Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff wants to reduce neighborhood crime

Ring began as a humble crowdfunded project called Doorbot — a Wi-Fi-enabled video doorbell that enabled two-way communication. In 2013, it was rejected on Shark Tank. This year, the company was acquired by Amazon for over $1 billion. Nilay sat down with Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff on this week’s Vergecast to talk about joining the Amazon family of brands, the future of security in smart homes, and how Ring product owners may (or may not) work with law enforcement to make neighborhoods safer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  This episode of Vergecast is brought to you by Smart Water. Not satisfied being like other brands, Smart Water looked up at the clouds and said, "We wonder if we can one-up Mother Nature for a purer, crisper water." And guess what? They did. Smart Water, vapor distilled for purity, electrolytes for taste. Hey, everybody. It's Nellie from the Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, we have Jamie Simonoff, who is the CEO of Ring. It's the smart doorbell security camera company that's now part of Amazon. Ring's a really interesting story, actually. It started as a Kickstarter project called Doorbot, and it became such a success that about five and a half months ago, Amazon actually bought the company. Jamie and I talked about what Ring is all about. It's a little surprising. It's not a smart home company. Jamie really thinks it's a security company. What it's been like working with Amazon, becoming part of that

• 0:44Nilay Patel?

  Amazon family of brands, the future of the smart home, and how Jamie really thinks, and this, to me, is crazy. He really thinks that connecting everybody in a neighborhood to one another's security cameras will make us all safer. It was pretty wild. Check it out. Here's Jamie Siminoff from Ring.

• 1:00Nilay Patel?

  All right, we are here with Jamie Siminoff, who is the CEO of Ring. Is that, that's the correct title?

• 1:06Speaker 01

  I technically, on the legal papers, I'm the CEO, but I like to go by Chief Inventor because it just feels more like who I am.

• 1:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And you don't have to, like, you're part of Amazon. Like, you can mostly invent, right? Isn't that like the luxury of being part of the big company? Like, they provide the HR and the snacks for you, and you get to just make stuff?

• 1:21Speaker 01

  It actually is like that here at Amazon, so I am enjoying that.

• 1:25Nilay Patel?

  That's great. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. You were, Amazon just had a huge event last week, and they called you out on stage, and that was really fun. But I want to start earlier with Ring. So, right now, Ring is part of Amazon. You make a bunch of products, a doorbell, a security system, floodlights, the whole thing. But what I think is really interesting is, this started as a Kickstarter called Doorbot years ago, right?

• 1:49Speaker 01

  It's even crazier than that. It started as a pre-sale crowdfund, but not on Kickstarter because at that time Kickstarter wouldn't accept products that had cameras on them.

• 2:02Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  So, like, it goes back to like a time when Kickstarter was even trying to figure itself out, and that's how early it was in this whole thing, where we kind of all forget now, but back then, like Kickstarter's trying to figure itself out. It was putting stuff on. It was resetting the rules, and it actually changed the rules that you couldn't have something with a camera. So, we actually launched it on our own crowdfunding site because there wasn't one that existed at the time at any scale. Indiegogo at the time... I don't think Indiegogo had a campaign over, pretty sure not even over a million, but you know, probably even well below that. I mean, so they were, there was just really no clear person doing it at the time.

• 2:37Nilay Patel?

  That's cra- I mean, the fact that you built a little crowdfunding platform, this thing could have gone a whole different way, right? You could have been like, that's the business.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  And, and we kind of, you know, at the time, we would have been just as happy at that time because we really were, you know, figuring stuff out. I mean, it wasn't clearly at that time that this was going to be like the greatest thing ever. I mean, it was a doorbell, you know?

• 2:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So let's talk about, so you, you had Doorbot, you crowdfunded it, it became a success. When did you turn it into Ring, the, the product and the company?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  So we crowdfunded it. When we were doing the crowdfunding, we started talking to people and we realized that, you know, my wife was the one who really got me to do it. And she said, that made her feel safer at home. As we crowdfunded it, we saw there was a lot of people that were saying the same thing, like this really, like this make, this will make me feel safer at home. People are breaking into homes around our neighborhood. And when I'm out, then this way I can talk to them and, and say like I'm home. And so we realized very quickly that we could actually reduce crime in neighborhoods with this. And so the, the bigger sort of concept came up when we were doing the crowdfunding. And as soon as that was done, we knew that we had to version to it. You know, this was, you know, Doorbot was really an alpha product and we needed a real product to follow on.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  And getting on Shark Tank gave us the money from sales to be able to do that. And so that was about November of 2013.

