How Nick Weaver Scaled His Passion and Got His Company Acquired by Amazon

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing. platform. Today, we'll be breaking down how Nick scaled his passion and got his company acquired by Amazon. To drop these vibe bombs, I have brought Nick Weaver into EO Fire Studios. Nick is the CEO and co-founder of Eero, which focuses on building the connectivity layer for homes and businesses everywhere. Founded in 2014 and acquired in 2019 by Amazon, Eero was the first to launch a whole home mesh Wi-Fi system and today supports customers and service providers across the globe.

0:38And today we'll talk about idea to launch, what it's really like to be acquired specifically by Amazon, and the biggest lessons that Nick has learned along the way and oh so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Nick and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software, say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey.

1:18It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Nick, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. Hey, John, great to be with you here today. I think I knew I was going to get this question. And for me, I think one of the things that's really popular when people start talking about how to manage a business or start a company is how important delegating everything is and creating all these different processes to try to get yourself out of the day-to-day and the details.

2:13And what I've found and I think is very important for being successful is, especially if you're the founder or CEO or run a very complicated business, getting into the details is actually one of the most important things you can do. And so that doesn't mean don't focus on strategy, don't bring yourself up to really think about where you're headed, but you need to be really cognizant of every little detail that's related to building your product or delivering a service for customers. And so that depth in addition to breadth, I think, is incredibly important. And Fire Nation, that's why we're going to be diving deeper into specifically how Nick scaled his passion and got his company acquired by none other than Amazon.

3:08Now, Nick, I'm just curious. Have you always had that entrepreneurial spark, even as a kid? Like, what were you like when you were young and growing up? I think it's it has been something I've been excited about for a really, really long time. I mean, growing up, I helped people fix their computers and set up Wi-Fi and networking when people were first starting to get connected to the Internet. So that was my first run at managing my own very, very, very small business and working with customers day in and day out. I was a caddy and lifeguard growing up, too. So just like lots of work experience in small, basically these small jobs.

3:58But I loved being able to dive in and like solve problems for people. And I think that's one of the most valuable lessons that we can learn as a child growing up is how do I create a incredible solution, potentially even the number one solution to a real problem in a growing market? And I mean, Nick, you nailed that more than most I've seen in my 13 years of interviewing successful entrepreneurs. And we're talking over 4 ,700 episodes. You came up with Eero. So take us to the beginning. Where did the idea for Eero come? And of course, a little description of exactly what it does. And how did you go from idea to launch?

4:40Yeah, why don't I start with what Eero is, and then we can back up to how it all began. So Eero is a really simple, easy-to-use Wi-Fi system. So what does that mean? Well, we have a number of different units you can put all over your home, your business, and they seamlessly connect together to give you perfect Wi-Fi coverage. So it solves the never-ending problem of how do I get great Wi-Fi in every corner of my home or business. and where did this all begin? Like I said, growing up, I helped lots of people get connected to the internet. Back then, it was setting up AOL and getting everyone a dial-up account.

5:32Eventually, as people got faster and faster connections, whether that was DSL or cable, I helped people set up actual networks. This was all before there was readily available Wi-Fi gear. So a lot of this was all wired Ethernet networking. And so eventually Wi-Fi came out. I helped people get Wi-Fi networks going so they could connect from a handful of different places in their homes. And that was really, you know, my first look into this very, very complicated technology. Like it It was hard to set up. It was hard to configure. Most people didn't have an understanding of how it all worked. But it was still early, right?

6:16Like, people weren't checking their email all the time. Constant connectivity was not as important for entertainment. And so, just had a lot of experience simplifying things. And then fast forward a few years, When I was in college, I was a network admin and got exposed to some really cool and much more complicated and sophisticated networks. And we had things like analytics to understand exactly what was going on in case there was a problem. There was remote management so you could be anywhere and fix problems. So I kind of parked a lot of that knowledge and experience and knew eventually one day we'd need a product that married the simplicity of some of the easiest to use consumer products with all that sophistication of a large scale enterprise network under the hood.

