Co-Founder and CEO Tony Fadell of Nest steps down
Nest has seen better days recently, as Google has been reporting of underperformance ever since they have bought them and several failed attempts at new products. Apparently the pressure has been too much for CEO and Co-Founder Tony Fadell, as he will be stepping down from the position, according to a recent blog post.
Fadell will remain as an advisor to Alphabet and CEO Larry Page. As for his replacement, Marwan Fawaz, who is a former exec with Adelphia, Charter and Mobility and chairman of CableLabs, will be the new CEO of Nest.
In case you forgot, Fadell is most known for leading the engineering team that handled and developed the iPod, before he left Apple to co-found Nest with Matt Rogers in 2010, where they focused on connected home devices such as their ever-popular Nest Thermostat. Nest later acquired Dropcam, and then a few months later, Google bought Nest in 2014 for $3.2billion.
As mentioned above, Nest hasn't been performing to everyone's expectations, with delays and outages for several unreleased products. According to an interview with The Information, Fadell claimed that some of the employees at Dropcam were "not as good as we'd hoped." Former Dropcam CEO Greg Duffy quickly fired back saying that Nest was scapegoating, and challenged Fadell to release Nest's financials to show how the company was really performing.
Google has been interestingly quiet with the news of Fadell's change in employment, however, they recently released their Home device without any Nest branding. The question remains, what will Fadell be doing after Nest. Well, he's still the Advisor to Alphabet and Larry Page, but on top of that he's working on a smart go-kart for kids, as well as secretly investing in over 100 companies that "can change the world in a positive way."
As far as the new CEO Marwan Fawaz, he was hired by Google in 2012 to run Motorola's cable box business which was sold to Arris a year and a half later. Fadell said in a recent interview with The New York Times that Nest is a "healthy" business with over 1,100 employees. And in a statement, Alphabet CEO Larry Page said that Fawaz will help "bring Nest products to even more homes."
Via: | Engadget |
-
Source: | Nest Blog |
-
Image Credit: | KonnectDigital |
