Tony Fadell: How to build real taste (and why AI makes it matter more)
You still need humans in the loop.
你仍然需要人在环路里。
Don't surrender to the machine.
不要向机器投降。
We can use the machines, but don't cognitively surrender
我们可以使用机器，但不要认知上投降
because it's so easy to build.
因为构建变得太容易了。
The things that stand out are the things that are really well thought through.
真正脱颖而出的，是那些经过深思熟虑的东西。
Today in the AI world, I can just make a prompt and all of a sudden it gets [music] spit out.
今天在 AI 的世界里，我只需打个 prompt，一下子它就被吐出来了。
You're building on a really crusty foundation.
你是在一个非常腐朽的基础上构建。
You're getting short-term game for very very long-term loss.
你在用极其长远的损失换取短期的收益。
If you're going to build a real company, can't be throwaway.
如果你要建一家真正的公司，就不能是一次性的。
One of your colleagues, Herman Hower, that ask him how he decides what is worth building.
你的一位同事 Hermann Hauser，我问过他怎么判断什么值得去做。
I always start from pain.
我总是从痛点出发。
Are there new technologies to solve that pain?
有没有新技术能解决这个痛点？
Bring innovation in, revolution [music] in redefine the space.
引入创新，掀起革命 ，重新定义这个领域。
What's the threshold?
门槛是什么？
What's a sign of, okay, this isn't big enough?
什么信号说明，好，这还不够大？
Oh, the iPod wasn't big enough.
哦，iPod 当时还不够大。
It took three generations of the iPod before it became [music] successful.
iPod 经历了三代才取得成功。
You got to fail a few times till you find your way.
你得失败几次，才能找到自己的路。
You are so into marketing that piece of building that I think a lot of builders don't think about at all.
你对营销这块儿非常投入，这是很多产品创造者根本不会去想的事情。
The technology is in service of the customer, not [music] we're going to jam the technology down the customer's throat.
技术是为客户服务的，而不是我们要把技术强塞给客户。
A customer only sees what they see through the lens of marketing.
客户只能通过营销的视角来看到你想让他们看到的东西。
You often come back to [music] the value of storytelling for product builders.
你经常回到叙事对产品创造者的价值这个话题。
Too many times when we're technology led, we talk about the what.
太多时候当我们以技术为导向，我们只谈是什么。
We don't talk about the why.
我们不谈为什么。
The why is storytelling.
为什么，就是叙事。
When I watched Steve, he was honing the story of the iPhone every day.
我看着 Steve，他每天都在打磨 iPhone 的故事。
And so when you saw him come on stage, it was just cuz he had done it a 100,000 times.
所以当你看到他走上舞台，那种感觉就是因为他已经讲过了 10 万遍。
Today my guest is Tony Fidel.
今天我的嘉宾是 Tony Fadell。
Tony doesn't know this, but ever since I started this podcast, [music] he's been near the top of my wish list of people that I've dreamed to have on this podcast.
Tony 不知道这件事，但自从我开始做这个播客 ，他就一直排在我梦想嘉宾名单的前列。
And that's because Tony [music] is the epitome of what most people listening to this podcast want to become.
这是因为 Tony 是大多数收听这个播客的人都想成为的那类人的典范。
He co-created some of the most innovative and beautiful and popular products in history, the iPod, the iPhone, the Nest thermostat.
他联合创造了历史上最具创新性、最美丽、最受欢迎的一些产品：iPod、iPhone 和 Nest 恒温器。
He's also famous for being part of the legendary team at General Magic.
他还因参与 General Magic 的传奇团队而声名大噪。
He's co-authored over 300 patents.
他拥有超过 300 项联合专利。
He also wrote one of the most important and valuable and inspiring books for builders called Build.
他还写了一本对产品创造者来说最重要、最有价值、最鼓舞人心的书，叫做《Build》。
Tony is currently an active investor [music] and adviser to deep tech startups with his team at the Build Collective.
Tony 目前是一位活跃的投资人和深科技初创公司的顾问，与他在 Build Collective 的团队一起工作。
He was recently named the inaugural designer and residence at the MIT Morning Academy [music] of Design.
他最近被任命为 MIT 莫宁设计学院首位驻场设计师。
There's so much gold in this episode.
