Tony Fadell on mission-driven a**holes, Silicon Valley entitlement and why LLMs are 'know-it-alls'
Tony Fadell took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how building the next generation of deep tech startups requires mission-driven a**holes.
Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod and founder of Nest, took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how building the next generation of deep tech startups requires mission-driven a**holes. The entrepreneur and investor did not hold back on stage as he called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement and dunked on LLMs being “know-it-alls”, earning a wave of laughs and applause across the fully-packed auditorium.
Fadell explained why he believes “mission-driven a**holes are a good thing, and in fact, needed to create and ship world class technology products.
“People work with people who are very difficult, and those are the ones that create and change the world. But there are two types of aholes. Everybody’s an ahole, but you gotta understand why,” Fadell said. “If they’re an ahole, because it’s their ego, they’re trying to push people down, that is an egocentric ahole. But, if you are an ahole on the details, you’re sitting there pushing on the details, you’re not criticizing the people, but you are critiquing their work and saying you can do better, that is a mission-driven ahole.”
Fadell thinks it’s not a bad thing when someone is keen on the details and makes sure their team is getting things right. He believes that focusing on details is what you need to make great products, and when you have a manager who cares, that’s a good thing.
The entrepreneur and investor also called out Silicon Valley for its entitlement, making a joke about how startups aren’t hiring Googlers because “you’re lucky that they even showed up.”
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