Interview with Nest co-founder Matt Rogers at CES 2014

The Challenges and Opportunities of Smart Home Interoperability

As we navigate the world of smart homes, one of the most pressing concerns is interoperability - the ability of different devices and systems to communicate with each other seamlessly. Tony Fadell, the co-founder of Nest, a leading provider of smart home products, shared his insights on this topic during an interview. According to Fadell, there are standards today, but they are not always consistent, making it challenging for users to find one that works for all their devices.

Fadell emphasized that from a user perspective, it's less important to have a single app or platform that ties everything together, and more about creating products that work together. He cited Philips Hue as an example of a product that has achieved this goal by making it easy to control lights with simple commands, like turning them down when leaving the house. However, Fadell acknowledged that not all smart home devices are created equal, citing his own company's experience with lighting systems.

The debate surrounding the transition from traditional light switches to smart bulbs, such as those made by Philips Hue, has sparked curiosity among consumers. Fadell observed that people are more willing to change a light bulb than a light switch, despite the fact that both involve replacing a fixture in their home. This trend suggests that consumers are increasingly embracing smart home technology, but may be hesitant to adopt new formats or protocols.

Looking ahead, Fadell believes that the smart home market will become more mature and widespread over the next five years. He envisions a future where any company that makes home appliances will build a connected appliance, as this will provide them with valuable insights into consumer behavior and preferences. However, he also noted that there is no inherent reason to have a connected appliance, and that many consumers may not see value in this feature.

One potential area of innovation for smart home devices is the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). Fadell emphasized the importance of finding applications where these technologies can add real value. He suggested that companies should focus on identifying unloved categories or areas where innovation has stalled, and then develop new products to address those needs.

The role of the central computing device in smart homes is also a topic of debate. Fadell questioned whether there will ever be a single, all-encompassing platform for controlling and interacting with home devices. Instead, he suggested that intelligence in the home should be distributed across various devices, allowing them to work together seamlessly.

Finally, Fadell touched on the importance of cloud computing in smart homes. He noted that even when one device is not present, the benefits of connected living can remain. For example, a smoke alarm or thermostat may continue to function and provide alerts or notifications when someone is not at home. This highlights the need for developers to create products that are flexible and adaptable, regardless of their physical presence in the home.

