How Tony Fadell discovers what to build

Tony Fadell built the iPod, iPhone and the Nest.

He is one of the most respected designers and builders of our time.

And he has a timeless approach to deciding what is worth building.

When given new technology, most people ask "What can we build with this?"

Tony doesn't do that.

He asks, "What's the pain that needs to be solved?" and then,

"How can new technology solve that pain?"

Simple to say, very hard to execute. But he did it time and again.

Here are four insights I got from listening to Tony on Lenny's podcast:

1. Pain before technology. Always
2. Habituated pain is invisible. Find it.
3. "Why now?" needs a technology answer.
4. You're building a system, not a feature.

I'll break each insight down, with a tip on how to apply it immediately.

Be the PM who ships a great product. Sign up now

​

#1 Pain Before Technology. Always.

Tony doesn't start with what's possible. He starts with what hurts.

The pain that exists right now, or that you can see forming on the horizon.

The thermostat wasn't a flashy opportunity. Nobody was rallying for a smarter one. But Tony saw that 50% of your energy bill was controlled by a device you hated, didn't understand, and never programmed. That's pain. And it had been sitting there, unaddressed, for decades.

The best discovery practitioners do this instinctively—they walk into a customer conversation already hunting for friction, not features.

Try this: Never ask your customers what they want. Ask what they hate doing and avoid doing and why. That's where the signal lives.

#2 Habituated Pain is Invisible. Find it.

The most dangerous pain is the kind people have stopped mentioning.

When a product was built with a technology limitation, users adapted. They learned to live with it. They stopped seeing it as a problem and started seeing it as "just how it works." Tony calls this habituated pain—and it's the richest discovery territory there is.

Again, energy companies gave programmable thermostats away as rebates. Almost nobody used it correctly because programming it sucked. People just had to pay the bill. Until Nest came along and made it disappear.

Try this: Ask your customers: "What workarounds have you built to deal with this product?" Workarounds are habituated pain made visible. If they have a spreadsheet, a Slack channel, or a manual process duct-taped to your product...that's opportunity.

#3 "Why Now?" needs a technology answer.

Every great product Tony has built was possible because multiple technologies matured at the same time.

The iPod needed portable mass storage, lithium batteries, low-power ARM processors, and the rise of digital music—all converging at once.

The iPhone needed multi-touch, WiFi, the coming of 3G, digital cameras, and YouTube.

None of these products would have worked two years earlier. The pain existed. The technology didn't. "Why now?" isn't a pitch question. It's a discovery question. And most PMs never ask it.

Try this: Before you start discovery on your next initiative, write down the answer to this question: "What became possible in the last 18 months that makes this solvable today?"

#4 You're Building a System, not a feature.

Nest wasn't just a better thermostat. It was a new installation model, a new distribution channel, a new pricing strategy, and an AI learning engine wrapped in hardware that looked nothing like anything else on the shelf.

When PMs think too narrowly—just the feature, just the screen, just the API—they miss the system that makes the product actually work in the world.

Discovery has to be that wide. You're not just learning about the product. You're learning about the entire context it lives in.

Try this: Map your product's system before your next discovery sprint. List every touchpoint: how customers find it, buy it, onboard, use it daily, get stuck, and eventually leave. Then run your interviews against that map. You'll find pain in places you weren't even planning to look.

From Insight to Action

• Want to be the PM who knows what to build? Join my free workshop and I'll show you how to use Claude to do it.
• Looking for your next job? Curious about trends in climate and product? Join my next Lean Coffee for Climate Product Leaders. Free, in partnership with My Climate Journey.