Tony Fadell on “opinion-based decisions” and what made Steve Jobs great Tony Fadell is the co-creator of the iPod, iPhone, and Nest. He describes some of the things that made Steve Jobs great: “Really pushing you. Relentless on the details. Challenging you for the right reasons. It wasn’t bullying, it wasn’t demeaning. He would critique the work, not judge the person—at least not in front of them or a group. Extreme attention to detail.” But one of the most impressive things about Steve, Tony argues, was his ability to make great opinion-based decisions, which is critical for any revolutionary product: “When you make the first version of anything—something revolutionary—there are a lot of opinion-based decisions… And when you have those opinions, and you’re trying to work with a team to implement those decisions, you have to really tell the ‘why’ of those decisions. That way everyone can feel like they’re a part of those decisions and understand the tradeoffs... A lot of times, people want a data-driven decision, but with v1s you don’t have data.” He continues: “If you look at most companies that are paralyzed and cannot make new innovations and new products, it’s because they’re trying to turn opinion-based decisions into data-driven decisions so that they don’t lose their jobs… with a v1 product, you need to be able to articulate opinion-based decisions and own them. If you don’t get them right, you own them, fix them, and move on.” And to be clear, this doesn’t mean Steve got every decision right. As Tony explains: “Version 1 of the iPod wasn’t perfect. Version 1 of the iPhone wasn’t perfect. We got a lot of opinion-based decisions wrong. But as you go through it, you got more data on those original opinions and you were then able to modulate off of that… But at the revolution stage: opinions, opinions, opinions. No data.’ Video source: @lexfridman (2022)