Tony Fadell, the father of the iPod and founder of Nest, took to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Tuesday to talk about how mission-driven a**holes are needed to build the next generation of deep tech startups. The entrepreneur and investor didn't hold back on stage to shout out Silicon Valley's rights and mock LLMs for being “know-it-alls,” sparking waves of laughter and applause throughout the packed venue. .
Fadel explained why he believes “mission-driven a**holes are a good thing and, in fact, necessary to create and ship world-class technology products.”
“People work with very difficult people, and they are the ones who create and change the world. But there are two types of holes: Everyone is a piece of shit, but understand why. There is a need,” Fadell said. “If they're an a**hole, it's their ego, so it's a self-centered a**hole trying to push people down. But if you're a big deal about details, If you sit there and impose details, you're not criticizing people, you're criticizing their work and insisting that they can do better. That's the mission. Ta.”
Fadell doesn't think it's a bad thing to have someone obsessive about the details and making sure the team is doing things correctly. He believes that focusing on the details is what it takes to create a great product, and it's good to have a manager who cares.
The entrepreneur and investor also argued that Silicon Valley has a right to do so, joking that startups don't hire Googlers because they're “lucky they even came.” .
“They showed up on the bus, came to eat lunch and took the bus home,” Fadell said. “They say, 'I worked today, I got a massage, oh, where's the yogurt?' That's why I don't like that startups hire most Googlers. Because they have this kind of culture.”
He said that during his time with the General Magic in the 1990s, the team decided not to hire players from the East Coast because of the demands of the region.
“We said we would never hire from the East Coast,” Fadell said. “I mean, this was IBM and Sperry and all that awful stuff, because they had to hire drivers, they had to have company cars, they had to have company lunches and We had to have a special executive toilet.''We try not to hire people like this. That won't work. It's a clash of cultures. And you wake up today and Silicon Valley is such a shithole and you're like, get out of here, right? Rights everywhere! ”
Fadell went on to accuse LLMs of being know-it-alls and joked that no one wants to hire a know-it-all. He believes that LLMs are good for certain things, but cannot be adopted across the board.
He believes the LLM is great for entertainment, such as when you want ChatGPT to write funny poems. However, Fadel argues that LLM is prone to hallucinations and should not be used where people may be at risk. For example, he doesn't think doctors should use ChatGPT to create patient reports because people could be harmed if treatment plans are entered incorrectly or drugs are named incorrectly. .
“If you look at artifact-specific models, they work very well,” Fadell said. “They don’t hallucinate, but LLMs are about to become so commonplace because we’re trying to make science fiction come true.”