• 3:57Nilay Patel?

  So you're not only a crowdfunding success story, you're like a Shark Tank success story.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it took, it took more than just one thing to make us successful.

• 4:07Nilay Patel?

  And, and then you're on Shark Tank like this week, right?

• 4:10Speaker 01

  I will be on Shark Tank as a shark, as their season 10 opener on Sunday night.

• 4:15Nilay Patel?

  Well, we're recording this before Sunday, so without time, people listen to it, you will have been on. So here's what we should do. You come up with a, a phrase that you, you're going to tell the listeners, like, go back and watch Shark Tank and I'll say it. Do you have like a canned line for when you reject a, a pitch?

• 4:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't.

• 4:31Nilay Patel?

  You should be like, I'm locking you out.

• 4:35Nilay Patel?

  You're an intruder. We'll think of something. By the end of the show, we'll come up with something.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  All right.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  So you have Doorbell on Kickstarter, you have Shark Tank, you have version two, it's Ring. You start with the doorbell. I want to talk about all the big action happening in smart home and security, but just this journey to me of one or two people starting a company, crowdfunding it. We cover a lot of that and usually it crashes into a wall somewhere, but you guys seem to have pulled it off. You've become this much bigger thing. Aside from Shark Tank and Kickstarter, is there a thing that actually helped you be successful with a hardware startup? Because we see so many of them kind of just fail.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if I look at the peer group that was around us, I mean, pretty much nobody made it. I think a couple of things worked in our advantage. One is we were in Los Angeles, which was a place where there wasn't a ecosystem around this. And so we broke a lot of rules, not knowing we were breaking the rules. And a lot of these startups were confined into ecosystems where they were around each other. And they became, I think, too homogenous in talking to each other and not actually thinking about the customer. They were thinking about the ecosystem of the area they're in and all this other stuff, not really worried about building a real business. And in Los Angeles, we had no one around us and we just kind of went out and built a business. We were super focused on solving a problem for our

• 5:53Speaker 01

  customers, not on technology. And I think that's, again, one of probably the most important things. At the end of the day, people don't buy technology, they buy things that make their lives better. And I think a lot of times, especially when we get into some of the tech scenes, we can easily forget about that. And then we see the issues of that when there is these crash and burns of these companies that just didn't really focus on that.

• 6:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's funny, we're, The Verge is based in New York, and I hear that from the New York startup scene too. You have to have a business here. You can't just fall back on the Valley ecosystem. It's interesting to hear you say that about Los Angeles as well. So now you have this whole lineup, right? You have floodlights, you have a security system with sensors, you've got multiple camera form factors. Were you already going to be there before Amazon showed up, or did they accelerate this product development for you?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  So what you're seeing, I mean, we've been part of Amazon for just under six months now. So it's still pretty early, actually. So what you're seeing from us now is the full suite of products that we were building at Ring. It takes about 12 to 18 to even 24 months to really have a good product cycle. And so the things that will come from the major benefits of Amazon are still sort of, you'll see those in six, 12, 24-ish months. Where we are getting a lot of benefit from Amazon is just now being able to focus 100% on product and our neighbors, which is what we call our customers. And that's for me probably the most refreshing and greatest thing as an entrepreneur and

• 7:25Speaker 01

  an inventor to ever have, is I now have the ability to just focus on making great product for great neighbors.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  Chief inventor and neighbor, I gotta, I'm gonna have to keep a list.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, well, it's like Starbucks, you know, we kind of made up our own, we made up our own thing, venti, you know, whatever.

• 7:44Nilay Patel?

  So tell me, just sort of, everyone's always curious, you know, we have a lot of listeners, they all want to run companies and be quiet. Tell me about the sort of process of Amazon showing up. Was it Jeff Bezos with a wheelbarrow full of cash? Did they have to convince you that Amazon was the right fit? Was he like, look at Alexa, dream the biggest dream? Like, what was that process like?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  So we've been working with them for about four years in different levels, different places in the organization, just it being Amazon and having different touchpoints with Ring. Over that time, I just became very friendly and really started to like a lot of the different execs and groups and people that I met at Amazon. And I think on the other side, they started to like us and they started to see how we were very mission focused and we'd always talk about that. And we stuck to that for years, not just, we didn't just come out and say, oh, we have this mission, we're gonna do this and then, you know, like fly by night. And I think seeing our long-term vision in the business, how we as a culture, as a company, really mirrored into Amazon, it became clear over time for both of us that this would be a great combination.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And so. As much as I'd like to say, you know, Amazon tried to convince us for sure that, you know, they were a good place. I also felt it was a great place for the business and to keep going and a place to build the next great things to reduce crime in neighborhoods. And so really, I'd say it came together in a very sort of nice and organic way, which I don't think a lot of deals actually would necessarily come together that way.

