← The Best One Yet
The Best One Yet
🔔 “Doorbell Disruptor” — Interview with Ring Founder Jamie Siminoff at our LA Live Show
00:36:04
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Jamie Siminoff.
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He disrupted the doorbell by inventing Ring, the video camera.
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Basic concept, a billion dollar door busting breakthrough idea.
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By linking a camera to WI fi, he turned Ding Dong into cha ching.
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But 13 years ago, Jamie pitched the invention on Shark Tank.
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And the sharks didn't bite, not even one bit.
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No, they didn't, Jack.
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Mr. Wonderful shut the door on him, literally.
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But he turned I'm out into I'm ins because 3 million people saw that
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episode and they were interested. And five years later, Amazon came knocking with a $1 billion acquisition offer. Also literally.
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And now your mom, your neighbor, and your landlord just installed one in your home.
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But Jamie is the ultimate comeback story. And tonight he's going to tell us all of his big secrets.
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Because Jamie is the Duke of Ding Dongs, the Baron of the buzzers, the
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patron saint of porch security.
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Bestie is the guest for tonight' show is the coolest entrepreneur in la, Jamie
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Simonoff, the founder of Ring and.
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Yeah. This episode is recorded on camera. Come on.
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Nice to meet you.
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We were going deep. We jumped in T boy style. We've listened to every interview we've done. We wanted to ask different things, but the first funny thing we noticed was on your LinkedIn. Right, Jack?
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Yeah. Your job title.
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Yeah, your job title.
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What we saw was not CEO or founder, which everyone else who's a CEO or founder wants to.
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Everyone we've interviewed has that on their LinkedIn.
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Your LinkedIn title was Chief Inventor.
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Yeah. And it's actually always been Chief Inventor from when I started Ring. Wow. So I've always looked at myself more as an inventor. I've always, like, to me, the business is something I need to have in order to invent. So it's like versus, like, where people actually just want to build businesses and then do other things. But yeah, I've always been like, my invention's been my thing.
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Well, we know that from deep in your history because you are the ultimate garage tinkerer.
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I thought his LinkedIn title was gonna be Tinkerer.
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Ah, Tinkerer.
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Chief Tinker. Yeah.
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Maybe we'll get a change tomorrow. We'll check our updates.
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Well, Tinker Bell, his product is kind of a bell.
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Anyway.
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Ring. Okay, dad, Joke of the night number one. But Ring is actually your fifth company, Jamie.
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Okay, Jack, can you list off some of the other ones? Yeah.
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Your first step. Phone tag, unsubscribe.com. body Mint.
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We actually could go on. There's one as a teenager. You started that, Jack and I just call like the puppy poo. Pickup service, which was very entrepreneurial.
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It was, yeah, we do anything for $15 an hour. And it turned out people would actually, like. People are awful. Like, they would. This was in college. And they would have us do like, awful things. One family had us take all the poison ivy off their hill. And by the way, we were like, for beer money. Yeah, we'll do it.
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So we were wondering, like, the original indicator that someone was gonna grow up and be an entrepreneur was like, if they had a paper route. But what's the tell now? How do you know if someone's gonna be entrepreneurial? Anything?
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Early signs, Vibe coding, kids. I guess. I mean, it's like, it really has changed though. I mean, I do still think, though, to the paper route. I do think grit is still going to be a part of entrepreneurs and success going forward. But it's definitely shifting. I mean, the AI I'm seeing. A friend of mine just sent this thing out today that a 15 year old who's interning at his company, he's a big hedge fund. Vibe coded this thing that basically blew out the Harvard guys that are trying to build some stuff there. Wow. And he did it in an afternoon. And it's doing some sort of model of ipo. It's like way over my head. That's the model. I don't even know. But I do think it really is changing. It's gonna just really change. I mean, like, the business plan competition is now a business competition. So it's just. It's just changing, I think, how young people are going to enter this sort of market.
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Well, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us tonight. We're proud to have an Angelino on stage. You're not born and raised here, but you call yourself an Angelina.
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I'm definitely. Yeah. I've been here for like 20 years. I'm an Angelina.
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Yeah.
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Your first garage.
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We read in Ding Dash, your book you published in December, that you hired your early team that ultimately got to ring on Craigslist.
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Yeah, we did.
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Can you take us into the garage? About like, that says a lot.
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Yeah.
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What was going on?
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And it was like, there's still. The guy who runs all of our supply chain came off of Craigslist. And he was. What's funny is, so this guy, Dave Savage, and he came in, we were literally shipping product out, and I needed someone to put the tape on the box and the sticker. And Dave came into my. I'd say my office, but it was like more like just where I had my computer and said, you know, we don't have enough, we're not ordering enough, whatever it was like the chargers or something and I'm like, damn it man, just why don't you order them? And so from that day forward, Dave's been ordering everything but now he's running like a multi billion dollar P and L so and so what were you
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guys doing in the garage?
