Quotes About Thermostats

Most thermostats are built by plumbing companies. But you really need to understand how to build a phone to make them better.

When you think of technology that gets people excited - long lines at stores, enthusiastic reviews in the blogosphere, passionate evangelists - the first thing to come to mind probably isn't thermostats. Then, along came Nest.

In a world lit by data, street corners are painted with contextual information, automobiles can navigate autonomously, thermostats respond to patterns of activity, and retail outlets change as rapidly (and individually) as search results from Google.

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.'

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.

In the developed world, we are surrounded by electronics - from the computers on our desks to the smart phones in our pockets to the thermostats in our homes to our data in the virtual cloud.