 it's crazy to be here like it's been so wild that we haven't had events like this in so long it's great to be here great to see everyone good morning yeah hello welcome to slash we are so excited to be here this is amazing uh i want to start by apologizing uh for not being harry stebbings you are all promised harry stebbings you have me michael stoffard i'm the editor of sifted um not the first time that i've stood in for harry stebbings uh i've been asked on numerous occasions to be his uh his his body double and his backup uh i also want to crash the party pretending to be harry stebbings another fun fact um so we're here with to talk about product with the man who has defined product in our era is that too much to say that too nice thank you very much no i mean a lot of hard work uh the the ipod uh the iphone nest uh seminal products of our era it's incredibly excited exciting to talk about it with you thanks so much for being here thank you thank you um but first i believe that you have some product experience with finland and indeed was your first nearly your first ever time outside the u.s was to do product in finland go on tell me how it was crazy so the first time was in finland was almost 30 years ago most of you were probably not even 30 in the audience but 30 years ago i was here i was just about 23 uh years old 22 23 at the time and i was working for a company called general magic and uh there's a great documentary you should check out uh uh on that but we were making the uh iphone about 15 years earlier than the world needed it let's put it that way and so when i came here i was you know i didn't know anything that there was no internet at the time there was hardly any cell phones so i i was coming to to helsinki and then tom pair finland and i'm going to visit a company called nokia i was like what nokia who where am i going i didn't even have a cell phone then there was very few cell phones in the world back in 92 93 something like that so i go to nokia but it was a september time frame and literally they bring out gsm gsm had just started like it had they're just working at gsm and then they're going to go we have a super secret demo for you and i'm like what is this and they go there's this thing called sms texting and literally i got to see sms and texting here in finland before the world saw it i had no idea what it was i had no idea if it was going to be success or anything but it's so wild like 30 years ago to where we are today and then having this inside finland right now it's just it's an incredible and then you know then there was the iphone and all the other stuff that came after it it's crazy to think that you know my my real understanding of mobile networks and and devices was right here do you remember what you said or that you thought did you think this is ridiculous this will never catch on you know i'm 23 i had no idea it's like ah i you know i knew what kind of the mobile network was because you know a couple people around general magic had Motorola star tax back in the day those little things but back back then you just didn't know like it was pre-internet you didn't know anything so i was like this could be cool i don't know but pretty wild that it all kind of started right here you know amazing so since then as i set up in my little intro you've created three of the products that have defined our age the watchword of slush is to be like radically practical we're trying to give advice there's a lot of people in this audience who are designing products tell us what is your secret source tell them how to do what you did give us the magic well magic the magic is really you know understanding need understanding what people really need or what they will need with technology and so for me you know learning from the disaster that was general magic you can see it up there on the slide that was the first one up to the up on the the left there um was making sure that you are solving a problem that people are starting to have okay not everyone has but are starting to have and technology can start to fill it with general magic what we were doing was we were creating the iphone 15 years too soon that was we were doing email most people didn't even have email back then most people we were doing downloadable games and buying tickets online but on a private network not on our internet network so we were doing we were even doing emojis we had emojis we had these you know these animated little graphics and things we had all this stuff in 1993 94 the world didn't even have networks we didn't have mobile we didn't have email we didn't have internet we didn't have any of these things so we were solving for problems that were just you know a decade and a half too soon and so so guess you can solve a problem but you have to make sure that people are going to understand it and when we showed that product and we showed it off the world because the world you know most people probably don't know this but we were we were destined to beat Microsoft people were saying we were going to crush Microsoft right this is in 93 94 they are going to take over the world this was a team of people who created the Macintosh okay and we spun out of Apple and we were building this thing and literally when we showed it to the world everyone was like wow and unless you were an uber geek because they're uber uber geek people were like oh that's interesting I think I'm not quite so sure and then when we launched it and we put it in the stores we sold after spending a hundred million dollars back in the day a hundred million or more back in the day four thousand units in total so you have to remember you may be solving a problem you just have to make sure society understands or at least a few people a larger enough people set of people understand that there is a problem to be solved and so ultimately fast forward to the iPhone days or 2005 2007 people already had email people had internet people had mobile communications they knew what you know mobile music was because of the iPod and those things and so that's why it took off like crazy right