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So I started a thing called Edison Jr. I had this like run of these failure companies kind of like it's like, it's so funny. People like name like oh, you were a serial entrepreneur? It's like, no, I just couldn't find anything that worked, you know. Yeah, it's really great. So I was like kind of doing all these things and they were like very little success but they were like, you know, kind of one to the next. And I went into the garage and I was trying to invent stuff and build stuff I think called Snap Garden, a modular gardening system. I had a thing called Pokey Poke which would call you when a conference call started so you wouldn't miss the conference call. So I was like just playing around with all this stuff. Couldn't hear the doorbell, just got an iPhone, looked online for a wi fi doorbell didn't exist and so I soldered one together.
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Now when hardware and tech gadgets come out, they tend to be launched by multi billion dollar publicly traded companies. Can anybody with a soldering iron, some tools, some know how and like how the heck did you create a hardware tech product that was connected to the Internet?
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What if you don't even know what a Phillips head is?
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I mean you probably shouldn't be. The truth is Jack had to teach
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me how to spel.
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Hardware's maybe getting a little bit easier again with AI, maybe a little bit. But like hardware is, it's almost physically impossible to do a hardware startup. I think like it's just to your point, like the scale that you need to do it as a startup is like it's very, very close to impossible. So you have to be a little bit insane or just not understand what you're getting into. I would say I have both.
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Is it impossible today or was it also impossible back then when you did
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it financially, it's just such a big lift to build a product, ship a product, especially if it's a connected product. I mean there's just so many different pieces that you have to do. The cash flow up front. All this stuff and pre sale sites have made it a little bit easier, like the Kickstarter kind of thing. But it's still like a million dollars in hardware is nothing. You can go through a million dollars in a second in hardware.
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Well, speaking of a million, we thought it was fascinating that you purchased at this early Stage the domain ring.com. you spent a million dollars on it, which was one of the most valuable pieces of digital real estate out there. One of the biggest spends ever for a website domain.
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Four letters and then dot com.
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There's not that many of those. No. So we were wondering like, first, was it worth it? And second, does that still matter today?
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Interesting about today. I'd say looking back for a ring, it was worth it because we were competing with like the biggest, you know, Nest, we were competing with Google, like Amazon, we were competing with the big guys. Having the four letter clean. This gave us this, like this credibility immediately. And so that I think it was, it was worth it, but it was an insane, again, like it was an insane thing to do. I had, I mean, I ended up doing it on installments. I had.
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You didn't even pay for it.
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I had 187,000 in the bank when I bought it. The first payment was 175,000. And I didn't tell the VCs that were putting money in that I was doing it because I was like, they're gonna kill me. So I mean, it was just like, I mean there's so many things I beg for forgiveness on building this business. But that's, but that's hardware, though. Like you, like, literally it's a shell game. I mean, you are kind of, you know, taking money from here, putting it here. You're constantly doing this because unlike software, you just don't have, there's no leverage like that. You just don't have that financial leverage you have on like a software business.
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And in an AI world where you're asking a chatbot, do you think the domains still matter like they did?
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So interesting. You know, I don't know. This is where like, you know, maybe my son would say I'm an unk, you know, like, like I might be an unk on this one. I actually don't, I don't, I don't think they do as much. I think probably between the way, the way we discover on social media, the way we discover with AI today, apps, kind of all of those things, it's probably less important today.
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Now a quick word from our sponsor, Monarch Yetis. One lobster roll, no joke. 50 bucks on Nantucket. And why is that, why is that a problem, Jack?
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Because we're going to Nantucket this Summer on a joint family T Boy trip.
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It's a write off. It is expensive, but we will travel with peace of mind because our finances are organized in Monarch despite the lobster rolls.
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Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything. Accounts, investments, savings goals and spending.
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Get your first year of Monarch Core for half off, just $50 with promo code T Boy.
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B
Monarch shows visually how much you're spending this month compared to the average month, which is really useful.
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So, like, honestly, this month been a doozy. Jack booked a lot of travel, but I know the future months won't be as bad after lobster roll season.
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You know, because Monarch showed you last year you had a spike in May for travel bookings, but a dip in the summer because the travel was already paid for.
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You can even ask Monarch's AI assistant anything about your finances, like, what are
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the key changes in my spending so far this year compared to last year?
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And how much was spent on lobster rolls last summer?
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Use code tby@monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core at half off. Just $50.