• 9:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I want to make sure we hit on the reduce crime in neighborhoods part of this because I think that's one of the most interesting ways ring positions itself. But we'll come to that in a minute because I'm still, I'm still so curious about just the company. So who made the first move? Did you call whoever at Amazon and say, let's do this? Or did they say, hey, it's time, like, we get it, you should join us? Like, how did that conversation go?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I would always say to them, kind of joking, but joking in like a serious joking way. I'd always say, listen, if we're ever gonna, I was gonna take the company public, that was really my plan. And I'd always say, but if, if you ever want to buy us, we would look at selling to you. But not in a way of like trying to get them to buy it, more like saying like, but really like saying, you're the type of people we like and we're trying to, we're trying to build something real. And so if someone wants to do that with us, we'd be happy to do it. And so it wasn't like a salesy thing. And one day they came and said, you know, we think it's time to take it to the next level. And it was one of those, kind of, it was actually a lunch. And I kind of had the, can I just be clear with what next level is? So I don't, you know, sort of, you know, like, embarrass myself terribly,

• 10:21Speaker 01

  you know, like, in a few minutes, you know, saying something and then realizing that you just meant like a better Alexa integration?

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I mean, that should 100% be your Shark Tank line. It's time to take it to the next level and just wait.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then just kind of look at them like, you know, like, like in Zoolander, you know, just kind of like a strange sort of long stare. Like, you know what I mean, right?

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, you're talking about Alexa integration. So six months ago, Ring becomes part of Amazon. Is there a reason that it's still separate? Like, what you're describing is you have a lot of independence. You can focus on your customers and the product. Is there a reason it's not just part of the sort of Echo family of devices?

• 11:03Speaker 01

  So it kind of is and it isn't. We have a very specific sort of niche in devices of this mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods. And so we, our goal at Ring is to build products and services that effectively and affordably can do that for our neighbors. Some of the stuff that's built in devices in the Devices Group is not necessarily like, you know, some of it actually helps that. Like Alexa, there's stuff to work with on that. But there's some stuff that sort of would, I'd say, is outside of that scope. And so we're really kind of like this subsidiary, whatever you want to call it, from a, not saying from the legal side, but from like a reality side, we're like, kind of like our own little group inside that gets to focus on that mission, build the stuff that does that, and then use the foundation of Amazon to accelerate it.

• 11:45Speaker 01

  So whether it's through AWS, or the e-commerce, or the Device Group having contract stuff, whatever that is, we get to sort of now ride on top of that, where we were a very sort of small hardware business, now we are part of a very large one.

• 11:59Nilay Patel?

  Right, so like the new Fire TV they announced today does not reduce crime in neighborhoods. So you're like, that's not for us. Is that how the conversation works?

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah. It's like, you know, and it's not to say like, I don't want to, I don't want to make it sound like all of a sudden there's like a soundbite like, you know, Jamie Siminoff says like, "All devices at Amazon don't reduce crime." It's not, it's more just like-

• 12:19Nilay Patel?

  Well, I think it's safe to say, "Most devices at Amazon don't reduce crime."

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Most devices globally don't, you know? It's like, which, it doesn't mean they're bad devices, but, but we get, we get to have this like focus area. And so, for me, it's not about staying independent from a, you know, I think some people when they sell their company, they want to stay independent because it's like part of who they are, they're eat, like, I really like the Amazon culture. I'm happy to be, I am, I'm an Amazonian, I'm proud of that. But I do like that we get to have this focus area, which is called Ring, that allows us to continue to move fast. And one thing about Amazon, which is great, is they are entrepreneurial, they like having fast-moving groups inside, there's a lot of autonomous areas of Amazon, and we get to be one of them.

