68 Quotes by Tony Fadell

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

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 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.

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.'

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.

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.'

You have to look at why people come and work at Nest. Part of it is that a lot of people here already know each other, but we're also on a mission with a purpose. People are personally motivated by energy or safety.

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.

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.