but 15 years too soon it wasn't there so you really have to understand are you delivering a painkiller to people and do people understand what it is you're doing stop trying to create something that impresses the engineer or the other person next to you who's really geeked out try to make sure you're building something that gives superpowers to every person make it really easy and they can understand it and you can and and and they um you don't have to be so you know whizzy and techy about it all so that's really the difference so you need to have timing timing is there nail the timing what about the way a product kind of feels what about the like soul and the spirit of these things because you know when you look at the you know the early the early iPod um it wasn't it wasn't i mean it was cool like a thousand songs in your pocket like the tech was fun and stuff but like there were other things like that it just felt like you wanted it right i wanted it in my in my in my body well well that's a great question michael so the way i see it and the way i think about products approaching it is 50 of what you put into that product has to have an irrational reason for existing there's got to be a reason rational like logic like yes it's existing it's solving this problem but the other 50 percent has to be emotional it has to hook you it has to grab you and say okay i need this now if it's all rational people go mmm that's neat okay yeah i need it but do i really need to get off my chair and commit and go do it if you do something that's a hundred percent emotional or mostly emotional people like that's neat but you know what it's novelty after a week or two it's going to end up in the drawer it's going to do whatever it's not like doesn't hook you if you hook the two things together need plus emotion that gets people to go wow i really want it and i really need it right and that's the big thing is splitting and making sure you understand you're working with both parts of your brain because some people approach most problem a lot of problems rationally a lot of people approach them logically and some people are exactly opposite of that and so what you have to do is blend those things together not just in the product not just in the user interface but the entire customer journey from the time they discover it through the time they use it to the time they even you know return it or do something with it you want to make sure you have that balance all the way through not just in the product experience but in the overall customer touch points was nest emotional oh nest was very emotional do you want to tell people what nest for those i mean yeah most people know but yeah just a quick recap so what nest was all about was it was really a company to save energy so this was just after the clean tech debacle of 2008 2009 when everyone was rushing to do green good things for the planet we decided we were going to go off and save energy and the reason being is that if you look at most homes 50% of their energy costs were all due to heating and cooling and heating and cooling for most people like yeah whatever they didn't even know that part of their bill they get a bill and it just says pay they didn't know that heating cooling took all that stuff and it was being controlled by a product that might have been 20 euros 50 euros wherever it was ugly it was this beige yellowing box on the wall people would hide it away so they were spending all this money every month every year using a product with a horrible interface and they didn't even know what was going on so we said what we're going to do is we're going to blend the rational part of saving money and saving energy with the emotional part of making something sexy that what's on the wall that you're like you point to you think about all the furnishings your home your furniture your artwork whatever in in your home you want to make a certain kind of experience right well this was all about making sure that this was a prized possession on your wall that you wanted to interact with what to talk about while it was saving money as well so that was really that that blend of the two but people when we first when I first started talking to talking about it people like thermostat are you nuts who the hell cares the market was tiny the market was maybe 200 million dollar market because it had been you know it was just a utility thing we changed the whole script on that and it was all about first and foremost to save energy to save making more power plants and then ultimately it got to where it was so that was another really interesting blend of of those things that came together and people thought we were crazy absolutely crazy but then it turned out to be crazy smart I think so um so now you're doing something slightly different you have future shape yeah um can you tell us briefly what future shape is the fund what are you doing but also how do you like spot product geniuses now you know like you you you can do it you you've got a track record of doing it yourself but it's a slightly different scale spotting someone else like right what are you what are you looking for like what's what's what's on your mind when you're talking talking to people okay so first about future shape so future shape is it's a fund or my own fund and we have teams we have teams uh people both in san francisco as well as in paris and what we're doing is we're funding deep technology companies around the world so we have over 200 250 direct investments and companies all around the world doing hard things hard things that most vcs would not invest in until you know until uh it becomes popular so for one instance maybe you guys have all heard of uh impossible foods so plant-based meats those kinds of things possible foods back in 2014 I think it was when we first invested no one cared no one really cared but we said this is important this is important for the planet this is important for people's health and so what we decided was we were going to invest in that we were one of the first checks in impossible foods now plant-based foods are