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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Tony Fadell

Thinking

Great

Brain

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It wasn't until the Apple Macintosh that people understood what true hardware-software integration was about. It took one company to line it up: low-cost hardware, cool graphics, third-party products built on top of it, in an all-in-one attractive package that was accessible to consumer marketing. "

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

" 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. "

" When I was four or five years old, my grandfather showed me how to build things, paint, saw. Through years of fixing bikes, repairing lawn mowers, I learned how things work. "

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

" 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 don't have an emotionally engaging design for a device, no one will care about it. "

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

" I learned the power of 'no.' No is really important. Entrepreneurs are told to say 'yes, yes, more, more.' "

" 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. "

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

" 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? "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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 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. "

" 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.' "

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

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

" Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic. "

" Nest Thermostat owners like the carbon monoxide link. If Nest Protect's carbon monoxide alarm goes off, the Nest Thermostat automatically turns off the gas furnace. "

Tony Fadell

Nest

Alarm

" 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. "

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

" Having kids makes you think about the world differently. "