这期节目里有太多干货了。
I could go on and on.
我可以一直说下去。
I'm going to leave it there.
就先说到这里吧。
Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennispodcast.com for a free year of some of the hottest and most well-crafted AI products in the world, available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers.
正式开始之前，别忘了去 lennispodcast.com 领取一年免费使用权，解锁一些全球最热门、最精心打磨的 AI 产品，仅向 Lenny 的通讯订阅者开放。
With that, I bring you Tony Fidel.
好了，有请 Tony Fadell。
Tony, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Tony，非常感谢你来，欢迎来到播客。
Thanks for having me.
谢谢邀请。
I appreciate it.
很荣幸。
I have a bazillion questions I want to ask you.
我有一大堆问题想问你。
I feel like I could fill four hours of conversation with all the things that I want to get out of your head.
我感觉能和你聊上四个小时，把我想从你脑子里挖出来的东西全部聊完。
I want to start with uh with the Blackberry.
我想先聊聊 BlackBerry。
I was just watching the uh BlackBerry movie recently and it's kind of this journey of the BlackBerry founders and their story and then at the end they were like, "Oh," and this iPhone thing launched and they're like, "No, this is dumb.
我最近刚看了 BlackBerry 的电影，讲的就是 BlackBerry 创始人的历程，然后到最后，iPhone 发布了，他们的反应是「噢」，然后说「不，这东西很蠢。
It's like no keyboard.
没有键盘。
It's not serious.
不是正经产品。
Can't do anything with it."
根本没法用。」
I've always wondered just being on the other side of this, being within Apple building the iPhone.
我一直很好奇，站在对立面，在 Apple 内部参与打造 iPhone 的那些人，
Uh how much did you guys actually doubt that, okay, maybe they have something, maybe we need to add a keyboard?
你们当时有多少人会怀疑这件事，觉得，也许他们说得有道理，也许我们需要加一个键盘？
It was the most heated conversation and it dragged out the longest.
这是争论最激烈、拖得最久的一个问题。
There was one one way of looking at the Blackberry which was that is the market we want to go after and we want to win.
有一种看法是，BlackBerry 就是我们想要攻占、想要赢下的市场。
And then there's the other side the flip side of that argument which is only 1% or 2% of mobile phone users at the time had a Blackberry, knew what a Blackberry was.
然后还有另一面，也就是反驳这个论点的另一面，就是当时只有 1% 到 2% 的手机用户有 BlackBerry，知道 BlackBerry 是什么。
So what about the other 98% of the people?
那另外 98% 的人呢？
What would they want?
他们想要什么？
What would they need?
他们需要什么？
Why are we going to go after winning this this very loyal and and and you know um incredibly passionate user base and try to pull them away from something?
我们为什么要去争夺这批极其忠诚、极其狂热的用户群，费尽心思把他们从已有的东西上拉过来？
And so there was this basically head-to-head competition between a display keyboard or a virtual keyboard and a physical keyboard.
于是这基本上就变成了一场正面交锋，虚拟键盘和实体键盘之间的对决。
I had been doing virtual keyboards for a while since General Magic in in the 90s and I knew what handwriting was and and keyboards were like on these touchcreens and but I was only doing it on a um I was writing software and calibrating them making trying to make them work with a single touch uh display resistive or what have you.
我从 90 年代在 General Magic 时就一直在做虚拟键盘，我知道手写输入是什么，也知道键盘在触摸屏上是什么体验，不过我那时只是在一个触摸屏上做，写软件、校准，想尽办法让它在单点触控屏上跑起来，不管是电阻屏还是别的什么。
And so I knew what the limitations were of those kinds of things.
所以我清楚这类东西的局限在哪。
So I was like, "This is really going to be difficult."
我当时的想法是：「这真的会很难。」
And we hadn't, you know, multi-touch was just, you know, was on a big pingpong table.
当时多点触控还没缩小，你知道，还停留在一张大乒乓球台那么大的东西上。
It like it hadn't been scaled down.
还没有被缩小到消费级形态。
So it wasn't like something in a consumptive form where you could really do user tests with it.
所以它还不是一个可以真正拿来做用户测试的消费级产品形态。
And so we set out a set of tests like, okay, how fast can I type this text?
