Product Managers Are the Voice of the Customer

How do you talk about a product before anything like it exists? How do you guide the engineers building it and the marketing department who has to sell it?

As co-creator of the iPod and iPhone, founder of the learning thermostat Nest, and with over 300 patents to his name, Tony Fadell is a serial entrepreneur who now focuses on investing. He tells Azeem Azhar how he uses opinion-based decision-making in his work, and why thinking like a product manager helps drive radical innovation.

They also discuss:

• What a “parent CEO” is and why they are crucial to an innovating company.
• How focusing on profits and loss (“P&L”) can stifle innovation in large companies.
• Why no one has been able to design the perfect TV remote.
• Why Tony believes the metaverse, as a social experience, is doomed to fail.

@azeem
@exponentialview
@tfadell

Further resources:

• General Magic (Documentary Film 2018)