Who lives who dies who tells your story?

On Tony Fadell's Decoder appearance and his references to Dropcam.

Aamir Virani

May 5

No, I’m not dead. How are you?

Busy busy… if you still want stories let me know what to talk about!

I wrote a Twitter thread to re-visit some Dropcam/Nest stories. Here you go!

Follow / share / subscribe, etc. Would really appreciate it!

Aamir Virani @avirani

Yo @tfadell and @dina323 wrote #build congrats! Yo @reckless did a new Decoder with Tony! It's great, Nilay asks good questions, you should subscribe. I'm the NOT "one founder". Don't worry - this is more "don't hate the player, hate the game". overcast.fm/+QLdtKBwaI 1/21

How big companies kill ideas — and how to fight back, with Tony Fadell — Decoder with Nilay Patel — Overcastovercast.fm

Aamir Virani @avirani

Real quick - props to @reckless. For all the press during a book launch on products that goes into company building and culture... who is the one interviewer who asked about the culture blowup that was public? So for my version of the Dropcam stuff... 2/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Questions I get asked: Were you unhappy? Why did we decide to sell Dropcam to @Google? How does an acquisition occur? How do you maintain company culture as you grow (and maybe merge)? Why didn’t you listen to Tony about the doorbell camera? (new - WTF?) 3/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Were you unhappy? Initially, no. I was excited to join @nest. Tony was a legend already, and the Nest nee @Apple hardware team was the world’s best. We thought we were merging (not acqui-hiring) into an awesome team and choosing a side in the connected home platform wars. 4/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Also - when you keep hearing “Google is giving us $500MM in marketing spend over the next 5 years” and “we already have an internal camera team - we worked on the iPhone you idiot”... Nope (thanks Ruth Porat?) and Nope (rot in hell [person])... 5/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Initially? When advising founders, I emphasize two points. First, when you sign the acquisition documents, your company is dead and you are trying to keep your team alive in a new host. We were a part of Nest and we had to figure out how to make our team successful. But... 6/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

This becomes really difficult when three things happen: Broken promises Lack of respect Lies 7/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Broken promises? Tony says this himself - just find-and-replace Nest with Dropcam and ($3.2 with $0.555 😉). What about lack of respect? 8/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Tony says this, too! Dropcam built a product that reset the “IP camera” / “connected camera” / “home monitoring” space… and had a software subscription that made sense and provided value. We had five years of technical and user and market knowledge led by... 9/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

geniuses @lkirkby, @grourk, Martin, @jaska, DougC, Liz, Alex, EricH. Consumers were hearing about our products, buying what was once a commodity product for $199, recording video 24/7 at scale (shout out to @awscloud), and watching their homes from anywhere in the world... 10/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

in real time (+/- 3 seconds) with a UX built upon 5 years of technical and user knowledge, and getting insanely good customer support. And yet we had to re-litigate our user experience and make changes to be more Nest-y. That’s fine, but… was it a respectful discussion? 11/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

From some (@dina323, Kirsten, @oenninger, @CottonBallsSD, @benbixby, Sam, etc.), yes! Others wanted to show Tony they were worthy (and playing the new game of GOOG PERF). They thought Dropcam was only hardware and didn’t know software, marketing, or business. So... lies? 12/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

I’ll leave detail for a post (subscribe here if you are into stories about startups and possible data points for your own company journey), but here’s a story (shout out to @gabor and @ethankurz for making me start this): 13/x

aamusingsthoughts about products, startups, marketing, life. Click to read aamusings, by Aamir Virani, a Substack publication with hundreds of readers.aamusings.substack.com

Aamir Virani @avirani

Tony - Do you remember the time I randomly came to the Nest office during diligence? I was trying to sniff out whether you were really an absentee CEO who didn’t work on Nest - you were just "the jeweler". That’s what your team was telling us! 14/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

I saw you talking with Dina and you nicely said “Hi! What are you doing here?” And I mumbled something about meeting folks and walking off. Maybe this is standard operating procedure and we were naive. But what a weird signal from the execs and how they spoke about you… 15/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

Sorry this is long, I'll skip a few questions but if you want to know feel free to DM/subscribe: aamusings.substack.com You don't get to fact-check conversations, right @reckless? So let's talk about that doorbell camera... 16/x

aamusingsthoughts about products, startups, marketing, life. Click to read aamusings, by Aamir Virani, a Substack publication with hundreds of readers.aamusings.substack.com

Aamir Virani @avirani

First, I can tell you later why Dropcam didn't do a doorbell cam. Second, Tony's story within Nest isn't true! Maybe Tony had convos with his exec team, or maybe on the hardware side with OG Nesters. In product and software, though, my year at Nest was focused on... 17/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

1. Rebrand to Nest Cam (and the Circle Stand ugh) 2. Get Thread radio in 3. Define Nest Aware (besides multi-home thermostat control 😉) 4. Restart the outdoor camera project (without using Dropcam knowledge and work) 5. Re-prove the camera and video UI And meanwhile... 18/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

6. Fight turf/ego wars on Nest Cam's positioning within the software app and overall platform roadmap 7. Deal with team unhappiness and how certain middle managers operated 8. Deal with restructuring software and AI/ML teams every few months So, no, the doorbell cam... 19/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

wasn't being argued for in a meaningful way. We were all trying to survive Google < Nest < Dropcam. I'll stop here and say: The Dropcam team is outstanding. I'm so blessed to know these people and have a part in helping folks keep an eye on their homes. To Tony... 20/x

Aamir Virani @avirani

I learned a lot about how to operate as a leader and build products from you. You take the things you like, the things you don't like, and you learn and absorb them into yourself. I'll leave the biggest lesson from the one heart-to-heart we had out. Yet another story... 😉 END

aamusings

Who lives who dies who tells your story?

On Tony Fadell's Decoder appearance and his references to Dropcam.

Ready for more?