• 13:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, so this leads right into sort of my next set of questions, which might be kind of annoyingly granular, given that you've only been there for six months, but, you know, I asked our tech team and our reviewers, "What do you want to know?" And here's the list. So like- There's a, they make a lot of products, like Amazon makes a lot of products. They make security cameras. Is there a reason that Ring doesn't really integrate with Amazon's security cameras? Is it just because they're inside the house and yours are outside the house?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  Around all the integration stuff, you know, people have asked me like, why isn't this integrated? Why isn't that integrated? I'm like, we've been there for five and a half months. Integration of these things takes a really long time. We will definitely integrate the things that make sense for customers to integrate. We're not just going to integrate for integration's sake. So if it's, you know, integrating to some thing that we make on some other side that doesn't make sense just to try to say where everything works together, we're not going to do that. But where it makes sense for the customer and for what we're trying to achieve, for sure, we'll do those integrations. But they do take a long time, and especially with devices where you have firmware on the devices, you have millions of devices in the field. I mean, these things are, just take a long time. And so I think on the outside, it looks like we're sort of standing still because you don't see the work.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  On the inside, there's a ton of work around the integrations. And one of the first things we did is now Echo can arm and disarm our alarm system. So that was one of the first sort of big API pieces that we did. We also have that our cameras can go on the show and the spots. You can say, you know, like, show me my front door. So there are a lot of things that we're doing, and we'll just keep doing more of those. And I think that'll benefit customers, neighbors, and just the overall ecosystem.

• 14:39Nilay Patel?

  Do you get the benefit of sort of telling the Alexa platform folks what to do? This is one of those, you know, the way Amazon works is like very famously, the AWS team is building a great platform and the sort of the e-commerce team is running on top of it, but there's obviously some communication. But do you think of Alexa as a platform over there that you support? Or is, is it a little bit more holistic, the way, say, an Apple or Google would work?

• 15:04Speaker 01

  You know, I think what we get to do now that we're part of like the team is to sort of, in essence, pitch them or talk to them about the things that we're trying to do, the ideas that we have. And get them to either help us with that or build something, or maybe they're already building something, so we integrate to it. So, but Amazon's a fairly autonomous place, and it doesn't have that like, at least I haven't seen it, and again, I've been there for like, you know, less than six months. It doesn't seem to have that like, top-down, like, you're gonna listen to this guy and do whatever he says. It's much more around sort of like, groups coming together, making decisions, and, and using the data or the customer data to say, this is the right thing or not.

• 15:46Nilay Patel?

  It's such a different way of operating companies. So I want to ask, because Alexa clearly is becoming this platform for Amazon, which is wildly important. I think last week, we counted, there was like, an Alexa announcement a minute at that event, just like, non-stop, covering it. Covering it as like, a, a news organization was like, hold, hold, we haven't finished typing the name of the previous one. Can, can you just give us a second? And then, they, you know, they shouted you out from stage, and that was really interesting. And it was, it's just clear that whatever's happening with Alexa in the smart home is so important. So I do want to come back to you saying, reducing crime in neighborhoods, because it doesn't seem like you are focused on, hey, I need to make a smart home for

• 16:27Nilay Patel?

  people. Which I think is sort of the natural instinct when Amazon bought Ring was, right, it's a smart home company, they got a big smart home play, they're gonna, it's doorbells and cameras, we get it. But that's not how you think about it.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  It's not, and, and it, you know, like, on one side, like, it is part of a smart home. I mean, if you can sit on your couch and answer your door from your Alexa, like, that's a pretty, you know, integrated smart home. We just don't come at it from that direction. We definitely work on the things that we believe are going to affect crime reduction in neighborhoods, whether it be a service, or a hardware product, or whatever. And that's like, our neighbors app, totally free app, anyone can download. It's having a massive effect on crime. It's becoming a very big part of our business, just doesn't have a package that we can put at, you know, Best Buy to sell. So we, we're able to focus on those things. And, and I think you're right. I think it was obvious that we were like, this smart home thing being brought into Amazon. I think people are now seeing

• 17:21Speaker 01

  that Amazon really liked what we were doing for homes and neighbors, and they're happy to let us keep doing that. And then how that sort of, over the long term, how that does, you know, evolve into smarter homes.

• 17:36Nilay Patel?

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• 18:18Nilay Patel?