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That's 50% off your first year at
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monarch.com with code T Boy Buro premium non alcoholic beer.
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All right, yet he's a little behind the scenes here. Before our New York City live show back in April, Jack and I went for two weeks. True story.
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Couldn't risk getting sick. I didn't want to be groggy. I couldn't afford a hangover.
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It was New York, baby. Okay, But Jack, celebrating the wins is what we do. And so for our live shows, we crack open something special.
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So we drank beer O, the premium non alcoholic beer brand co founded by Tom Holland.
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Yeah, actually first saw it at my grocery store. Delicious. Tastes like a celebration. Feels fantastic and looks legit. More on the looks in a sec.
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And if it's good enough for the actor who played Spider man, it's good enough for us.
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You see, it pairs well with the pickle game, a profitable earnings report, or with the best podcast.
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So, yetis, if you want to celebrate the wins with all the taste of a premium lager or ipa, but none of the alcohol, there's no better choice than beer.
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Okay, pause the pod. Did we mention the can is straight up gold? This thing will stand out at every one of your next parties. Trust us, we've done it.
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Only beer we know that actually upgrades the scene like a promotion.
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So, Basties, if there's a win, you're celebrating every day. Beau is the non alcoholic brew brand you gotta bring.
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So use code t boy for 20% off your first order@bureau brewing.com. tell it to me like I'm a five year old. You, you created a, a camera that sent the feed to the WI fi, which then sent the feed to your phone.
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The WI fi, yeah.
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Was that an un move?
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Is that an. I'm not the, I'm not the worst. Okay, keep going. Sorry. Keep going. I, I, I said I was being
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a five year old. You meant worldwide web, I think, Jeff.
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A five year old with no more. Anyway, keep going. Five year olds are pretty, they're pretty sophistic. Sorry. Sorry. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me. Thanks for having me.
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I'm going to bring you back to a tough time now.
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So.
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2013 Season 5 Episode 9 Shark Tank goes Terribly what?
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How did you prepare for that Shark Tank episode? And then what happened?
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So I did treat Shark Tank as. I was like, you know, to me, entrepreneur, inventors. Like, you know, that's like my identity. And so if I was a swimmer going to the Olympics, however, you would train for the Olympics as like that amateur swimmer, amateur athlete going to like the biggest thing of your life. That's how I trained for Shark Tank. So I built the set in the back of my house. Like I had this little house in the Palisades. Put the set up. I had hundreds of questions. I invited my neighbors over. I watched every episode. You know, I just, I like, I trained for it.
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Yeah.
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And I think part. And I, and I, what's so crazy is because I never believed I could do this, but I actually, I tried to do this without believing it, but I was like, I am going to win Shark Tank.
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Wow.
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And I am now, we are by far the largest company ever to appear on Shark Tank. And so it is crazy that that actually did happen because I didn't, in my soul, I didn't believe it. I tried, I did everything I could to win, to be like the best, the whatever, but I actually, like, I never believed I could actually get there. But I went on, I thought for sure, Mark Cuban. I'm like, he's just gonna be like, you know, Jamie, whatever. And it's like, Mark Cuban accent. Like, I'm a tech person and I get this and like, I'm all in. And it was, I mean, you get up there, they cut the episode. So you don't see exactly the timeline. I get up there, I do my speech and he's like, Jamie, you know, I can't see how this is bigger than like a $20 million company. I'm out. I'm Just like. And the whole time they're telling you, like, keep them talking, make sure they don't go out. And like, Mark Cuban's now out. I'm just like, oh, no. And luckily I then kept him talking because otherwise you don't even get to air. It was. And it being. Being on Shark Tank at that time, like, Shark Tank is still a big show, but back then it was like, it was the biggest show. I think it was actually, I think it was actually the highest ratings of like that show year or whatever.
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B
So you got an offer though, from Mr.
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Wonderful. Mr. Wonderful.
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And the terms were just awful.
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Yeah, read them off to us.
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He wanted everything, including a cut of the allowance of your unborn future children
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and the naming rights to your unborn children.
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Your name rights. I would have given them that. I actually would have. Honestly. Naming rights are fine. Those are like wonderful. Naming rights are free. Like, put it on the jersey.
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B
So how much time did you have to stand there before you had to say yes or no?
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It's fairly ish real time. Like they, they cut it down. But like, that interaction is like pretty tight, pretty close. But I did in my head, you know, he. I needed the money. Like, I really did need the money at the time. We needed that money. I mean, I was like negative in the bank. And so I did need the money. And I again, I wanted, I went on there to win, but I also, I was like, part of that was to get like, to get an investor and to keep going. And so I walked off of there without it. And I just knew I couldn't accept like his deal. You can't have a company that's already like losing money and needs cash to give more money away was like, that was just. That did not seem like a good idea.