The challenges and opportunities of smart home interoperability are vast and complex, requiring innovative solutions from technology companies like Nest. By embracing distributed intelligence and focusing on real-world applications, Fadell believes that we can create a seamless and user-friendly experience for consumers, transforming the way we live and interact with our homes.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's with the Verge here at CS 2014 I got Matt Rogers co-founder of Nest Matt has brought us a fire truck we got a fire truck here and this is the best thing ever I honked a horn earlier uh and now I don't have any experiences left to have why in Earth do you have a fire truck because it's awesome it is awesome and which Engineers do not want to have a fire truck yeah this is the best thing like we talk about fire safety we take a to kids for rides we show up at schools and home locations and talk about the product and talk about fire safety yeah so you actually there's like demos and stuff on the side right you like yeah so so we we demo the product show some of the cool features we have like fireman suits and hats for the kids to play with we have T-shirts it's all good stuff I mean I really want one they let me light off the siren earlier and I'm going to do it again I just want everyone to be warn so Matt why does an S come uh CES so we do a lot of meetings at CES 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 ship vendors and Manufacturing partners are all here mean CS it seems like the whole nature of the show is changing it's like there was a minute when everyone was making laptops and then a minute when everyone was making phones minute whenever's making tablets and this year it's sort of like sensors for the phones and tablets you already have and in a lot of ways Nest is like part of that sensor Network right so do you see that like as 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 lot there's there's a lot of stuff coming out and I I feel like we're at kind of the dawn of something new and it's not like a immediate thing I think over the next 5 to 10 years we're going to see a lot of cool interconnected devices again think it's still early days though so you just launched your second device to protect right yeah the yeah we about two months ago how's it going I mean it's going really well I mean one it's selling very well like we're a top seller on Amazon we're kicking button Home Depot and Apple Stores all those kind of things but it's also working it's saving lives like we actually we got an email from one of our customers saying they never had carbon monoxide alarm before but they bought Nest protected they actually had a carbon monoxide alert and they left the house they called the fire department and they had a real emergency really they had like 10 times the safe limits and they they could have died so it's a it's a serious product and it works um so that's actually when you were launching it we were doing the big story before it was launched I asked you you know the thermostat you get to play with it all the time it's a toy and a protect you kind of Mount on the ceiling you wait for kind of something bad to happen are 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 like actually the biggest thing we get is more ties in with our old product with our thermostat so today like you have this feature where it turns off the furnace if there's carbon dioxide in the house because furnaces can't generate you know fire uh and also we have this feature where it uh basically they tie together for auto way so if you're in one room in the house and your thermostat doesn't see you next protect will see you but that's all we've done to date and there's a lot more we could do we actually have a a temperature sensor and humidity sensor in as protect now why couldn't that be communicated to the thermostatic Cy just things we got to do there's lots more ways to tie those two products together and then there's a whole wide world of other products and even now 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 at at CS that like want makes you excited for what could happen in Smart Home in general I mean the definitely it's actually so we met with with some of the Philips H guys yesterday to talk it through like what things we can do together there I mean there's a lot of really interesting stuff and I don't know if you saw the Mercedes Booth but there's a tie in there where like your car now tells Nest it's coming home so like like ties like that that you I think could be really cool and add good user features it's it's not about connectivity for connectivity sake it's about adding some cool stuff that users can appreciate somebody ask you if you put in all these sensors all these 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 like do 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 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 when you installed it it ask you to scan a barcode not just to kind of connect to its Network and the reason why we do that is we want to make sure it's you who are installing it not your neighbors trying to kind of hack into your system so we actually we 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 I mean if we don't again like your parents heat can get turned up and that would be horrible right I I'm doing it to them constantly I mean I temperature troll my parents that's a phrase that you should use temperature trolling I do it constantly like all the time um and so that was actually another thing I was telling you a story before we start 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 and my parents program was like wild swings like my mom turned it all the way up to 80 and my dad would turn all the way down to 60 and the nest was 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 for Smart Home in general you've got a big base of early adopters who have like control four and like they want this stuff and Gadget heads are like fine I can just buy one thing but you got to there's the big broad Market out there that's still learning how this technology integrates how do you go after that like in terms of there's a lot of cost there right so we have a lot of work to do in terms of explaining the features and letting people know what Nest does so I think for the most part people aren't even aware of who Nest is yet like like in the Tech Community people know who Nest is I think the broader you know population that's no idea who we are and part of that is you know learning is a difficult concept to understand and part of it is we have to get the word out and we're a new company well there's getting the word out but there's also like you know wearables are a big story at this show and I think the the big the the roadblock to wearing something on your body is it has to provide you a benefit that's worth the cost so glass the cost does you look like a huge dor and the benefits aren't in line right the benefits aren't in line you don't get something out of being a huge dork all the time you like take a picture and 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 Nest it's a pretty low cost like it's a great product and you can install 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 ex is that a challenge for you in the in the home or people eager for it I think people are pretty eager and from what we've seen uh what helped us get more mass is actually utility Partnerships and and reing the product and getting people to understand more the Energy savings CU 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 about how