Learning by doing is the only way I know how to learn.
Studies have shown that children are less likely to wake up to a horn than the sound of a mother's voice.
I knew there were all kinds of interesting things going on at Google, but now that I've seen them, my mind has been blown - in a great way. They have all these amazing projects and people that the world doesn't know anything about. I'm like a kid in a candy store - it's an idea factory.
I look at the world and peer into products and think, 'What's wrong with these products?'
I had been doing MP3 players and handheld computers since 1990-1991, and so they sought me out because of my experience. And about 18 generations of iPod and three generations of iPhone later, I decided to leave Apple.
I've been working with contractors designing and building a house on a nonstop basis since 2005. I learned about all these systems of audio, construction, electricity, energy, water systems.
Usually, the biggest companies are not the most dynamic.
I've learnt something from every failure. The products I helped design at the first two companies I worked for were utter failures. But now I know why.
There are two different types of prototyping. First, the gut sense. You know how far you can take it. Second, you need experts to figure out whether or not it is attainable.
Well, you can say there is a self driving car. I'm seeing the automation of vehicles. Really, computer-assisted driving. I think that is really interesting to us because we are taking all of the sensors technologies and putting them in cars and making people safer.
People buy products, and they want to understand what those things are and how they are applicable to their life.
Every person I talk to has a story about how their smoke alarm went off or woke them up with a battery beeping. So you take it off the wall and you take the battery out and say 'screw this.' They hate the products.
No amount of data will tell you if a feature should be in the product, because it doesn't exist. You need to have a very clear leader with a clear point of view... otherwise, you get a mishmash of features and stuff that doesn't make a lot of sense.
With most tech guys, it's the same outfit every day - they wear their company logo.
To help you focus, to help you really understand what you're doing, you have to say no a lot. When you say yes to everything, you get distracted. When you say no, you have to get the one thing you're doing really right.
If you look at where the tried and true of Silicon Valley VC's are investing, it's in people who understand what it takes, who've been through it and have a network of people they can tap and resources to pull together.
We built the iPod in weeks. It had to be what I thought it was going to be because there wasn't time for endless refinements.
Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally.
I learned the power of 'no.' No is really important. Entrepreneurs are told to say 'yes, yes, more, more.'
We work crazy hours in Silicon Valley; my wife says we're all kind of diseased in some way. We're totally obsessive compulsive - when we see an idea, we're like, 'let me in, it's so much fun.'