everywhere you know you run into it there's probably 200 300 company startups all going after this kind of stuff so we try to do stuff that's really early before it's popular before there's a rush of money into it because we think it's the right thing to do not just because it's fashionable right same thing with nest those kinds of things we try to find the trends find those entrepreneurs who are on top of the next trend and so to your questions specifically and I'm sure there's a lot of entrepreneurs out there in this room who do this are cutting-edge and those cutting-edge people when I meet them they're people that I can learn from and if I have a first discussion with them they are teaching me something and I'm reading all the time I'm digesting so much stuff they're teaching me something that I can't even get access to even in the popular mainstream press or whatever it is when when they're teaching me something when I'm talking to them and then I'm also able to give them some advice or some ideas and they're learning as well when that two-way street opens up and we're communicating on that level and we're both learning I say that that's the entrepreneur that's the team I want to I want to get interested in because they're open to learning and I'm going to be learning from them and we're on that cutting edge we can work together to bring the cutting edge to the world much more quickly because we can build our our put our networks together put our brains together and make it happen so it's really first about that spark about am I learning and are they understanding the need and are they understanding the rational and the emotional need for what they're trying to do those things are really really key for me for how we find these these people and we've like I said over 200 companies and they're all around the world we're not just Silicon Valley actually I think we're doing more deals outside the US now and especially outside of Silicon Valley then then we have ever done and that's only increased over the years in fact I moved away I moved away from Silicon Valley I want to ask you about your move your move to Paris and you can hype up European tech because we're all here and we're all fans but yeah is um sorry I just totally lost my place um is oh yeah so so to pitch you if people want to pitch you basically what you're saying is sure tell you something you don't know right tell you something that you can't get access to like that's the way to get future shape interested right yeah that's the lesson well that's yeah the big thing is if it's popular if you're coming to me with like I have something for the metaverse I'm like no thank you if you have something that tells me I'm doing you know sales tech or ad tech or media tech or I'm doing you know those kinds of things that are not going to be about helping the environment helping societies helping the health of individuals we don't talk about it that just doesn't matter we want the stuff that's fundamentally going to change the planet for the better I don't want to talk about social I don't want to talk about any of that stuff that stuff yeah that's whatever I only talk about stuff that matters that's gonna that's gonna impact our our families and our our kids our grandkids that stuff that we need to do that's what's most important for what our team does and so you can see some things here on the slides thank you very much you can see some stuff here on the slides it's crazy stuff like if you look here like Menlo Micro it's up there uh on the upper right they are actually replacing all relays now if you remember back in the day there's there were vacuum tubes and we transferred to transistors like that was a huge jump well at that same time and before that there's things called relays solid state relays electro mechanical relays what have you those things have not changed for 150 years Menlo Micro up there has made a solid state switch the first innovation in relays and solid state relays in 150 years it is so fundamental to everything we do on this planet it may not sound incredible but in the electrification and the wireless of everything that we're moving to it is absolutely critical over 20 30 billion of these things are sold every year and now with this one product it's like moving from vacuum tubes to transistors so that's the kind of stuff like really fundamental stuff and we save tons of energy tons of wasted heat all that stuff with that we talked about impossible turn tide turn tide next generation electric motors highly efficient electric motors so we don't just burn up heat and you know when they're when they're running for electric vehicles for all fans for equipment in factories again does it sound sexy maybe not but you know how much energy is wasted when we produce 100% of the energy today 60 to 70% of that energy is wasted wasted as heat we just lose it we're trying to save energy we're trying to save the planets try to save co2 all those kinds of things emit less we're wasting so much we're going for those fundamental things that matter not freaking metaverse sorry everybody in the audience do metaverse but we got to save the planet all right so you moved to paris six years ago you're one of us now yep you are part of the european tech ecosystem which as you can see has never been stronger or more booming why did you come here because we're so great but why why else did you come here and what are you excited about in europe and i guess maybe those questions have a overlap in terms of their venn diagram of like climate stuff but but give us the yeah so really i started coming here in 2009 besides work but i started coming here for leisure and stuff in 2009 and um actually wrote the business plan for nest while it was in europe and went back to go build it and so i had started to see the inklings of kind of a startup culture in 2009 but it was really really nascent but we fell in love my wife and i and our family fell in love with europe from our visit in 2009 where we stayed eight months or so in paris and in different places around europe and so we just kept