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A
But that's the plot twist part. And that's what's so amazing here, is that lack of deal turned into like an eight minute ad for you on TV. 12, 12 minute ad.
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C
No, it is like November. So this Shark Tank at the time, the ratings were insane. And this was basically like a Super bowl commercial for a startup. I mean, it was like I literally was a guy in a garage in the Palisades and I drove to the Sony lot and I get a Super bowl commercial, you know, showing my product credibility awareness. And then I like, I used every bit of that. Like, I used it. I was like, every email I sent was like, Jamie, who appeared on Shark Tank, that's coming from me, you know, like, I'm like, I just, I didn't care. I'm like, I am going to like, I am going to make this like sort of C level celebrity thing work.
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We were wondering then because you know this airs in November, it's right before the holiday season. So like amazing but stressful. Probably everybody goes to the Google and
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searches for your ring and orders it for Christmas. So your four previous businesses stalled, as you mentioned. What was the clearest sign that this business had product market fit?
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Well, kumbaya in the product.
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C
You know, it was not an aha. So I, I created the doorbell. I started kind of playing with it at the house and then the Kickstarters and all these things were coming out and the pre sale sites, we actually launched a pre sale site and to launch a pre sale site to compete with Kickstarter, that was the idea. And you have to put a product on it. And so a friend of mine, this guy, Louis Lemur, we were speaking at his conference in Paris and I gave him all these products I was working on and he said the doorbell, put on the doorbell. And like literally I'm like, you think, you think he's like, yeah. And so that was so even then. So it was like, it was so many of these like weird sort of things that just led to like one thing led to the next, to the next. Even after that, like we started selling them. It was like, maybe it's something the biggest Aha. The biggest product market fit though to your question. To try to answer your question, people started buying. We knew that it could be this security device, that it could deliver presence and actually like help people with security in their house. Because by being home, people aren't gonna like these knock, knock burglaries, all this stuff. But we thought it would be very hard to market that, to like tell people that. And we started when people were pre buying it. They were saying like, this is gonna help me because now I can say I'm home. When someone not like, so they actually like saw what the product did. And that was when we started to be like, oh, other people see it too. And so maybe there is something here.
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A
The other element that Jack and I found fascinating is that you were kind of early on, like the celeb equity trend. Like early on, Shaq invested and got involved. Richard Branson invested and got involved.
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Can you tell us the story how Richard reached out to you? Like what was that?
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Or did you reach out to him? Or how does that go down?
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C
So, so I hooked, I was like, I was literally just like putting doorbells on people's Houses.
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B
I mean, with those really tiny screwdrivers.
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C
Yeah. I'm like. I mean, like, literally what I was doing, and a guy that I had just done it for in San Francisco goes to the island and is there. And Richard's like, you know, what kind of nice things are you seeing? Whatever. You know, he's like, asking this stuff. And he shows him. He's like, richard, I literally told the UPS person where to go from the beach this morning. Check out this video. So he shows him the video from his newly installed ring. And Richard's like, oh, I'd like to give that to my friends for the holidays. So he emails me cold, like, you know, hi, it's Richard. I'd like to. But at this point, by the way, like, really small, and people are emailing me, like, if I buy three, can I get 30% off? It's like, sure. And at that time, you're just like, you know, it's like, ff. Like, what did. Like, like, what did I do in my life? Like, what mistake did I make that I'm selling doorbells three at a time? Like, you know, this is like, this is what I've become. Like, I'm a doorbell salesman. Like, literally. And so, like, my first thing is, like, then I look and I'm like, oh, no, this is like, this is Richard. Like, the. The one Richard.
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A
Sir Richard, actually.
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C
Sir Richard. And so we start going back and forth. It's a Friday, and we had just solved, like, our first crime, like, where we had, like, someone who, like, got caught on a ring in real time. They arrested him. Like, our first, like, real, like, making neighborhood safer moment. And so I said to him, not only are your friends going to like it as a gadget, but it also makes their house safer. Because we just did. I sent him the link, and then Richard sent back, can I invest?
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A
Wow.
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C
And that was pretty cool.
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A
Do you think it's critical for startups today to have a celebrity investor?
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C
I don't. Celebrities, you have. It's. You have to put the work in to have a celebrity work for you. Like, celebrities are not magic bullets. I think, like, anything, if you do it just like Shark Tank. Like, I leverage Shark Tank. I leveraged Richard Branson, I leveraged Shaq. But I had to work to do it. Just having them in, you've seen it. There's tons of these startups that have had celebrities and just die. And so I think you have to work it. They have to also be on brand authentic to your mission. Our mission was to make neighborhoods safer. Richard Branson, total missionary. Shaq was literally a cop. So you had these people cop. Shaq's a cop? Yeah. Reserve my grandpa? Yeah.
