While Nest wasn’t the first company to offer a smart thermostat, its first product quickly developed rock star status. Nest helped turn the thermostat — a relatively forgettable device — into a sexy offering that made consumers excited about other devices that would be offered as part of the smart home. Honeywell, a company that has long dominated the traditional thermostat market, is now going head to head with Nest in selling smart thermostats. In the third episode of a 7-part series on the future of the smart home, Andrew examines how an industry titan is able to maintain its lead in the smart thermostat space and what this means for manufacturers of smart home devices in other verticals.

Interviewee

Other Leaders Consulted for this episode

Episode Excerpt

The Birth Of Smart Home Cool

In the mid-2000’s, Matt Rogers started as an intern on the engineering team at Apple that worked on the iPod. At the time, Tony Fadell was running the iPod group that Rogers reported into. Rogers went on to work on the iPhone and the iPad, and then, in 2010, in what must have seemed like a crazy move at the time, both Rogers and Fadell left Apple and decided to collaborate on, of all things, a thermostat. They began designing the prototype out of a garage that Rogers rented in Silicon Valley.

When Rogers presented the idea of building a smart home to Fadell, even Fadell, who was building his own smart home at the time, told Rogers he thought that smart homes were only for geeks. Eventually, Fadell told Rogers that instead of a whole smart home, he’d like him to focus on a smart thermostat, and they came up with a plan to deliver on one with an interface as friendly as an iPod. This required a team of 100 people, and Fadell and Rogers released the first generation of the Nest device in 2011.

Two things seemed revolutionary about the Nest Learning Thermostat. First, I’m guessing that, before Nest, the overwhelming majority of people couldn’t tell you the name of the company that manufactured their thermostats. For people who purchased Nests, the user interface was so enticing that people began to brag about their thermostat.

If you’ve ever used a Nest, you’d know that there are no switches or mechanical buttons. There’s just a dial. As you turn the dial, you see different options (which are reall...