coming back and then we bought uh apartment in paris we kept back coming back every year made lots of friends and stuff and i started seeing literally seven six seven years ago things starting booming blossoming at the very lowest levels inside of all these countries paris be are in france being one of them but all around europe and i was like this is the place to be silicon valley after being there 26 years i'm like yeah i've known a lot of it know a lot about it but i'm like there are problems to be solved all around this world and there are smart people all around this world and we need to go find those entrepreneurs because we have to light a fire across the entire planet to get us to where we need to go as a as a as a species right and so coming to europe and watching it watching this whole scene grow i think slush might be exactly that many years old six seven years old watching this just blossom and just take over you know people like no there's never going to be any unicorns in europe and no there's never we need to google why don't we have google of europe and why don't we have the apple of europe and all this stuff well it's coming now right it is absolutely coming it's there you're the reality you can see it here and it is stronger than ever and like i said we're doing more deals here than than the most places in the world because it's so strong the talent the education the openness um we just love it here and we're continuing to invest and and and building a life and and so we're staying here in europe we're not moving back to the us so thank you guys are very interested and it's great to be part of this community um and you're interested in the same things you're interested in the clean tech like oh yeah all the same things all the same things all the same things so speaking of products products yes i believe that you've been working on a secret product i have hiding from the world i have um that you are going to announce to us today uh so maybe over over to you but i for one am on tenterhooks okay well everyone you know i love building great products um working with great teams of people helping people today to build great things um you know i'm i'm the old guy in the industry now i used to be the young one like i said when i came to uh fiddling so long ago well over the years with uh with future shape you know and working with all these entrepreneurs and helping them i realized something i realized that the only reason why i'm on this stage today is because someone helped me to get here over the years someone mentored me helped me get to this point and and believed in me and so i went back over all the all the years and all the things lessons i've learned and all the mentors i worked with and i said and i look back and i said a lot of my mentors have died a lot of my mentors have died and i was like you know what that baton of mentorship has been passed from them to me or at least i'm grabbing it the only way i can give back to to honor the mentors who gave to me is to give back to the community to give back to the world and so today i want to announce a whole crazy new product that i've been working on for the last 18 24 months during covid i didn't know covid was coming but it came and it's called build and it's a book today is the day the the teaser day the launch day for build a and an orthodox guide to making things worth making it's not a bibliography at all it's not autobiographical it's a book of mentorship it's an encyclopedia of mentorship it's all the questions i get asked all the time the things that i've seen the things that i've learned it's got all kinds of microchapters all about you know how to approach a career how to approach a startup how to about think about product design how to think about doing things how do you choose lawyers how do you choose venture capitalist how do you build a board all of these things so we've been putting this book together distilling it down and working through it many many times but literally build is it we're gonna it'll be launching and it'll be available in may uh uh the next year it's going to be in 14 different languages in the regions around the world obviously it's print it's a printed book i thought it was going to be easy it's as hard if not harder than actually making products and so this is it this is what we're working on and hopefully you know it's going to help a lot of people out there um and and uh and maybe you're going to find that uh you know it might give you some confidence what i've always found with working with all these entrepreneurs is that typically they have the right answers they already have the right answers they're right here in their gut but what they don't have is the experience and confidence to trust their gut so my hope is this book will allow you to start to trust your gut more and take those big leaps and to get that mentorship the way i had the mentorship and spread it far and wide so that you can go on and and accelerate your missions inside your companies and change the world dramatically and as quickly as we were able to do so that's really about it's really about giving back and and and helping a lot of people out there trying to change the world so that's what it's all about so there you go build build everybody i hope you like it that's really exciting i can't wait to read it um well our time is up sadly um but we've learned a huge amount about timings of building products getting like soul into a product i thought the idea of it being like if it's just useful it's neat uh it has to be like 50 soul 50 uh you know like actually solving like rational problems it's fascinating to pitch you you need to tell you something you really don't know and it can't be about the metaverse definitely not no nft sneaker startups for tony uh it has to be solving like real fundamental problems ideally to stop the world from burning and as often dying a terrible climate related death um really fantastic insights thank you so much thank you mike round of applause for tony thank you all you have a great slash thanks everybody see you out there