In this episode, Fahd sits down with Stuart Lombard, founder of Ecobee, to unpack one of the most iconic David vs. Goliath stories in Canadian tech. What started as a personal mission to reduce his carbon footprint led Stuart to invent one of the world’s first smart thermostats—and take on giants like Honeywell and Google Nest in the process.
Stuart shares how Ecobee turned clunky hardware into a customer-obsessed experience, why innovation often starts with frustration, and how staying true to their mission helped them win customer trust while competitors chased channel partnerships and flashy ads.
From getting 172 VC rejections to building sensors that rewrote the rules, this is a story of what happens when a team chooses learning over ego—and how a thermostat became the first step in rethinking home energy systems.
Stuart Lombard
Stuart Lombard is the founder and former CEO of Ecobee — the Canadian startup that took on giants like Google Nest and Honeywell to reinvent the smart thermostat. An “accidental entrepreneur,” Stuart’s journey began after quitting a stable job under a miserable boss — a decision that led him to build one of Canada’s first internet providers, scale a VPN company, and eventually launch Ecobee from a personal mission to reduce his environmental footprint.
Driven by empathy, ingenuity, and relentless customer focus, Stuart turned a frustrating night in a freezing home into a $770 million business. Along the way, he rejected industry norms, built open systems in a world of closed ones, and led teams grounded in mastery, autonomy, and purpose.
