Like Square and Uber, Nest Seeks to Reinvent the Mundane
Two years ago, Nest, a start-up founded by a group of ex-Apple AAPL +0.63% engineers and designers, unveiled a "smart" home thermostat. Folks in the tech industry responded with a familiar, collective two-step. First, puzzlement: A thermostat? Who buys thermostats? And then, when they got a chance to see the Nest in action, there was respectful envy: A thermostat! Of course!
There had been Internet-connected thermostats before Nest's version, just as there had been digital music players before the iPod. But like Apple Inc.'s music player, the Nest thermostat was so much more clever than anything else on the market that it seemed a reinvention of the entire industry.
Rather than expect users to program their ideal temperature settings into the device—which many people never did, wasting lots of energy on unnecessary heating and cooling—Nest's device used sensors and algorithms to "learn" your preferences and program itself. The result was a gadget so innovative it became obvious: You looked at the Nest and you thought, "Wait a second, why didn't anyone think of this before?" (It's not cheap, though, at $249).
Read full article here from The Wall Street Journal
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