A plumber explains why Google paid $3.2 billion for Nest in 2014: to control referrals for HVAC, plumbing, and electrical work. He built a platform linking thermostats directly to contractors, cutting Google out. His first year: $14.2 million in thermostat sales and fewer Google searches.
Chapters
In 2014, Google bought Nest for $3.2 billion. And Nest is just a regular thermostat. Most people would look at that and be like, well, Nest sold a lot of thermostats, and that's not the reason why Google bought them. Google bought them in a strategic. And this mind blows me how they're playing chess, they're not playing checkers. Most people would look at that acquisition and be like, oh, they bought them because they have millions of thermostats out there. No, they bought them because there was going to be a plumber like myself. There was going to be somebody that was going to come into our industry and start putting service providers. If ne had the provider inside the thermostat, meaning if something went wrong with your ac, they would look at it and not go on their phone. Kind of like your ADT panel. The only reason why you know to call ADT is because you click the logo and there's a 1-800-number and you call them and say, hey, my sensors or my cameras or something's not off. Right? Google bought Nest because they didn't want that to happen. They bought them for $3.2 billion because they want you to keep using your phone to go on Google to look for an H VAC electrical plumbing roofing provider. And what our platform does is we connect the thermostat back to the contractor, meaning when they need you, they don'. Go on Google. So I bypassed that from it. Is Google going to be super mad? 100% sold $14.2 million of thermostats on our first year. More thermostats I get out there, the less the clicks, the less the searches for Google.
