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Interview with Nest co-founder Matt Rogers at CES 2014

2014-01-10
hey guys let's see now at the verge here at CES 2014 I got Matt Rogers co-founder of nest matt has brought us a fire truck we got a fire truck here is the best thing ever i honk the horn earlier and now I don't have any experiences left to have why on earth do you have a fire because it's awesome it is ok which engineers do not have a fire truck yeah this is the best thing way we talk about fire safety we take kids for rides we show up at schools and wholly evil locations and talk about the product to talk about fire safety yeah so you actually there's like demos and stuff on the side right yeah like ESO weekly demo the products Joe some cool features we have like firemen suits and hats for the kids to play with Wow t-shirts it's all good stuff I mean I really want one they let me let off the siren earlier and I'm gonna do it again I just want everyone anymore so Matt why doesn't have to come CS so we do a lot of means that see ya so it's kind of the one time of the year where every vendor Under the Sun comes to one place at one time so like all of our different chip vendors and manufacturing partners are all here yes it seems like the whole nature of the show is changing its like there was a minute when everyone was making laptops in a minute when I'm fownes minute when I was writing tablets and this year it's sort of like sensors for phones and tablets you already have right and a lot of ways nest is like part of that sensor network right so do you see that like it's a big trend here are you part of it well you see a lot of smart home stuff and there's a lot of noise but in the end there's a lesson there's lots of coming out and I feel like what kind of dawn is something new and it's not like a immediate thing I think over the next five to ten years we're gonna see a lot of cool interactive devices again it's thinking it's still early days now so you just launched your second device to protect right yeah yeah we love it's about two months ago how's it going I mean it's going really well the one that's selling very well like we're a top seller in Amazon we're kicking butt in home depot and apple stores all those kind of things but it's also working it's saving lives like we actually got an email from one of our customers saying they never had a settle on before but they bought nests protected they actually had a carbon dioxide alert and they left the house they called the fire department and they had a real emergency really late they had like 10 times the safe limits and it because it could hide so it's a serious product and it works uh so that's actually when you were launching it we were doing a big story before it was launched I asked you you know the thermoset you get to play this at all time it's a toy in a protecting kind of malice feeling you wait for a kind of something bad to happen our customers like seeing it that way they're mounting it they feel safer you have all these features in it to like sort of interact with you all the time are they asking for more feedbacks so we get a lot of feedback for more actually the biggest thing we get is more ties in with our old product without thermostat so today you have this feature where it turns off the furnace if there's carbon oxide the house because first can't generate yeah uh also we have this feature where it basically they tie together for on our way so if you're in one room in the house your thermostat doesn't see you next protect I'll see you but that's all we've done to date and there's a lot more we could do we actually have a temperature sensor humidity sensor nets protect now why couldn't that be communicated the thermostatic candy just things we going to do there's lots of more ways to tie those two products together and then there's a whole wide world of other products and you announced some stuff but you know there's a lot of there's a lot of question marks over whether nest would ever open up and like kind of work with other partners and you recently announced you're going to start doing that so are you seeing anything great it's CS that like what makes you excited for what could happen smart hub in general in the definitely is actually see we do it with with something Phillips you guys yesterday to talk it through like what things we do gather there there's a lot of really interesting stuff and I love you saw the Mercedes booth but there's a tie-in there were like your car now tells nest it's coming home yeah so like ties in like that I think could be really cool and I could use her features it's not about creativity for creativity's sake it's about adding some cool stuff that users can appreciate so I asked you if you put in all these sensors on my smarts in your house how do you guys think about like security right like I I can control my parents thermostats at will and I'm always like I should just turn them up all the way let you guys worry about that aspect of it like once you have more sensors and more cameras and more whatever in your house how do you sort of lock things down to make sure that everything is safe and secure so we actually worry about it a lot yeah to the point where sometimes we do things that are a little bit more difficult because it's for security and privacy reasons like for nest protect and you installed it it asks you to scan a barcode not just to kind of connect to its network and the reason we do that is going to make sure it's you who are installing it not your neighbors turn their kind of hack into your system so we actually put a lot of time and thought into this we use all these encryption protocols and we actually go above and beyond to make sure this stuff is secure we have to if we don't again like your parents he could get turned up and that would be horrible and I'm doing agent of constant look and I had temperature troll my parents that's a phrase that you should use control I do it constantly time and so that was actually another thing I was selling his story before I saw the interview there's you guys are still kind of teaching your users how the products work right so i went home over the holidays my parents program was like wild swings like my mom turned all the way up to 80 my dad will turn all the way down to 60 and that's just like it kind of didn't understand it you had a big base of early adopters who kind of understood the stuff I think it's a challenge or smart up in general you've got a big base of early adopters who have like control for and like they want the stuff and gadget heads like fun i can just buy one thing but you got it there's the big broad market app and it's still learning how the technology integrates how do you go after that like in terms of there's a lot of costs there so we have a lot of work to do in terms