于是我们制定了一套测试方案，比如：好，我打这段文字能有多快？
How can I how fast can I do this on a hardware keyboard?
在硬件键盘上能打多快？
And then how can we do this on the virtual one with multi-touch?
在多点触控虚拟键盘上又能打多快？
And it was a hardware software integration challenge of how we could get this to work.
这是一个硬件和软件集成的挑战，看我们能不能把它做到可用。
So we were going back and forth and back and forth.
于是我们就这样反复折腾。
Oh that doesn't quite work in the software.
哦，软件这里行不通。
Oh we need to change this in the hardware.
哦，硬件这里需要改。
And so this was a over a set of months would okay the hardware keywords here you know and depends on how pro you know how much you've been using it but it there's this margin error and we could really understand it.
就这样持续了好几个月，好，硬件键盘在这里你知道，取决于你用得多熟，有一定的误差，我们可以真正搞清楚它。
This over time was started way down here and it started to get it, you know, and it got a little faster and a little faster and a little faster and how many errors, not just how fast, but how many errors and how do you correct the errors and all of those things and at the end of the day I was able to convince myself it wasn't going to be a hardware issue.
这个过程从最开始的底部慢慢开始有了感觉，你知道，然后越来越快，越来越快，越来越快，不只是速度，还有错误率，错误怎么纠正，所有这些问题，最后我说服了自己，这不会是一个硬件问题。
And I was convinced at some point that we were good enough.
我在某个时刻确信我们已经足够好了。
Were we as good as a hardware keyboard?
我们有没有达到硬件键盘的水准？
No.
没有。
But were we good enough?
但我们够用了吗？
Yes.
够了。
And then other people came to that conclusion.
后来其他人也得出了同样的结论。
But at the same time there were other people who were adamant that the hardware keyboard has to be there and they were unrelenting.
但与此同时，也有一些人坚持认为硬件键盘必须要有，他们毫不退让。
And so it came down to so this was a you know classic like I I say in build the data versus opinion-based decision.
最终这件事归结为，就像我在 Build 里说的，一个典型的数据驱动对观点驱动的决策问题。
And if you think about it you had data that said there was pros and cons on both sides and what happened was the data was not clear that we should choose one over the other.
如果你仔细想，你有数据，两边都有利有弊，而最终的情况是数据并不能清楚地告诉我们应该选哪一边。
And Steve said, "We are going this way."
Steve 说：「我们就走这条路。」
Enough other people kind of said, "Yeah, that seems like that's the right thing to do.
足够多的人也大概认可：「对，这看起来是正确的事。
We're going to get close enough to get there."
我们会做到足够接近的。」
And then other people were like, "No, my opinion is this."
然后另一些人说：「不，我的判断是这样的。」
And guess who wins at the end of the day?
猜猜最终谁赢了？
Steve Jobs opinion does.
Steve Jobs 的判断起了决定性作用。
And he was like, "If you're not going to get on board, get out of this room and you can go work on another project, but you're not going to work on this."
他说：「如果你不打算跟上，就出去，你可以去做别的项目，但不能继续做这个。」
This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, WorkOS.
本期节目由本季主赞助商 WorkOS 呈现。
What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Verscell, Replet, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common?
OpenAI、Anthropic、Cursor、Vercel、Replit、Sierra、Clay 以及其他数百家顶尖公司有什么共同点？
They are all powered by work OS.
他们都由 WorkOS 驱动。
If you're building a product for the enterprise, you've felt the pain of integrating single signon, skim, arbback, audit, logs, and other features required by large companies.
如果你在打造面向企业的产品，你一定体会过集成单点登录、用户管理、权限控制的痛苦。
Work OS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SAS.
WorkOS 把那些挡在合同面前的障碍变成即插即用的 API，提供一个专为开发者打造的现代平台。
Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand [music] up market ends up working with Work OS.
我投资的初创公司里，几乎每一家开始往高端市场扩张的，最后都在用 WorkOS。
And that's because they are the best.
因为他们就是最好的。
Whether you are seedstage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer or a unicorn expanding globally, work OS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking growth.
不管你是想拿下第一个企业客户的种子期初创，还是正在拓展高端市场的独角兽，