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A
Shaquille o'. Neal.
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C
Is she? Yeah. Oh, yeah. He doesn't know who Shaquille o'. Neal.
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B
Why are you on his side?
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A
He's very convincing.
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C
He's very convincing. We should do a pod.
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A
All right, let's talk about your wedding. You 2018, Amazon gets married to Ring for over a billion dollars.
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C
Yeah, it's 1.15. I mean, it's actually, that was, you know, that was when a billion dollars was a lot of money. Like, SpaceX is 1750 rings.
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A
That is some context. Well, I think maybe even my rocket's locked so big he may need to lock up the rockets. So there may be an opportunity there.
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B
So how does Ring fit into Amazon's, like, bigger strategy?
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C
So people, you know, people wrote all this stuff about how, like, it's gonna be the packages. And they look at, you know, all this very tactical things. Jeff was still there at the time and has this idea of infinite truths. And an infinite truth is like something that's just, you know, like, literally, like, like for E commerce. The way they look at it is people are always gonna want better price, more selection, faster delivery. Those are just infinite truths. Like, when you get something in 30 minutes, you're going to want it in 20 minutes, you're always going to want these things faster, more selection and price. We were making neighborhoods safer. It's an infinite truth. No matter where technology goes. Someone is going to. You would think they're probably going to be living in some sort of neighborhood structure and they're going to want it to be safer. And so Ring will supply that. And so they actually, Jeff actually looked at it as another large infinite truth, not as tactical to packages and delivery and all this stuff. And it was funny because all these articles would come out and we'd read them and laugh, telling us, like, why Amazon bought Ring. And I'd be like, jeff, look at this. Like, look at how smart you are.
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B
So there was never, like, he just thought it was a great product.
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C
It was really about the mission of making neighborhoods safer. And that being an infinite truth, that something that you could no matter again, that the technology didn't matter. The doorbell might, you know, the doorbell might not exist in 10 years, but we could still be making neighborhood safer. And maybe it's through an app or through drones or whatever that thing is. It doesn't matter. We'll just keep adjusting.
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A
Well, let's look At Amazon's draft picks here. Like, Jack and I whipped them up on the whiteboard the other day. Like, acquisitions by Amazon, IMDb, Zappos, Twitch, Zoox, Pillpack.
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B
It's a very fun category. Yeah. Pillpack, Wondery, Audible one Medical, Whole Foods,
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A
Ring, you've now been with Amazon eight years.
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C
I know.
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B
Is there a founder acquisition like Slack Channel that you and those nine other people.
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A
I can't believe Jeff said that. Yeah, Jassy, come on.
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C
No, I don't think there is. We do talk.
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A
We do, but do they treat you differently? Like you. You've clearly been so committed.
- [23:39]
C
Yeah, I think Amazon's a pretty still, like, for a large company and like, definitely, like a large company is a large company, but as large companies go, I think they're still the most entrepreneurial, like founder, forward startups leaning business. Like, and so for me, it's still fun to be there. I still love Ring. I love what we do. And I actually did leave, like, year five. I kind of like. I mean, I just like this thing was just a rocket ship that I was building and just got burnt out. And finally after year five was like, okay, like, I got it profitable. Like, I delivered on what I said I would do. I left, I was miserable, and I went back about a year and a half later.
- [24:20]
A
Wow.
- [24:21]
C
Yeah.
- [24:23]
B
So let's talk about the future. You've described the next era for Ring as the intelligent assistant for the entire home. What does that mean?
- [24:31]
C
Well, for Ring, we want to be what I really want to deliver. And I think this is like, AI is that AI is going to mimic the physical person that would have been there. So like a security guard. So every home should have a security guard that has worked at your house for 20 years, knows everything about, like, how you live, what you want to see, what you want to do, all of those things. And so for like, specifically for what we're doing in so many years, and maybe it's months, years, but like with AI, I want it to feel like you have that level of like a full human that really knows your home, your family and how you live. The butler fication trend, sort of the butlerification. But again, for us, we lean more around like the neighborhood and your home security, which doesn't have to be by just hard security. Like, if there was a bear that walked down your street, your security guard would be like, dude, you got to see this, you know, like, entertaining. But they would know, like, what you care about. And so I think that's. That's what we, like, we want to have that personalization there. And we're working on it.
- [25:32]
A
So kind of like Alfred and Batman.
