Build by Tony Fadell
Ghost-writing and real‑designing
Tony Fadell is best known as a creator of the iPod and iPhone and the founder of Nest. He and Matt Rogers started the thermostat company in 2011, and soon hired Matteo as Nest’s first Creative Director and Dina as its first writer.
(That’s me. Dina is me. Hello. I’m going to switch to the first person now. Also, Matteo says hi–he’s currently in a Zoom window telling me to finish writing this case study).
Anyway, the point is that we all worked closely together from the early days of Nest. And at some point after leaving the company, Tony began thinking about a book.
He’d been advising and investing for years, and noticed that he kept telling the same stories, giving the same advice. So he started a spreadsheet. Column A was topics: growing too fast, marketing, and the value of an assistant. Column B was examples: that one time at General Magic, that great story about Steve.
He came to me after 115 lines and asked if I’d ghostwrite his book.
That began the two-year process of writing Build, slightly interrupted by having a baby (me) and COVID (everyone). I organized the content, figured out the structure, and wrote a publisher pitch, and then came the long process of actually writing. How much advice, how much story, how much to reveal, how deep to go. I’d interview Tony over the phone, write the chapter, send it over, and then we’d hash it out in the Google Doc. Back and forth and back again.
It quickly became obvious that words weren’t enough. We needed illustrations of Tony’s ideas. We needed photos of his creations, most of which were buried in unlabeled boxes in his garage.
Enter Matteo.
Matteo designed the cover, which turned into the visual language for dozens of covers in dozens of languages and the entire Build Fund. Matteo designed every illustration in the book. And he assembled a team to unearth, photograph, and archive everything Tony had saved over 40 ears.
The result was Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making. It became a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestseller. At the moment, it has 4.32 stars on Goodreads.
