Employee #29 at age 21
Tony Fadell joined General Magic at age 21 as a software engineer in the hardware team, hired after six to seven months of persistent cold-calling.
Snapshot · Planet Money
We almost had a smartphone in the 90s. Why did it fail?
Explore episode
Jun 26, 2026
Where this was said
Introduction: What If You Had Everything?
At 3:23 · chapter starts 0:16
Erika Beras and Emma Peaslee open with a relatable thought experiment: how much more could you accomplish with more time, money, and help? They pivot immediately to General Magic — a Silicon Valley startup that had all of those things in the early 1990s and was building something extraordinary: a portable device that could make calls, send faxes, buy things, and play games. In other words, a smartphone, nearly two decades before the iPhone. The hosts introduce Tony Fadell, employee number 29 at General Magic, who describes what the company was attempting in almost disbelieving terms — creating everything from the operating system to the touchscreen before the internet, Wi-Fi, or mobile data even existed. [1] — Tony Fadell "Before the internet, Wi-Fi, or mobile data existed, General Magic was building a device that could make calls, send faxes, buy things, navi…" 05:10 It is a jaw-dropping premise, and the episode promises to explain why it all went wrong.
Tony Fadell's Origin Story: From Fake IDs to Silicon Valley
Tony Fadell was making fake IDs on a laser printer in high school and obsessively tracking computer engineers in Rolling Stone magazine. He cold-called General Magic 10–15 times a day for six months until they hired him — at age 21.
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