- [25:35]
C
Yes.
- [25:35]
A
If you will.
- [25:36]
B
Is it just for the outside of the home or also inside?
- [25:38]
C
We're mostly outside. We do have some inside. We launched without shipping a drone, which is our indoor camera idea. And so, you know, we'll see how that. If that comes back up again.
- [25:51]
A
Well, thinking ahead on that future, one thing from the recent past is the super bowl commercial, which brought up a lot of really interesting questions.
- [26:00]
C
Yeah.
- [26:01]
A
Showing, you know, a lost dog getting found. What then led to getting some roasting on social media around mass surveillance. So we were wondering, like, as a leader, when that, when those comments which are the content start coming in, how do you react and how do you, how do you respond to that?
- [26:19]
C
So, I mean, yeah, we did this. I mean, we did a Super bowl commercial. We have a thing called Search party, which if your dog goes missing, which happens to like over a million dogs a year in the US Go missing, You post a picture, we look for it through the cameras. If we find it, we're like, you know, Jamie, this dog that's missing in the neighborhood, picture looks like this dog in front of your house. Do you want to contact your neighbor? If you say no, you know, it's questionable who you are, but your privacy is protected. If you say yes, it's just like calling the number on a dog tag and talking to your neighbor and saying, I think your dog is in front of our house. We're reuniting over one dog per day. It's amazing. Do a 30 second ad on the Super bowl and you know, 30 seconds is like, it's hard to like what I just described. Like, to say all of that stuff with like, privacy forward. It's like, you know, it's like, it's like of the, whatever commercial. It's like, you know, this might cause, you know, burning and itching. So we didn't have all this time, so we kind of like rushed through it. There was. And it definitely created this other thing of like mass surveillance and people being worried we're using it for that. Which, that misinformation that happened, I say is like, that's my fault of a misunderstanding. Like, that's like, I'm. Listen, like, Buck stops here. Like, I did not explain it well enough. And so I went out and did like my, as they call it, the apology tour. But really it was like, it was like a, you know, trying to get people to understand what we're doing because I think we are, we Actually, like, and this is something that I'm seeing across the board is we're getting very extreme in our views. Like, they have to be like one side or the other side.
- [27:55]
A
Consumers are getting extreme.
- [27:56]
C
Us. Yeah. People, humans. And so we just can't like imagine that the middle exists like a dog search party. It's either like, it has to be this one side of ultra privacy, can't have it, or this other side that's this bad thing. And it's like, actually, no, you can have the middle. You can be asked the question, do you want to do this? And if you say no, your privacy is maintained. And if you say yes, then you can enter into the conversation at that time. We've built a lot of stuff like that. But I think it is hard right now in the sort of the heat of the algorithms to get some of these messages out there. Yeah.
- [28:33]
A
Now a quick word from our sponsor. Top hats, baseball hats, Von Dutch hats. We wear so many hats on this podcast. Honestly, we're not great at all of them.
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No, we've been avoiding hiring someone to wear those hats instead of us, especially the Von Dutch one, because hiring and training can take forever.
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- [29:35]
C
Hims Yetis.
- [29:36]
A
We've been keeping a list of weight control plans that Jack has launched and announced on this podcast.
- [29:40]
B
The first was veganuary. I went vegan, but just for the month of January.
- [29:44]
A
Jack, remember only cone's day. Like you pledged to only eat ice cream. It was eaten in a cone. Yeah.
- [29:48]
B
Also, who says honey is not cool with vegan? What's the deal with that?
- [29:52]
A
Apparently the bees. The latest. Don't eat food off his kids plates. Each one of those. What do you say? Mild success for you, Jack.
- [29:57]
B
Yeah, I've done it all when it comes to weight loss, but so haven't we all. Achieving weight loss goals is another story.
- [30:03]
A
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B
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A
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- [30:42]
B
you should
- [30:43]
A
share the quote that you love, Jack, from Brian Chesky of Airbnb.
- [30:46]
B
So Brian Chesky says that technology is neither good nor bad, it's how you use it. His example, nuclear. It can light up a city or destroy a city. So to extend the Lord of the Rings analogy.
- [30:57]
C
Yeah.
- [30:58]
A
As you being Lord of the Rings, what efforts.
- [31:03]
B
What efforts are you taking to ensure that?
- [31:04]
C
I actually told that joke to Jeff when they were doing Lord of the Rings. Well, Amazon did Lord of the Rings.
- [31:10]
A
Yeah.
- [31:11]
C
And it was like, what? Like he laughs at everything I say. And it was like the one where he looked at me and he's just like, you're stupid. He's like, you're just. It's just. No, like you're stupid. I was like, oof, that's tough. I'm sorry.