  One thing that's interesting to me, industry-wide, is that all of the smart home companies that start with a product have all ended up building security systems. Right? Like, obviously, you have a security system. Nest has a security system. SimpliSafe exists. Blink, which is also an Amazon company, I want to talk about in a minute, they announced a security system. Like, but you guys seem to have gone there intentionally from the beginning.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  We've been hiding in plain sight with our roadmap. I mean, it's been out there. I mean, it's what we're going to do is we're going to do the rings of security. We're going to work from the door to the outside, to the inside. I mean, we've talked about it for years and years and years, and we just kind of, you know, every year, just kept getting closer and closer to it and doing it. I mean, I think the reason you see the clumping around security is because the reality is, you know, there are a few big themes that are important to the home. And security and safety and being safe in your neighborhood is certainly something that people are going to spend money on, that they're going to put focus on, and that they're going to care about.

• 19:18Nilay Patel?

  Do you think there's also, just to be maybe a little cynical about it, you can charge people a monthly fee? Do you think that's like part of it? Like, that monitoring fee is just really high-margin and lucrative?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  I'd kind of come at it the other way, which is the reason that monthly fees and that there has been historically very lucrative fees in the business is because it's so important to people. Now, I would say that the fees have been too lucrative. And I think what we've done is, you know, we're going after the underserved or the not served. Because I think that there is a huge portion of neighbors out there that don't have proper security. And it's because historically, it's just been too expensive.

• 19:55Nilay Patel?

  So, do you feel pressured to have like increasing margin and revenue inside of Amazon now? Are you, do you think of yourself as a hardware company with an associated fee? Or are you like a broad spectrum services company?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Again, this is where you get lucky selling to a company like Amazon is they have a very long-term outlook on things. And so as long as there is a long-term perspective of where it goes, where it's not just like, oh, we're gonna lose money for 10 years and then, I don't know. I mean, like, that, like, you know, I think some people see Amazon and think that's how it works. It's just like, oh, they just don't care. Like, no, they're actually super frugal. They care about every dollar. But they are willing to invest in things for a much longer period of time than I've seen in other companies. And so what I love about them, and I think where we are at, is they are understanding that neighbor security is a long-term benefit to customers, to neighbors, and they're willing to invest in it for a very long time to do it in the right way.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  And so with that, we're able to do things the right way for the long-term, not trying to have to cut, you know, do some shortcuts for the short-term, whether that be, you know, trying to gouge margins or something like that, which wouldn't be good for neighbors in what we're trying to accomplish.

• 21:06Nilay Patel?

  So, it's funny, I have a bunch of Amazon products. I have one Ring product, but the ecosystem I'd actually invested in myself personally was I have a bunch of Blink cameras, right? So, Amazon bought Blink. They were a competitor of yours. Now, I'm assuming they're just like in the family with you guys. Are you thinking, do they have a different mission? There's definitely some overlap there. Or is that slowly over time, are you guys gonna work more closely together?

• 21:31Speaker 01

  It's funny, because they're very close in some ways to us and then, but they do it differently. They go out for the market differently. You know, they have a great product and it's differentiated from what we do. And I love what they do and the customers that have their products seem to love their products. So I think that's a great win all around. As being now part of Amazon, having Ring, Amazon has some camera products, and then Blink. You know, it makes sense for customers, I think, over time to figure out how to bring those ecosystems together, including, by the way, other third-party ecosystems together to deliver the best experience for those customers.

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you know, and this has nothing to do with you, but when Amazon bought Blink, I noticed immediately two things happened. One, the app got faster because the backend had clearly just been upgraded. Like, they just upgraded the AWS instance that was faster, and they added an Amazon logo. And I was like, well, that was worth it to me as a customer.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  We're always doing what's right for the customer. And those are like, there's some short-term things you can get from, you know, going into a place like Amazon. The harder part is the long-term ones, that like, trying to integrate a Blink Ring in a way that customers can sort of share video between them, et cetera. Like, those are much more long-term sort of things that take a lot more work to do.

