Jesus, what's so good about a thermostat? This fellow is a constant self booster.
We need cooler, game-changing hardware. Not a janky drone (looking at you Snapchat)
Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
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Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#12We have a Nest thermostat, we have now turned off every single smart feature and just use it for a schedule and turning it on/off remotely when away (we gave up with the automatic away detection). I should also point out we are in the UK. I’m completely unconvinced that “smart” thermostats achieve anything for the majority of homes in the UK, despite most energy suppliers pushing customers to purchase them for years.…
Agreed on the "smart" features.
When I moved into my current house we had painters working on one floor. They cranked the newly programmed Nest that was in learning mode to 90 degrees for one night to keep the paint warm while it dried. I, of course, had no idea they had done something that silly, but for weeks afterwards this smart thermostat will crank the heat to 90 and I have to manually turn it down. I'm convinced that it will not be able to unlearn and I'll have to delete the profile and recreate it. I should set it on a schedule as you mention.
Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#13I'm reading his book Build right now - it came out last week, so assuming that's why he's appearing all over all the feed). About 2/3rds of the way through currently.
My thoughts: 1. Lots of Steve Jobs talk. There's a whole chapter on the distinction between real assholes, and assholes that just really care about the product quality / customer. The distinction drawn was in motivation - but I wonder if it might just be a winner-writes-the-history situation. 2. Some advice goes heavily against current startup orthodoxy. He rejects fail-fast / figure it out later mentality, and argues for a lengthy product design process (for both atoms and bits!). 3. Lots of good details about how to think about managing people, managing and scaling team, and issues with scaling, etc, taken from his days building Nest.
Both (2) and (3) stand out to me as functions of his specific background. Building a company like Nest is obviously wildly (!) hard, but doing it after building the iPhone is a different game. I don't think his advice about lengthy design processes make a ton of sense for my startup [1], for example.
Generally, I always try and remind myself when I'm reading company-building advice books: this is probably good advice for someone in the same context as Tony Fadell (e.g. someone who is launching a second company after building... the iPhone). For me, it may or may not be relevant.
The good thing about failing fast is that you can use it at a strategy-level, aka fail fast _at_ failing fast, and switch to longer product cycles if you think that might work better. Starting with a long-product cycle doesn't give you much of a chance to try again if your first swing is a miss (which Mito's first attempt was...).
Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#14"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
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Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#15We have a Nest thermostat, we have now turned off every single smart feature and just use it for a schedule and turning it on/off remotely when away (we gave up with the automatic away detection). I should also point out we are in the UK. I’m completely unconvinced that “smart” thermostats achieve anything for the majority of homes in the UK, despite most energy suppliers pushing customers to purchase them for years.…
I have an Ecobee. Agree with you that the killer feature definitely isn't the self learning stuff.
It's simply:
- Has WiFi (update from phone)
Then also:
- Being able to link with Alexa or similar to do things like turning off when you leave automatically
- Custom programming modes. So instead of setting a temperature at a single time during the day (home/away), you could do (morning/home/home2/afternoon/night/away)
- Can run my fan once an hour automatically for just 5 minutes
- Looks cool
Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#16> Shipping the Nest thermostat with a screwdriver "turned a moment of frustration into a moment of delight" I must be in the minority then. I end up with a ton of these product-specific screwdrivers and get a little frustrated that I have to throw it away, contributing ever-so-slightly to the pile of consumer waste. It'd be cool if you could select a "need tools" option sort of like how take out now has a "need utens…
For me it's kind of a wash. For years I avoided buying any imperial allen keys because I had a pile of free ones that were good when I infrequently needed them. I also got this combination 2.5mm hex / Phillips screwdriver which is actually quite convenient as those are the sizes of screwdriver I need most frequently.
The rest go into the landfill unfortunately, and I agree the waste isn't really worth the 3 random sizes of allen key I once needed.
Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#17"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
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Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#18"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
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Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#19> Shipping the Nest thermostat with a screwdriver "turned a moment of frustration into a moment of delight" I must be in the minority then. I end up with a ton of these product-specific screwdrivers and get a little frustrated that I have to throw it away, contributing ever-so-slightly to the pile of consumer waste. It'd be cool if you could select a "need tools" option sort of like how take out now has a "need utens…
Check out the picture - it's not a product-specific screwdriver, it's just a screwdriver with standard Philips and flathead bits. Some of the products used outdoors have security bits, but even those are just Torx bits most of the time. I am delighted to not need additional tools, and feel no pressure to keep it since I have a good set of screwdrivers already. Plus, this makes a handy small one to keep in the kitchen for random uses.
Re: Tony Fadell: The Nest Thermostat Disrupted My Life
#20"Every time my wife and I drove up to our Lake Tahoe ski cabin on Friday nights after work, we’d have to keep our snow jackets on until the next day. The house took all night to heat up." That is first world problems hall of fame material right there! But a great origin story for the Nest regardless.
I never understood what problem smart thermostats were supposed to solve, now I do: ski home pre-heating. Cool, makes sense, but no use to me.