- [31:25]
B
It's all good. I love Lord of the Rings tangent.
- [31:28]
A
So.
- [31:28]
B
So what are you doing to ensure that ring owners are on the side of Frodo, not Sauron? Are there any nudges you're making or behavior that you'll intervene when you see?
- [31:38]
C
I mean, I think we build everything where it's that same idea as the dog search party, where your information is your information, your camera, your house is private. But when something happens, like we have this thing called Firewatch. So for us in Los Angeles, I live in the Palisades. The garage that I built Ring at burned down and it burned into the back. We had moved from that house to kind of across the other side of the Palisades, and it burned in the back of our house. I actually stayed and helped in the fire with my neighbors. And so we saw through that, that part of the problem in the fires were that the firemen, the fire did not know where to go. They just. The command center, they didn't know where the fire was. It was skipping, like, you know, quarter of a mile at a time. We had 10,000 cameras plus in the Palisades, so we knew where the fire was on the ring cameras, like the individual homeowners that had ring knew where the fire was. So now we have this single firewatch. So when a fire like this happens, we alert everyone and we say, do you want to enter your camera into firewatch? So now, again, if you don't, that's fine, you don't have to. But I can tell you, in the Palisades, everyone wanted to help. And so now you say, like, yeah, I want to enter this thing in. And now with AI, we look for smoke, ember, fire, we feed it into watch duty, which then goes into the command centers. And now they can supply better data to the first responders to say, like, it just jumped over here, like, let's go put that out before it becomes a big fire. So I think the idea is we build things like that where every single time, though, you are asked and it's like your choice to join in. And what we have found is people in moments of, like, when a crime happens, when a fire is going on, when a dog is missing, people do want to come together. And so that is, I think we can build better neighborhoods and sort of better social fabric because people do want to help out the other sides. They also want their privacy, and they deserve their privacy. And I think, again, both of those things can be maintained and we can live in both of those worlds at the same time.
- [33:37]
A
Oh, by giving these options, you're saying, yeah, you know, you're building all of these things. It's just incredible, the pace of the launches, like Able, Jack and I always say, always be launching everything. But funny, we asked the poppy founders of the Prebiotic Soda when we interviewed them in Austin a few months ago.
- [33:53]
C
Another shark tank.
- [33:54]
A
Yes, Another great shark tank who became
- [33:56]
B
a shark just like you.
- [33:57]
C
Yeah.
- [33:59]
A
We asked about work, life, balance. And Alison said, doesn't exist if you're a founder. And so, Jack, they want to be
- [34:06]
B
a successful founder, you have to sacrifice work, life, balance. Do you agree?
- [34:09]
A
Yeah, I.
- [34:11]
C
Well, I think it's like, what is work and what is life? And, you know, so. So my, you know, I brought my son with me everywhere when he was not in school. So he's now 17. He's out in the audience somewhere. I don't even know where he is. But little.
- [34:23]
A
Wonderful, right?
- [34:24]
C
Yeah, little ones. That's funny. That's actually really funny. But he traveled so. But like he traveled with me. So like work life balance, like, I don't know, like he came to. But when he was five and we, the first door bots were coming off the line, I brought them with me to the factory, which so funny because so many people are like, you can't bring a five year old to China. And I'm like, why? Like, why can't you bring a five year old to China? And by the way, I brought a five year old to China. It was great. Yeah, we had a blast experience for it. So I do think like the work life balance thing, you know, if you're doing something you love, you know, I was lucky. My family was like sort of all in. My wife was like a huge supporter. I think that helps. It's like your is your village. If you're gonna do this stuff to their point, I think it's super hard. And so you do need to have like the village has to be with you. But if it is, it's kind of like all the same.
- [35:10]
A
So then when you're making decisions like that, like even taking your son or when you're gonna launch something like Jack and I are always curious like how much of it is like guts versus graphs, metrics versus magic, like information versus intuition. How do you make the decision?
- [35:24]
C
I think it's a. So my email's on every box and that gives me an incredible feed that then creates my gut. Like I have these incredible feeds that come in of raw data. And then. So I think my gut is very good because of that. I don't, I definitely, I don't look at surveys. I don't, I don't like to look at. I'd say like a lot of the typical things that people build products off of.
- [35:46]
A
Okay.
