Drishti Diaries | The PodFather

IIMB's PGPEM cohort hosted Tony Fadell at Drishti 2022#BiggestEverDrishti

Tony Fadell, known as 'the father of the iPod', joined Apple in 2001 and helped develop the first-generation iPhone and iPod. He was also the founder of Nest labs which he sold to Google for $3.2 Billion!?

Tony now runs an investment firm called 'Future Shape' and has recently authored his book titled Build.?

Professor Ramesh Venkateswaran moderated the discussion.

The event saw participation from IIMB students, alum and fans from outside the IIMB community across the country.

The session started with Professor Venkateswaran asking how Tony got the entrepreneurial bug. Tony recounted his first taste of business. He was in the 4th grade when he got his first taste of entrepreneurship. Buying eggs wholesale from the farmers and selling them door-to-door with his brother and the empowerment of earning money and freedom to buy whatever he wanted with this money is what kick-started his interest in building his own business.?

On his thoughts around current business practices and mindset of instant gratification, nano-second success and market valuation, tony mentioned, " First and foremost, anything worth doing takes a Decade to build."

"The best time to build the companies is during the downturn".

Tony noted that a downturn provides fundamental opportunities. With persistence and the best teams, you can build transformative companies.

"It's easy to solve a problem that everyone sees, but it is hard to solve a problem that almost no one sees. We are all victims of habit".

Remembering Tony's statement, professor Venkateswaran asked how Tony managed to identify problems that others did not see. On this, Tony mentioned that one needs to look at the experience of a first-time user, understand customer touch points and where the frictions are.?

"You should be prototyping your marketing long before you have something to market".

Tony stressed figuring out the 'Why' before the 'what' and the 'how'. He explained that people have small attention spans and that one has to condense your communication into a short press release.?

Before solving the how, he suggested determining who your audience is, what your differentiation is, and what problem you are solving.???

The session helped the students learn from real-world examples of Building scalable products and helped them map the frameworks learnt in the class with the reality of business.