"The plate hasn't changed since the caveman days, when it was a flat stone." Alexander engineers temperature controls for a living—surely, he thought, he could come up with a better plate than this primitive one.

Thoughts just like these have launched a thousand smart gadgets. Some are true game-changers (like the Nest Thermostat), others are just parodies of Silicon Valley's get-rich-quick culture run amok. (Does the world really need Wi-Fi-enabled diapers?) As for Alexander, his musings led him to start Ember, a new company that plans on using thermal science to make our kitchen devices smarter and our food better.

Ember's first product is a travel mug designed to cool your coffee to the temperature of your choosing—anywhere from 120 to 145 degrees—six times faster than it would normally, and then keep it there for about four hours.