it works you just use it but you know this is this is again early days yeah me and that's it's funny because you see I I see it CS like the Halls every Hall is popular at different times so like 5 years ago the South Hall 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 5 years the North Hall will be the most popular one cuz the car companies will be 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 that talk to each other and you're kind of locked into one ecosystem or Nest only has two products and 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 can talk to each other and people have like choice in the market or is that not something you guys really worry about so the way we think about it is there are standards today yeah but there are multiples being standards so it's really hard to pick one from the other I mean from a user perspective they shouldn't care what communication standards that companies use as long as the products work together so the way we think about it is let's find some really high value procs and work with those guys and build out really obvious experiences that people can understand so like Philips H like what if the lights could turn down when you 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 but doesn't that like with a hue it's to me the Hue is crazy because it's light bulbs not switches and I I I kind of in my mind can't understand why people are more willing to change a light bulb than they are to like change a light switch but they are like absolutely they are the entire Market has gone to light bulbs and it's like I look at nest and you guys are Reinventing these un love 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 that's always the question I know you're not probably want to answer it 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 they're 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 Homes 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 Select vendors so so I think it should be pretty broad I mean any company that makes home appliances today in the next five years we'll build a connected Appliance yeah that said there's not a really good reason to have a connected Appliance yeah I can't think of one yeah I don't know you try the texting a washer I have not but I can imagine tweeting from your refrigerator is not so useful yeah like it's about finding an application mean that's it like what's next for us I mean we have to find other great products to do I mean like we're going to one we're going to improve the products we already made like those are going to get better but two like find those unloved categories and we like to find things that have no innovation where the people are not like kind of in the Wayne grety skyle let St to where the isn't right where it's going to be right so like we're not going to follow we're to lead I look at what you guys do is almost an extension of a phone like you they're Standalone devices but really they're they become great when you add a phone to the mix right and the phone knows like what your sensors in the house are 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 it the tablet is it the is it still the laptop so I don't think there's any Central Computing device it's definitely a primary user interface it's what you're going to look at it's the best way to interact with your house that said I think the intelligence in the home has to be distributed amongst the home okay so like if your phone isn't there it still works right uh like one of the 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 one's one not there how the benefits remain those kind of things this has been the most distracting interview of all time uh because we're in a firet truck and I've been wanting to like lean out the window and scream I'm in a fire truck this whole time and thank you very much for letting me ride in your fire truck uh Matt pleasure great this is the best ready oh God that's the best thing I've ever done it is the best thing I've ever done okay I'm donehey guys it's with the Verge here at CS 2014 I got Matt Rogers co-founder of Nest Matt has brought us a fire truck we got a fire truck here and this is the best thing ever I honked a horn earlier uh and now I don't have any experiences left to have why in Earth do you have a fire truck because it's awesome it is awesome and which Engineers do not want to have a fire truck yeah this is the best thing like we talk about fire safety we take a to kids for rides we show up at schools and home locations and talk about the product and talk about fire safety yeah so you actually there's like demos and stuff on the side right you like yeah so so we we demo the product show some of the cool features we have like fireman suits and hats for the kids to play with we have T-shirts it's all good stuff I mean I really want one they let me light off the siren earlier and I'm going to do it again I just want everyone to be warn so Matt why does an S come uh CES so we do a lot of meetings at CES 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 ship vendors and Manufacturing partners are all here mean CS it seems like the whole nature of the show is changing it's like there was a minute when everyone was making laptops and then a minute when everyone was making phones minute whenever's making tablets and this year it's sort of like sensors for the phones and tablets you already have and in a lot of ways Nest is like part of that sensor Network right so do you see that like as 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 lot there's there's a lot of stuff coming out and I I feel like we're at kind of the dawn of something new and it's not like a immediate thing I think over the next 5 to 10 years we're going to see a lot of cool interconnected devices again think it's still early days though so you just launched your second device to protect right yeah the yeah we about two months ago how's it going I mean it's going really well I mean one it's selling very well like we're a top seller on Amazon we're kicking button Home Depot and Apple Stores all those kind of things but it's also working it's saving lives like we actually we got an email from one of our customers saying they never had carbon monoxide alarm before but they bought Nest protected they actually had a carbon monoxide alert and they left the house they called the fire department and they had a real emergency really they had like 10 times the safe limits and they they could have died so it's a it's a serious product and it works um so that's actually when you were launching it we were doing the big story before it was launched I asked you you know the thermostat you get to play with it all the time it's a toy and a protect you kind of Mount on the ceiling you wait for kind of something bad to happen are 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 like actually the biggest thing we get is more ties in with our old product with our thermostat so today like you have this feature where it turns off the furnace if there's carbon dioxide in the house because furnaces can't generate you know fire uh and also we have this feature where it uh basically they tie together for auto way so if you're in one room in the house and your thermostat doesn't see you next protect will see you but that's all we've done to date and there's a lot more we could do we actually have a a temperature sensor and humidity sensor in as protect now why couldn't that be communicated to the thermostatic Cy just things we got to do there's lots more ways to tie those two products together and then there's a whole wide world of other