of explain the features and letting people know what nuts does so I think for the most part people aren't even aware of who nesters yet really like in a tech community people know who nest is I think the broader you know population it's no idea who we are and where that is you know learning is a difficult concept to understand and part of this we have to get the word out and we're a new company well there's getting the what happen there's also like you know wearables our big story at the show and I think the biggest the roadblock to wearing something anybody's it has to provide you with benefit that's worth the cost like glass the cost is you look like a huge dork and the benefits are in line right the benefits are in line you don't get something out of being a huge dork all the time you like take a picture that's kind of not worth it all the time with stuff in the house it's like well I've got to replace all of my light switches and that's a big cost with an ass tits and pretty low cost like it's a great product and you can insult really easily i installed mine in like 20 minutes right but once you kind of get beyond that set of products you've got to start telling people what the benefits of these extra costs are exist at a challenge for you and home people eager for I think people are pretty eager and what we seen was helped us get more mass is actually utility partnerships and regain the product and getting people to understand what are the energy savings is you can save a lot of money with nest and it's about getting that word out and you know again there's a lot of work we need to do in terms of making it easier to use making learning more efficient so that you don't have to think of that how it works you just use it but you know this is this is a good early days yeah them in that it's funny because you see I I see it CS like the halls every Hall is popular different times it's like five years ago this alcohol was all Intel and Microsoft and then right now it's all the device manufacturers sort of in the middle and then you see the car companies they're north hall and like in five years the North Hall be the most popular one there's a car coming to doing crazy stuff what I don't see is anywhere where like a unified home they all there's bits and pieces everywhere there's no standards to talk to each other and you kind of locked into one ecosystem or nest only has two products you're waiting for them to have more how do you see that kind of network how do you make it so that all these things and talk to each other people have like choice no market or is that not something you guys really worried about so what we think about it is there are standards today yeah but there are multiple stand being standard so it's really hard to pick one for the other I mean form a user's perspective they shouldn't care what communication standards that companies used as long as the products work together right so the way we think about it is let's find some really high value prox and work with those guys and build out really obvious experiences that people can understand so like Philips here like what if the lights get turned on when you leave home like really obvious stuff but that's the kind of the important things like it's less important about like tying all these things together and having one app just let's make it work together right but does not like with the hue it's to me that he was crazy because it's light bulbs not switches and I I kind of in my mind can't understand why people are more willing to change a lightbulb than they are to like change a light switch but they are like absolutely the entire market has gone to light bulbs and it's like I look at nest and you guys are reinventing these all my products like that's the line you always say Tony always says but I don't see I'm always curious like where you guys see the next one it's always the question I know you're not we probably answer but I always see in terms of how you think about the next one is it where the market is not gone or is it where the market is rapidly expanding like you know you surprised everybody at the thermostat but people aren't going to be surprised anymore like Samsung's here right there trying a bunch of stuff LG's here Sony's here they're all trying a bunch of stuff where do you see like the market really going in terms of smart do you think it's a broad penetration it's like going to happen everywhere from every company or is it going to be kind of selection benders so so I think it should be pretty broad any company that makes home appliances today in the next five years will build a connected appliance yeah that said there's not a really good reason to have a connected appliance yeah I can't think about yeah why don't we try the texting the washers I have not but I can imagine tweeting from refrigerators not too useful yeah like is that fine an application and that's it like what's next for us I mean we have to find other great products to do like we're going to when we can improve the proxy already need those are to get better but to like five is unloved categories and the we like to find things that have no innovation where the people are not like kind of in the Wayne Gretzky I'll estate to the buck isn't right yeah what's gonna be right so like we're not going to follow we're too weak I look at what you guys do is almost an extension of the phone like you there's standalone devices but really there they become great when you add a phone for the next the phone knows like what your sensors the house for doing what your temperature is what's going to happen you can look at all your energy saving charts do you think the phone is kind of the central computing device is the tablet is it the does it still the laptop so I don't think there's any central computing device it's definitely a primary user interface device it's what you're gonna look at it's the best way to interact with your house yeah that said I think the intelligence in the home has to be distributed amongst the home okay so if your phone isn't there it's the worst right like one of things that we're thinking about is how do you take advantage of the phone the hardware you have in your house like your smoke alarm or your thermostat but also the cloud and how do you tie all these things together and make sure they work seamlessly and when one's there once when not there has the benefits were making those kind of things this has been a most distracting interview all time because we're in a fire truck and I've been wanting to lie clean out the windows and scream I'm in a fire truck this whole time and thank you very much for letting me ride your flytrap matte blush bronzer great this is the best daddy that's the best thing I've ever done it is the best thing I've ever done okay
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