7:17And in the beginning of 2014, that's when we got going on Eero. We had basically a napkin sketch of this really simple system that used a mobile application so that anybody could be a sophisticated network admin just with a really easy-to-use app. And then one of the key things was tying it all back to a cloud service so that you could understand exactly what was going on and constantly make the product better. So it was many, many, many years from experiencing the pain that was home networking to getting some exposure to what sophisticated networking looked like to then putting together that early concept of what ultimately became Eero.

8:06Yes, and I think this is such a great example of, man, people, number one, They just want their product to work. They don't necessarily need to know the behind the scenes of why it's working or how it's working as much as it just working. And I think a great example is like, you know, I have obviously been running my business online for 13 years now. So I've always had a great internet connection, Wi-Fi set up at my house. But whenever I would go visit family, like especially my parents, like, you know, they just had terrible Wi-Fi. There's just like this one crappy modem in the corner of a house, like under a table.

8:40and like you had to like be within seven feet of it and it was just like a miserable experience but they were never figuring it out because it was just too difficult for them to so they just just went with it but then i was just like oh well guys you can literally just order eero you can set it up in a few clicks you have an app and then boom your house is going to be wi-fi'd up and it's going to make my business much more enjoyable and your life much more enjoyable and i can just remember having them like be so grateful for something like that because they actually thought that they were going to have to like completely be installing, like, you know, running wires through the house and doing all these millions of things.

9:15So it's really interesting to think about Fire Nation when you're growing your product, growing your business. How does it work for the end consumer? And then of course, it was working so well, I'm sure Amazon was seeing you selling all of these products and they enter the picture. So at what point did Amazon enter the picture? And like, what was that acquisition journey like behind the scenes? Yeah. So our relationship with Amazon actually started pretty early in the history of the company. So we started in 2014. We announced the product and did a pre-order in early 2015. And then in early 2016, that's when we actually started shipping to customers.

10:03So it was about two years from company got started to getting our first product, the Eero Wi-Fi system, out to customers. Both a very exciting and incredibly stressful time. But in terms of where Amazon entered the picture, right after we did our pre-order, so this is 2015, there was a big initiative at Amazon called Launchpad, helping early stage companies deliver their products to more customers. So our relationship with Amazon started then, as we were trying to figure out how to scale up our production so that we could get our product on Amazon.com and out to even more customers. So really in the early, early days of Euro, we had that relationship.

11:00And that's when I started interacting with a lot more folks across Amazon, not just on the retail side, but across all the other different businesses. Now, in terms of how we went from there to the acquisition process, we'd been shipping for many years, had scaled up the business. We were available in basically U.S. and Canada, North America, and started talking through what an acquisition would look like in 2018. So from the time those conversations started until we signed a term sheet and started negotiating the finer points of the acquisition, that was about a six-month process. And I remember sitting with my co-founders and some of our leadership team members as we were working through that process.

12:03And like any M &A situation, there's a data room and there were like 100 plus, 200 plus people, more than the employee count at Eero at the time in the data room on the Amazon side. so you know that was a that was a moment where you're like wow like this is uh this has been a lot of work for us but there's so many people involved for so many different functions just you know vetting every aspect of the company making sure it was a good um a good fit for for amazon so uh similar to those early days while we were uh trying to get the product ready and shipped to customers, also an incredibly stressful time because not only are you trying to run the business, and we had all sorts of challenges then.

13:02We were working on a big transition of our manufacturing facilities from China to Vietnam and trying to launch some new products, but you're also going through this incredibly challenging and detailed, you know, sale process and diligence process. Man, I mean, Fire Nation, just to think about all the boxes that need to be checked to get something going like this. It really does take a village in so many areas. And now we have a lot more to talk about when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Okay, let's talk about a platform that's completely changing how entrepreneurs are running their business, and they are also our featured partner, HighLevel.

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15:42Fire Nation, I used to scramble every April and hope for the best. Now I see how much smoother things can be with a partner who helps me think ahead, get a personalized consultation, and 10 % off your first year when you mention entrepreneurs on fire. Visit joingelt.com slash E-O-F. That's www.joingelt.com slash E-O-F. F. Nick, you've kind of talked us through building this startup from your apartment to joining one of the biggest companies literally on the planet. My audience, Fire Nation, they're entrepreneurs, they're small business owners. I mean, we're looking to learn from people who have had success with their strategies, with their tactics, with their tips, with their tools.

