife enjoyed the mentorship from Bill Campbell and others. As a result, Fadell desires to give back, pave the way forward, and help mentor the next group of technologists and entrepreneurs.

6) Fadell believes that trustworthiness and willingness to listen are the 2 defining traits for a person to be considered "coachable".

Fadell is very supportive in the benefits of mentorship. Usually, exceptional mentors are highly selective.

7) Being a “change-maker” requires being bold.

There is a difference between taking stupid risks versus risk mitigation versus taking calculated risks.

Be upfront, kind, authentic, and respected.

8) Focus on building quality and trusted relationships instead of transaction-based tradeoffs. Avoid fake relationships from people that are simply building an ulterior sales funnel to initiate transactions.

9) Fadell believes that everyone goes through “imposter syndrome” at some point in their life.

10) Growth occurs when you push yourself to the edge.

Complacency can lead to stagnation.

Learn from both failures and success. “Do, fail, learn, repeat”.

11) “Do, fail, learn, repeat”.

Fadell believes that the current general education system is backwards, since it focuses on learning first, followed by “doing”.

Fadell believes that best learning comes from doing, followed by learning along the journey to figure out the gaps.

12) Fadell has an exceptionally curious mind, and “new things, new ideas, new people, and new technologies are like oxygen to his brain”.

13) Both @tfadell and @chamath share the belief that the world's first trillionaire will originate from the climate change & climate technology industry.

14) Fadell believes that single-use plastic recycling isn’t an environmentally sustainable method of living, especially since a significant amount of global plastic recycling is either burned, buried, littered, or relocated to another country.

15) Fadell believes that more industries in the future global economy will focus on building a “holistic, circular, and sustainable” economy as opposed to the current state in many industries, which is an “extract, use, and trash” economy.

16) “Software doesn’t eat the world unless it has hardware attached to it and changing it”. ~ Fadell

Fadell emphasized the focus on “systems thinking” in the podcast.

17) “Do the right thing, and the money will eventually come”. ~ Fadell

18) Fast money generally doesn’t solve multi-generational problems, and Fadell stated that “fast money” implies chasing, not building.

Instead, it takes hard work, long-term committed capital, and lots of talented individuals to solve multi-generational problems.

19) Fadell’s book recommendation: "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman

20) Hope you enjoyed this thread of thoughts! 😃

Special thanks to @tfadell for sharing several insights, words of wisdom, and life lessons on the podcast with @HarryStebbings on the @twentyminutevc podcast.