products and even now 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 at at CS that like want makes you excited for what could happen in Smart Home in general I mean the definitely it's actually so we met with with some of the Philips H guys yesterday to talk it through like what things we can do together there I mean there's a lot of really interesting stuff and I don't know if you saw the Mercedes Booth but there's a tie in there where like your car now tells Nest it's coming home so like like ties like that that you I think could be really cool and add good user features it's it's not about connectivity for connectivity sake it's about adding some cool stuff that users can appreciate somebody ask you if you put in all these sensors all these 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 like do 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 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 when you installed it it ask you to scan a barcode not just to kind of connect to its Network and the reason why we do that is we want to make sure it's you who are installing it not your neighbors trying to kind of hack into your system so we actually we 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 I mean if we don't again like your parents heat can get turned up and that would be horrible right I I'm doing it to them constantly I mean I temperature troll my parents that's a phrase that you should use temperature trolling I do it constantly like all the time um and so that was actually another thing I was telling you a story before we start 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 and my parents program was like wild swings like my mom turned it all the way up to 80 and my dad would turn all the way down to 60 and the nest was 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 for Smart Home in general you've got a big base of early adopters who have like control four and like they want this stuff and Gadget heads are like fine I can just buy one thing but you got to there's the big broad Market out there that's still learning how this technology integrates how do you go after that like in terms of there's a lot of cost there right so we have a lot of work to do in terms of explaining the features and letting people know what Nest does so I think for the most part people aren't even aware of who Nest is yet like like in the Tech Community people know who Nest is I think the broader you know population that's no idea who we are and part of that is you know learning is a difficult concept to understand and part of it is we have to get the word out and we're a new company well there's getting the word out but there's also like you know wearables are a big story at this show and I think the the big the the roadblock to wearing something on your body is it has to provide you a benefit that's worth the cost so glass the cost does you look like a huge dor and the benefits aren't in line right the benefits aren't in line you don't get something out of being a huge dork all the time you like take a picture and 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 Nest it's a pretty low cost like it's a great product and you can install 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 ex is that a challenge for you in the in the home or people eager for it I think people are pretty eager and from what we've seen uh what helped us get more mass is actually utility Partnerships and and reing the product and getting people to understand more the Energy savings CU 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 about how it works you just use it but you know this is this is again early days yeah me and that's it's funny because you see I I see it CS like the Halls every Hall is popular at different times so like 5 years ago the South Hall 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 5 years the North Hall will be the most popular one cuz the car companies will be 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 that talk to each other and you're kind of locked into one ecosystem or Nest only has two products and 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 can talk to each other and people have like choice in the market or is that not something you guys really worry about so the way we think about it is there are standards today yeah but there are multiples being standards so it's really hard to pick one from the other I mean from a user perspective they shouldn't care what communication standards that companies use as long as the products work together so the way we think about it is let's find some really high value procs and work with those guys and build out really obvious experiences that people can understand so like Philips H like what if the lights could turn down when you 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 but doesn't that like with a hue it's to me the Hue is crazy because it's light bulbs not switches and I I I kind of in my mind can't understand why people are more willing to change a light bulb than they are to like change a light switch but they are like absolutely they are the entire Market has gone to light bulbs and it's like I look at nest and you guys are Reinventing these un love 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 that's always the question I know you're not probably want to answer it 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 they're 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 Homes 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 Select vendors so so I think it should be pretty broad I mean any company that makes home appliances today in the next five years we'll build a connected Appliance yeah that said there's not a really good reason to have a connected Appliance yeah I can't think of one yeah I don't know you try the texting a washer I have not but I can imagine tweeting from your refrigerator is not so useful yeah like it's about finding an application mean that's it like what's next for us I mean we have to find other great products to do I mean like we're going to one we're going to improve the products we already made like those are going to get better but two like find those unloved categories and we like to find things that have no innovation where the people are not like kind of in the Wayne grety skyle let St to where the isn't right where it's going to be right so like we're not going to follow we're to lead I look at what you guys do is almost an extension of a phone like you they're Standalone devices but really they're they become great when you add a phone to the mix right and the phone knows like what your sensors in the house are 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 it the tablet is it the is it still the laptop so I don't think there's any Central Computing device it's definitely a primary user interface it's what you're going to look at it's the best way to interact with your house that said I think the intelligence in the home has to be distributed amongst the home okay so like if your phone isn't there it still works right uh like one of the 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 one's one not there how the benefits remain those kind of things this has been the most distracting interview of all time uh because we're in a firet truck and I've been wanting to like lean out the window and scream I'm in a fire truck this whole time and thank you very much for letting me ride in your fire truck uh Matt pleasure great this is the best ready oh God that's the best thing I've ever done it is the best thing I've ever done okay I'm done\n"