tony fadell

iPod has been one of the most innovative products from Apple, and it was not just Steve Jobs that brought out this innovative product, but another brilliant mind that worked behind it was Tony Fadell. Tony Fadell is one of some rare innovators who has contributed to many major development projects in major companies, like Apple and Philips. Tony Fadell is also the founder of Nest Labs, a company that builds smart home products, especially the thermostats.

Early Life

Tony Fadell was born on 22 March 1969, as Anthony Michael Tony Fadell. His father is a Lebanese, and his mother belongs to Polish ethnicity. He completed his high school education from Grosse Pointe South High School, Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. In 1991, he received a graduate degree in Science from the University of Michigan. He was still in college when he worked as the CEO of Constructive Instruments.

Career

After completing his graduation, Fadell got the opportunity to work with Apple, on Apple’s spinoff General Magic project, where he worked for three years, first as a diagnostics engineer, and then as a systems architect. During this time, he contributed to some major Magic Cap projects including the Sony Magic Link and Motorola Envoy.

In 1995, he joined Philips and became the CEO and the Director of Engineering of the Mobile Computing Group, after he co-founded it along with Philips. While in Philips, he played the major role in the development of a few Windows CE-based hand-held services.

Later in 1999, he got inspired to found his own company, named Fuse, that sold the small hard disk-based music players. The company failed to put an impact on the investors and got shut within a year of its inception.

In February 2001, Fadell joined Apple Inc., as a contractor designer and was employed to work on Apple’s new project, iPod. Within two months of his joining at Apple Inc., he was appointed to assemble and run its iPod & Special Projects group, and in 2006, he became the Senior Vice President of the iPod Division. He played a significant role in the designing and development of the iPod and is also referred to as ‘one of the fathers of the iPod’. In 2008, Fadell left Apple.

Founding Nest Labs

In late 2009, Fadell was busy building a green home for himself, where he was looking for alternates for everything that could help save energy. Here he found out that the thermostats are really helpful in saving and controlling over 50 to 60 per cent of money on the energy consumption every year, but people are unaware of how to do that with those ugly looking thermostat.

So finally, he conceived the idea of launching a thermostat that could automatically help people save more energy. Being known as one of 0the fathers of iPod, many raised questions on his decision of building thermostats and even tried to stop him, including Fadell’s wife. In the very beginning, even the co-founder of Nest Labs, Matt Rogers, doubted his plan, but Fadell was convinced that his decision could bring some revolutionary changes.

Matt Rogers was one of the iPod development team members. In 2010, the two founded Nest Labs and released new revolutionalised and awesome looking thermostats, enabled with wi-fi that worked using sensors and machine learning. The Nest Labs thermostats were able to adapt the user behaviour and work accordingly.

Even though thermostats had been there for many years, Fadell found out that there had been no alteration in those thermostats, not even in its design. So when he built the new smart thermostats, even Google became interested in investing in the company. Shasta Ventures and KPCB became the first investors in the company, and on 13 January 2014, Google revealed that it was planning to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash and on the very next day the tech giant acquired Nest Labs.

Fadell worked with Google and Nest Labs till 2016 and resigned from Nest Labs on June 3, 2016.

Fadell is one of the greatest inventors and engineers who has contributed to many famous and innovative developments. He has also received several awards and recognitions, including Alva Award for ‘The Next Great Serial Inventor’ in 2012 and was named among the ‘CNBC Top 50 Disruptors’ in 2013. He was also listed among the ‘Trailblazers: 11 people changing the business’ by Fortune in 2013, ‘The World’s Top 25 Eco-Innovators’ by Fortune in 2014 and in the list of ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ by TIME Magazine in 2014. He has also authored over 300 patents in his 20 years long career.