20VC: Tony Fadell "The Father of The iPod" on Mentors, Self-Doubt, Vulnerability, His Relationship To Money, Why Entrepreneurs Need to Be Coachable, Why VCs Need To Be More Direct & Why The First Trillionaire Will Innovate Around Climate Change

Everyone goes through imposter syndrome ... When you're doing stuff you've never done before and you're changing the world, no one else has done it either ... If you don't have butterflies in your stomach each day, you're either not paying attention or you're not pushing hard enough and taking enough risk.

It's do, fail, learn. Do, fail, learn. There's no such thing as learn and then you're going to do. No, no, no, no, no. When you really learn in life is after you've tried to do it.

I think anybody who's trying to do something that the world has never seen before... better be coachable. Because you're going to be so narrowly focused, you're going to be so heads-down, you're going to be on a mission that sometimes you're blinded, and you need somebody to come from left field to go 'Wait a second. Dude, you're not thinking about this right. You're so in the weeds. We got to pull you out. Let me give you some perspective.'

The quiet person in the corner doesn't typically succeed because they're not getting other people excited and interested in what they're saying or what they're thinking—even if they're the smartest people in the world.

So then I dig into recycling and I find out, oh my god, we either bury or burn almost all of it. Nothing is really recycled. Why? Because plastic is so cheap and the petroleum companies just want to sell you more and more virgin plastic. Nobody wants to recycle it because it's not worth anything to them.

On the mentor side, it takes someone who's going to tell you stuff you don't like to hear. You need to get someone who's going to be really truthful.

If you are selling someone, you got to be up front and say 'Look, I'm talking to you about this. This is why I want your time. I think you could be helpful with this.' But be up front on what the game is about and what you're trying to discuss with people. Don't waste my time because that's even worse.

We're finally understanding that software doesn't eat the world unless you got hardware that's attached to it and changing it.