Who is Tony Fadell?

He has had many successes. Prior to January 14th, 2003 most people knew Fadell as the person that Apple called in 2001 to help design a MP3 player that would work with their iTunes platform, because the company felt that most of the other players on the market were too complicated. Of course, this became the first version of the iPod. He left Apple in 2008 but re-emerged on the tech scene in 2010 as the co-founder of Nest. Nest Thermostat is the connected thermostat for the home. Late last year, the company also launched Nest Protect, which is a connected smoke detector. Both devices have helped usher in The Internet of Things. A world where all appliances and devices are connected to the Internet, controllable through a smartphone or tablet, and able to leverage that connection to make your home (or work) environment that much more efficient. But, the story doesn’t end there. Nest rocked the world last week when it was acquired by Google for over three billion dollars (not a typo). After three years of being in business.

3 Billion Dollars… how did Tony Fadell do it?

Kevin Rose (co-founder of Digg and now at Google Ventures) sat down with Fadell at the Google Ventures CEO Summit and recorded this in-depth conversation with him (which was recorded prior to the acquisition by Google) for his always-fascinating Foundation podcast.

Here is their conversation…