Tony Fadell
Tony Fadell
Anthony Michael "Tony" Fadellis a Lebanese-American inventor, designer, entrepreneur, and angel investor. He served as the Senior Vice President of the iPod Division at Apple Inc., from March 2006 to November 2008 and is known as "one of the fathers of the iPod" for his work on the first generations of Apple's music player. In May 2010, he founded Nest Labs, which announced its first product, the Nest Learning Thermostat, in October 2011. Nest was acquired by Google in January...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionInventor
Date of Birth22 March 1969
CountryUnited States of America
At the end of the day, customer choice is essential. And we don't make products that compete with Apple, nor make products that compete with Google. Our customers come in both iOS and Android flavors, and I hope our customers can still buy the products they want to purchase wherever they want to purchase them.
We work crazy hours in Silicon Valley; my wife says we're all kind of diseased in some way. We're totally obsessive compulsive - when we see an idea, we're like, 'let me in, it's so much fun.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't look backwards. I'm pleasantly surprised, and I feel really proud of the team and what we were able to accomplish together. But really, where I'm focused is the future and where Nest is going.
I learned the power of 'no.' No is really important. Entrepreneurs are told to say 'yes, yes, more, more.'
I had been doing MP3 players and handheld computers since 1990-1991, and so they sought me out because of my experience. And about 18 generations of iPod and three generations of iPhone later, I decided to leave Apple.
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.
I started designing the greenest the most connected home before the iPhone and the iPad.
Every person I talk to has a story about how their smoke alarm went off or woke them up with a battery beeping. So you take it off the wall and you take the battery out and say screw this. They hate the products.
Learning by doing is the only way I know how to learn.