Tony fadell - godfather of iPod and CEO of NEST
tony fadell - godfather of iPod and CEO of NEST
some excerpts from the foundation interview with Tony Fadell.
1. Entrepreneur in college? no actually started in high school.
2. what do you think about Kickstarter? the problem with most hardware projects is that people start make money with the 3rd generation of the product. He doesn’t think that people can market a project with a profit little over cost. atoms and bits are very different things. Kickstarter is very good for getting an audience and getting capital. But need real capital and a real team.
3. Boots on the ground in China? Partners are in china, but it is very hard to trust the chinese people. Not everything goes the way you think it does. You have to reengineer the project the product for production. also the price for each components for 10s vs. 1 million is very different.
4. Manufacturing coming back to the US? Assembly is coming back, just like Dell, components coming back. For example in Brazil, everything is assembled in china, and then compiled back in Brazil. Rubber, plastic for the mould, and for the shift. Korea —> Taiwan —> China. Supply chain has shifted to china and it would take more time for the configuration, and the supply chain to shift back to the US.
5. iPod? Jan 2001, got a call from Apple for consulting. iTunes with an mp3 players to work. 6-7 weeks later with styrofoam model, deck, system architecture, 3 different options - flash, d-ram, hard drive. Green lighted in a big companies. go research it a bit more. but Steve was very gung-ho about it and 7 months later they shipped the first generation of iPod.
6. Steve jobs ? He learned the power of NO. It is very important. in order to understand what you need to focus on, there needs a NO. say no to a lot of things, you have to get one thing to get right. power of simplification.
7. Nest learning thermostats ? 2 generations of products. With less than 1% of US households, already saved 1 Tera-Watt worth of electricity. There is so much waste. We have power plants settling idle to generate power for the peak moments during the day. So nest learning thermostats sets up algorithms to spread electricity consumption for throughout the day. What happens after setting up the thermostat after 15-20 yrs? Nest work with utility companies to optimize energy consumption.
8. Was it part of the original thesis with the thermostat? Series A - 2010, certain green venture firms for the power of connectivity with Utilities. First make the thermostat successful then work on the idea.
9. How much for due diligence? 4-5 months of due diligence. 2yrs he was thinking of the product. 4-5 months against the incumbents. mockups and prototypes.
10. Nest protect? smoke detector. Nest always thought to work in connection. Nest thermostat. Nest protect. all work very well independently. CO event, or the carbon monoxide alarm. Also, Nest protect stands alone well, but also work with the thermostat to work together.
11. Nest has 13,000 installation network.
12. What traits do you look at when you invest? 70 angel investments so far. he stick with technology. ground breaking technology that will change. No execution plays. deep technology items that would change a whole industry. chips. algorithms. etc. People - how did they find this idea? is it from a hobby? or is it from an execution play? interesting and new way of looking at something.
13. Bitcoins? network, open-source, fully transparent. Like an execution play - mining. something better than scale.
14. Disruptive industry? auto - all the components in an automobile. who would be the intel of the engines? Whole world of silicon valley could be adopted to the auto. systems oriented technology for the auto industry. google with the self driving car. Silicon Valley and google beat the auto-industry for the self-driving cars. the Auto-industry should work on safety and driving systems. Not information systems.modern stuff is in our pockets. lets work together with the silicon valley to put it together.
15. wearables? he used to work with Nike for wearables. Repeated accuracy. +_ 20% for the accuracy for the sensors. Wearable sensors thing, it is very hard to be effective so far.
