172 Rejections Later: How Stuart Lombard Built ecobee Into a Smart Home Leader
March 12, 2026
What if getting rejected 172 times was the best thing that could happen to your startup? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Stuart Lombard, co-founder and former CEO of ecobee, to unpack the grit and strategic clarity required to build a lasting company.
After 172 investor rejections, Stuart transformed ecobee into a trusted smart home brand competing against giants like Google and Nest. He shares how founders must develop the judgment to filter advice, balance hardware’s operational rigidity with software’s agility, and recognise true product-market fit before scaling.
Stuart also explains why culture, transparency, and mission-driven leadership aren’t soft ideals but competitive advantages. From navigating hardware complexity to building a 600-person organisation, this conversation reveals how resilience, focus, and long-term thinking turn scrappy startups into market leaders.
What if getting rejected 172 times was the best thing that could happen to your startup? In this episode of Built Not Born, host Sage Nye sits down with Stuart Lombard, co-founder and former CEO of ecobee, to unpack the grit and strategic clarity required to build a lasting company.
After 172 investor rejections, Stuart transformed ecobee into a trusted smart home brand competing against giants like Google and Nest. He shares how founders must develop the judgment to filter advice, balance hardware’s operational rigidity with software’s agility, and recognise true product-market fit before scaling.
Stuart also explains why culture, transparency, and mission-driven leadership aren’t soft ideals but competitive advantages. From navigating hardware complexity to building a 600-person organisation, this conversation reveals how resilience, focus, and long-term thinking turn scrappy startups into market leaders.
Here’s what you will learn:
- How to filter venture capital advice without becoming dismissive of it
- Why hardware and software require fundamentally different operational cultures
- The leadership reinvention framework for scaling from 10 to 600+ employees
- How to identify and exploit a competitor's structural weaknesses
- The two non-negotiable signals before scaling aggressively
- Why transparency and mission-driven culture are competitive advantages
Stuart Lombard is co-inventor and former CEO of ecobee, and an accidental entrepreneur whose career began after quitting a comfortable job to start one of Canada’s largest internet service providers. An engineer by training and former venture capital partner, he has built and scaled companies at the intersection of hardware and software. Passionate about sustainability, culture, and customer insight, Stuart believes businesses are community citizens. Under his leadership, ecobee became a globally loved smart home brand, helping save over 30 terawatt hours of energy.
Episode Resources:
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