Tony Fadell Quotes

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Tony Fadell

Profession : Inventor

Birth : March 22, 1969

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

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.

Tony Fadell

Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic.

Tony Fadell

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

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

Studies have shown that children are less likely to wake up to a horn than the sound of a mother's voice.

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

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.'

Tony Fadell

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

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally.

Tony Fadell

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

Tony Fadell

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.

Tony Fadell

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

Tony Fadell

Having kids makes you think about the world differently.

Tony Fadell

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

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.'

Tony Fadell