--- description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. title: Tony Fadell by Yves Béhar: TIME 100 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- Apr 24, 2014 # Tony Fadell by Yves Béhar Making stuff is hard. Making stuff that counts is rare. Making beautiful products, with a user experience that’s intuitive for all, while rocking the world of business almost never happens. I know how hard this is, as combining design, engineering and entrepreneurship has been a common calling I’ve shared with Tony Fadell since our 20s. “A passionate, brilliant engineer” is what I remember people saying about Tony in Silicon Valley in the ’90s, but that is just scraping the surface. Tony did all this, at least twice: with our music as the father of the iPod, which he led at Apple; and with the Nest Labs thermostat, the company he founded four years ago and recently sold to Google. And did I mention his central role in the development of the iPhone? Some people spend their entire lives hoping for one breakthrough that counts, one that truly makes a difference in the human experience. At 45, Tony has two of these under his belt, or three — who’s counting? I can’t wait to live through what’s next. _Béhar is the founder of the award-winning design agency Fuseproject_ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/"},"headline":"Tony Fadell","datePublished":"2014-04-24T01:29:11.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T22:59:32.934Z","description":"The engineer of the smarter home","url":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/","name":"Tony Fadell"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"How A Thermostat Can Save The World","description":"Tony Fadell has been chosen as one of TIME's top 100 most influential people for 2014. See how he hopes his Nest learning thermostat will save the planet.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/jJ6hjmUA/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-04-24T10:24:53.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/jJ6hjmUA.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/","duration":"PT5M18S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/collections/2014-time-100/70912/tony-fadell-2014-time-100/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```