"We call ourselves mentors with money,” says Tony Fadell, who is principal at Future Shape, a global advisory and investment firm coaching engineers and scientists working on foundational deep technology. He has been coaching founders and investing in their start-ups for the better part of the past decade, and with 250-plus start-ups in its portfolio, Future Shape is bringing technology out of the lab and into our lives.  The idea behind Future Shape, he says, was to “help all of these companies that are doing really difficult things”. Fadell and his crew have identified a few really difficult things that he sees as big investment areas going forward. They include the electrification of everything; the digital connection of everything; the rise of biomanufacturing; and the eradication of waste. Those themes drive some, though not all, of the work in Future Shape’s portfolio. Everyone deserves a mentor, Fadell believes. For every career crisis, every fork in the road, you need someone to talk to. Someone who’s been there before, who knows exactly how wobbly and conflicted you feel, who can give it to you straight: Here’s how to think about choosing a job. Here’s how to be a better manager. Here’s how to approach design. Here’s how to start a company. Here’s how to run it. Fadell learned all these lessons the hard way. He started his 30-year Silicon Valley career at General Magic, the most influential start-up nobody has ever heard of, and spent the first ten years failing spectacularly. But then he spent the next 20 building some of the most impactful devices in history – the iPod, the iPhone and the Nest Learning Thermostat. Since his move to Paris a few years ago, Fadell has worked closely with President Macron and his team in helping to build the French Silicon Valley, with the result that France is now home to 26 tech unicorns. He has enough stories and advice about leadership, design, start-ups, mentorship, decision-making, devastating screw-ups and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopaedia. So that’s what his latest book is. Simply called Build, it’s not a biography, definitely not an autobiography. It’s an advice encyclopaedia. A mentor in a box. He says he was motivated to write the book because he woke up one day and realised that most “mentors” that had helped him along his journey – some he worked with, others supported him with investment and advice – had died. He suddenly understood the baton had been passed to him and so now it was time for him to “help the next generation”, just as he was helped. The book is a very easy read, accessible to everyone from high-school kids all the way up to boardroom executives. It’s engaging and full of practical advice about negotiating your career and how you can succeed. But most surprisingly, it’s a really honest account that states success doesn’t come right away and there is “a ton of failure along the way”.  Recalling his dynamic working relationship with Steve Jobs, he says: “Steve always wanted to discuss not just the smart decisions we made, but our failures as well, so we could also learn from them and avoid them in the future.” He argues passionately that everyone in business needs to talk about failure more often and “make it a part of company culture”, because “that’s the only way we can learn”. After all, “you didn’t just get up and walk, you failed hundreds of times before you learnt to walk, or even stand, as a baby, and everybody cheered, you know, even when you tried”. He discusses how this process failure provides “tangible, gritty and raw advice”, which is important because “people have to understand that the shiny things they see on Instagram and TikTok are not how the world is”. His own personal story is one of inspiration and perseverance. Born to a Lebanese father and Polish mother, he attributes his success to “hunger” and “passion” as well as the “environment you grow up in”. When he found himself in more risk-taking environments, he was able to take even bigger risks than he normally would, especially as there were a lot of environments where he felt totally stifled and he had to just live with it or leave. He believes passionately that it takes both the combination of environment and the person themselves to be able to succeed.  It is when discussing schooling that he sounds most unorthodox. Too often, he believes, schooling can be negative. It is too focused on testing, and testing is about passing and not failing. Maybe, he argues, “you learn because you failed on the test”, but “everything is set up since you are born to make this test, get into this school, follow the formula, and once you’re out of school there’s no more formula, it’s only taking risk”. Fadell doesn’t follow the standard Silicon Valley credo that you have to radically reinvent everything you do. His advice is unorthodox because it’s “old school”. Because it’s based on human nature, not gimmicks. He keeps things simple: he just tells you what works. He gives ...