- [35:47]
C
I definitely. We try to always build a product that solves a problem and not a product looking for a market. So like, I'm very careful not to try to like get on the next trend. And if the next trend was to make neighborhoods safer and it's something, it's fine, I'll do that. But, but, but, but I do try to like look at like, you know, even firewatch is like, there's no, we don't, we don't sell it. Like, it's just like something that we, and we think if we. From the day we started it, it's always Been that if we can make your neighborhood safer and you believe that ring makes your neighborhood safer, you will reward us by purchasing our products. And so I don't have to sell you our products. If I keep doing that, if I keep launching these things and keep doing this and prove to you that we are a company that can do that, you will reward us. And so I've tried to. And you know, we're the largest home security company in the world today. Well over 100 million cameras out in the market. So I think, like, we have been rewarded. So I think it has. It has definitely worked to do that.
- [36:38]
B
So you changed the doorbell forever. If you could reimagine another product, if you had unlimited time, an everyday option,
- [36:47]
C
what would it be? These.
- [36:48]
B
Our audience is looking for ideas.
- [36:51]
C
You know, I still think the thermostat is the craziest thing in the world. Really.
- [36:56]
A
Like, even the nest one, well, you
- [36:58]
C
have to choose, like, auto heat. Cool. Like, it's like, why doesn't my house just stay at the temperature it's supposed to be at? Like, we have AI. We have like. Like, we have all these, like, pills that can solve things, like, all this stuff. But my house, I have to, like, move the thing back and forth or change, like, the. What it's in.
- [37:15]
A
Yeah.
- [37:16]
B
And when they try to, like, do their smart override. It's not smart.
- [37:19]
A
Stop overriding.
- [37:20]
C
No, I'm like, cold or hot? Like, something's wrong. Like, the sun hits it and it like, goes crazy. Like, it's got to know this. Like, it's like this. Come on.
- [37:30]
A
Thermostat 2.0. All right, well, Jamie, it's been wonderful to have you with us, but before we let you go, we did have some rapid fire questions for you. And a question we always ask our guests at the end.
- [37:40]
B
Okay, so what is the best brand in business?
- [37:43]
C
Ring.
- [37:45]
A
That isn't ring.
- [37:47]
C
Jamie. I mean, come on. Come on.
- [37:50]
A
By the way, for everyone listening, Jamie is wearing ring socks, so we will accept that answer. It has the ring logo on his socks.
- [37:55]
B
Okay, what's the best book you've ever read? And it can't be written by Jeff Bezos or Andy Jassy.
- [38:02]
C
It's the Walt Disney biography by, I think it's like Neil Gabler. G A B L E R. It's like, it's like, it's like a 48 hour audiobook. I don't even know how big the actual book is, but it's gotta be huge. And I think Walt Disney is one of the most fascinating stories of someone who just got. Was a product engineer, basically built, you know, entrepreneur. Always hated what he was doing. Always frustrated, like kind of that consummate, like just that fighter.
- [38:30]
A
Well, like you. We did a whole episode on Disneyland. First day was a total failure.
- [38:33]
C
Yeah.
- [38:34]
A
Yeah, right? Yeah, like that Shark Tank experience.
- [38:36]
C
Totally.
- [38:38]
B
Disney's first day was a paper boy.
- [38:41]
A
Yeah, good point, Jack.
- [38:42]
C
Yeah.
- [38:42]
B
Paper.
- [38:43]
A
Okay. Best business leader out there.
- [38:46]
C
Best business leader out there today, huh? Who's the best out there right now? I would say Dario from Anthropic has been incredibly impressive with how he's been. I mean, what he has taken there and what he's gotten is unbelievable.
- [39:03]
B
I think best inventor in history.
- [39:08]
C
Best inventor in history. I mean, I love James Dyson. I would say that's not the best inventor. I mean, you have to go to like, there's bigger inventors in that than a vacuum. Yeah. But I love. From a consumer electronics side, I think I love James Dyson, but I think that's not. I'm not gonna go like, that's not the best inventor in history.
- [39:29]
A
Okay. Best restaurant here in lovely Los Angeles.
- [39:33]
C
Cinque Terre in Venice.
- [39:36]
A
Nice. We're staying like right near there.
- [39:38]
C
Oh, Cinque Terre's amazing. It's like the best Italian ever.
- [39:42]
A
And if you could be a four letter stock ticker symbol. But you can't say ring and you can't say ding and you can't say dong.
- [39:56]
C
Beating me, I'm. Yeah, no, I just put you all zeros. I don't know, you just, you just took away everything in my bag of tricks like ring, ding, dong. It's like, it's like I got, I got. I got nothing.
- [40:10]
A
Oh, Jamie, thank you for being with us.
- [40:12]
C
Thank you so much.
- [40:12]
A
The takeaway from you for our audience and everyone and all the yetis and besties listening, Stay gritty.
- [40:18]
B
Thank you so much.
- [40:19]
A
Thank you, Jamie.
- [40:30]
B
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