Dropcam cofounder: Nest ‘crushed’ employees’ ability to build great products

Dropcam cofounder and former CEO Greg Duffy has bitten back at Nest’s Tony Fadell, after Fadell claimed in an article published in The Information last week that “a lot of the [Dropcam] employees were not as good as we’d hoped…” and “unfortunately it wasn’t a very experienced team.”

To recap, Google acquired smart home devices company Nest for more than $3 billion back in early 2014, and six months later Nest itself acquired video camera company Dropcam for north of $550 million. But all, it seems, has not been well at Nest, with reports circulating of significant unrest among employees that was leading to a mass exodus.

Taking to Medium (where else?), Duffy has now responded to Fadell’s claims, saying, “I would almost find such blatant scapegoating amusing if it weren’t so insulting to the team. Given that, I feel compelled to set the record straight.”

Duffy doesn’t pull any punches in his retort today, taking the opportunity not only to tout Dropcam’s success prior to Nest acquiring it, but also his team’s output afterwards. “I can’t publish Dropcam’s revenue, but if you knew what percentage of all of Alphabet’s ‘other bets’ revenue was brought in by the relatively tiny 100-person Dropcam team that Fadell derides, Nest itself would not look good in comparison,” he said. “So, if Fadell wants to stick by his statement, I challenge him to release full financials (easy prediction: he won’t).”

But Duffy doesn’t stop there. He continues by saying that the 50 or so Dropcam employees who have resigned did so “because they felt their ability to build great products being totally crushed.” He continues:

All of us have worked at big companies before, where it is harder to move fast. But this is something different, as evidenced by the continued lack of output from the currently 1200-person team and its virtually unlimited budget. According to LinkedIn, total attrition to date at Nest amounts to nearly 500 people, which suggests that we were not alone in our frustrations.

It’s worth noting here that Duffy parted ways with Nest back in January 2015, so some things may have changed in the 14 months since — but judging by recent reports, that may not be for the better.