Tony Fadell Quotes

In Tahoe, you want to be able check on the temperature of the house or turn it on before you get there. Because it's really cold in the winter.

The truth is, homes change over time - and technology has to adapt, not try to do everything at once.

You start with the right amount of rational and emotional experiences. You have to blend those in your product when you come out.

I've been working with contractors designing and building a house on a nonstop basis since 2005. I learned about all these systems of audio, construction, electricity, energy, water systems.

I've learnt something from every failure. The products I helped design at the first two companies I worked for were utter failures. But now I know why.

People buy products, and they want to understand what those things are and how they are applicable to their life.

Even if you have constrained resources, don't cut corners. People will feel it.

Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic.

Your television has changed, your phone has changed. Why don't these other things you need, that the government tells you you must have in your home, change?

I look at the world and peer into products and think, 'What's wrong with these products?'

Over the next ten years, everything that has a cord is going to have data in it.

It can't be that difficult to build a great thermostat. So I decided to figure out: What would the thermostat for the iPhone generation look like? I got this bug. It really infected my brain. I kept thinking about it. This could be a cool product that matters and a cool product that has a great business.

Nest really came out of a process where I was trying to design the most connected and the most green home that I knew of. I was curious of just about everything that goes into a home and building a home.

We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.

Most thermostats are built by plumbing companies. But you really need to understand how to build a phone to make them better.

Thermostats are made by very large companies with no incentive to innovate. Their customers are contractors or HVAC wholesalers, not consumers. So why spend to make them better? It's a good business.

You need to set near-term milestones. Put the assumptions down on paper, and make it to your vision or ultimate product. Your team has to understand where they're going. Your partners need to understand where they're going.

Computers are great tools, but they need to be applied to the physical world.

I don't want the iPod to be my defining thing.

Typical mergers happen when there are two competitors coming together, and they reduce overhead.

I started designing the greenest the most connected home before the iPhone and the iPad.

Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally.

I used to work about 100 hours a week; now it's about 70. But 40 hours? Forget about it. Either you're all in, or your not.

There are two different types of prototyping. First, the gut sense. You know how far you can take it. Second, you need experts to figure out whether or not it is attainable.

It's not just about turning up or down the heat, it's about the other experiences that come with turning up or down the heat - what are we doing about energy, what are we doing about your health and safety.

Learning by doing is the only way I know how to learn.

No amount of data will tell you if a feature should be in the product, because it doesn't exist. You need to have a very clear leader with a clear point of view ... otherwise, you get a mishmash of features and stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense.

While I was designing my home, I was living in different houses all around the world, and I saw thermostats that were just as bad as the ones in the U.S., or houses that needed them but didn't have them. I realised that this was a worldwide problem. I thought, 'Let's fix it.'

I have not seen a true grounds-up revolution from a bunch of companies getting together. It takes one company to put it together, then people draft off of that, but they don't build it top to bottom with a specific vision.

To help you focus, to help you really understand what you're doing, you have to say no a lot. When you say yes to everything, you get distracted. When you say no, you have to get the one thing you're doing really right.

I say homes are for families, and you have to make sure you design for the family, not just one person: kids, your wife, your grandparents need to be able to use it.

I knew there were all kinds of interesting things going on at Google, but now that I've seen them, my mind has been blown - in a great way. They have all these amazing projects and people that the world doesn't know anything about. I'm like a kid in a candy store - it's an idea factory.

It's easy to solve a problem that everyone sees, but it's hard to solve a problem that almost no one sees.

If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.

There are a lot of designers who think they understand technology and a lot of technology guys who think they understand design. But to put them together and make it robust and repeatable for the mass market? It's an art.

With most tech guys, it's the same outfit every day - they wear their company logo.

If you look at most successful startups, they're run by people in their mid to late forties, who've gone through the trenches multiple times and had multiple failures, so they understand.

Well, you can say there is a self driving car. I'm seeing the automation of vehicles. Really, computer-assisted driving. I think that is really interesting to us because we are taking all of the sensors technologies and putting them in cars and making people safer.

We're thrilled to join Google. With their support, Nest will be even better placed to build simple, thoughtful devices that make life easier at home, and that have a positive impact on the world.