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
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 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.
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 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.
We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasnt time for endless refinements.
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.'
With most tech guys, it's the same outfit every day - they wear their company logo.
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.
Typical mergers happen when there are two competitors coming together, and they reduce overhead.
I knew a lot about product design before coming to Apple, but I didn't understand a lot about consumer experience design, which is really Apple's forte.
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.
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.
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.