16:29What are the biggest lessons that you've learned in your journey that you can pass along to my audience? Well, like we opened, I think you have to stay close to the details if you're trying to build a great business. That doesn't mean don't hire great people who can run autonomously on their own, but you have to have a very clear, fundamental understanding of, I think, every aspect of your business if you're going to be successful. So that, again, I think is probably the biggest piece of advice I can give people is really understand every aspect, understand what your scaling constraints can be.

17:20So are there opportunities for you to think through a different process or a new way of building something or a new way of interacting with customers just so you can deliver a better experience or do so more efficiently and effectively. Okay, so that's one lesson. What would be another lesson that you've picked up along the way that you're like, man, I wish I knew this or thankfully I had this mentor who told this to me? I mean, what would one of those be? I think focusing on team culture, team camaraderie is so important. So for any business or job, you're going to be spending a huge amount of your time with the people you work with.

18:06And so really focusing on team dynamic, making sure everyone's working together well, more importantly, having fun. I think that pays off in such a big way. Everyone likes to get into, oh, what's that one big strategic insight that changed things? I think ultimately it's lots of little strategic insights built up over many, many, many years. But to do that well and to do it at scale, focusing on how a team works together, I think is probably one of the most important things. So, of course, we live in the age right now of AI, robotics. I mean, it's on the tip of everybody's tongue. What is next on the horizon for Eero?

18:51What are you fired up about in the near term and even maybe a little longer term future? Yeah, it's an incredibly exciting time when it comes to all things AI. You know, for us, we are evaluating like every aspect of the business and think even more importantly, the product and customer experience, like how can we make things better for customers? So that could be better troubleshooting, helping customers fix problems, whether it's with an Eero system or with their incoming Internet connection or with a device that's connected to their Eero network. So that's one area we've been exploring, not recently, but for many, many, many years about how do we apply the latest and greatest technologies to solve those types of problems.

19:47You know, we're also looking at like, how do you write code more efficiently? How do you review it more quickly? How do you automatically find more bugs in our overall system? So, like, Eero itself is an incredibly complicated set of services and systems, whether they're running on a physical Eero device in our applications or in our cloud or in our factories. So we're constantly trying to develop new systems, new ways of both detecting problems, but increasingly, how do we remediate those problems automatically so that our team members can spend more time developing new things for customers as opposed to fixing existing problems.

20:48problems. Nick, you've dropped some value bombs during this entire episode. Thank you for taking us through your journey, lessons learned, what you're seeing for the future, the acquisition process through Amazon. I mean, it's all just so cool stuff to see the inside scoop of this. What would you say would be your one single piece of advice for anybody listening today? And we're just talking one sentence, keep it tight, concise. What is that one phrase? Well, whether you're looking to start a business or decide on a career path, I think one of the most important things is finding something you're really passionate about.

21:31especially when you're solving hard problems like it gets really tough and having a product or service that you are incredibly passionate about makes it a lot easier to to dig deep and that's why we call this episode how nick scaled his passion and got his company acquired by amazon because it is about the passion fire nation nick if fire nation wanted to connect with you. Wanted to learn more about what you have going on. What is your call to action for our listeners today? If you want to learn about Eero, head to Eero.com or see our products on Amazon. If you have questions for me, find me on X or any of our other social properties.

22:21I was kind of joking around with Nick on our pre-interview chat where the tagline for Eero is the way Wi-Fi should be. And I'm from the state of Maine. And what's our motto? The way life should be. So a lot of connections there. Good stuff for sure, Nick. And Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with N-Dubs and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com. Just type it Nick in the search bar and the show notes page will pop right up. And Nick, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

22:57For that, we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Nick for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for entrepreneurs on fire. So to learn more about becoming a guest, visit eofire.com slash guest, and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software.

23:36Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, success isn't a solo journey. It's about who you surround yourself with. That's why I built the Freedom Circle, a powerful community of entrepreneurs ready to support, inspire, and share the ideas that move you forward. Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more.