• 22:49Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, all this stuff is really new. So I think you're right. The expectation that it would happen immediately is a little sideways, but over the long sweep of things, you can see how the ecosystems would integrate. What's interesting to me, again, is your focus on this reducing crime. So that's, that's actually the real reason I wanted to talk to you. I just wanted to get all of this history out of the way and ask this, like, long, granular list. So you are mounting cameras around everybody's home, or at least that's the goal for your customers. You obviously provide monitoring services, you have moisture sensors, you've got door open-close sensors, you have a security system. But really, it comes down to the Neighbors app and this sort of like, shared surveillance thing that you're doing. Describe the Neighbors app.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the Neighbors app is, it's like the, everything else, you're looking at it right, I think. Everything else is kind of like these tools that are out there. The Neighbors app puts it all together so that people can share what's going on in the neighborhood in a very content-rich way. And we found that by doing that, you can really, really impact the crime in the neighborhood by immediately being able to share this, having everyone talk about what's happening, again, in a very content-rich way. That's like the pinnacle. And so the Neighbors app is totally free. It's embedded, if you have a Ring product, in the Ring app. But you can also literally just download Neighbors on Android or iOS, and now you can see what's going on in your neighborhood, you can post stuff from your phone into it. But you will see the difference of that versus, say, some other platforms.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  Is the content and the richness of it to be able to see what's happening, who's doing what, and that has been able to really have an impact on crime.

• 24:26Nilay Patel?

  Give me your sort of like paradigmatic example of the Neighbors app. The picture on your website is a photo of a guy at the door and the message says, has anybody seen this guy? Is that what you're looking for? Or is there something else you're looking for?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  And you know, a lot of times that actually works. I mean, so at the base, yeah, I mean, like, you know, this person came to my door. I've never seen them. They had a weird story that they were selling, you know, rugs or tree trimming, but I, they didn't seem to be sort of sure of that. Anyone else seen this person? Oh, yeah, they came to my door. They were actually saying something completely different. And then it, you know, it ends up either going to the police or somehow will become something that is used, you know, to catch them, you know, burglaries. I mean, I'll give you like a, an amazing example, which happened a few weeks ago in Florida. So in Florida, we've also rolled it out where the police can actually ask questions into the app as well with our neighbors.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  And so there, there was a crime where a burglar actually burned a car. The neighbors were all together on the app, talking about it, whatever. The police said, does anyone have any information from this time to this time? Neighbors are able to post it through this. They found the guy and arrested him. And so that was like a full end to end, like, you know, taking from the devices, the Neighbors app, to the social side of it, to working as what we call the public-private partnership with communities and police and actually, you know, apprehending someone who was very bad in the neighborhood.

• 25:51Nilay Patel?

  So that's the optimistic result, right? Like you're an optimist, you built the system, that's how you want it to work. America 2018, the public-private partnership is a little darker than that, right? Do you think about the fact that black people get the cops called to them a little bit more often than you would want right now? Are you thinking about how your app can mediate those kinds of problems?

• 26:12Speaker 01

  I look at it as if the police weren't around, we would be in trouble. I mean, like, there is a definite need for police in society. And I think that is a, a truth that I think everyone of all sides can agree to. Being able to get more rich data to the police so that they have the ability to understand a situation better, I think helps to prevent a lot of the negative things that we see happening. And so what we've hoped to see, what we are seeing is by being able to give the police data in a way that lets them understand what's happening and make it much more clear to everyone, because the video is the video. It's not hearsay, it's not someone's interpretation.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  We believe that that helps the entire community to have safer communities and also without some of the negative things that we've seen happen.

• 27:04Nilay Patel?

  But are you doing anything in the app to provide a check on the, here's a group of neighbors, they see someone, they immediately go to the police and say, get this person out of my neighborhood, right? Like, that could be a problematic result in like many cases.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  With video, what's nice about video is like the police are able to see what you're talking about. And so before it's someone calling up and saying, hey, this XYZ person did this and that, and I need this. And all they have to go on is that. And sometimes that ends up in being a real thing. Sometimes it ends up being this. Like, they have all these different outcomes. Whereas with this, it's like, here's this video, I have this problem. And the police can say, okay, we'll look into it, but maybe they see it and they say, this is not a problem. Or they say, okay, maybe this is something we need to follow up on, let's follow up on it. But I think giving them better data, one of the problems the police has, if you look at it from like, almost like a business side, is they're in a business of making very big decisions with very limited data.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  And, and we're trying to just give them better data to have them make better decisions. Because I think if you agree that there needs to be police in order to have a safer society, then we need, there needs to be people that help them to make better decisions.

• 28:14Nilay Patel?

  So are you actively helping them understand how to watch a Ring video? When you think about that public-private partnership, is Ring in the middle of it?

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Your Ring, your data is 100% yours, and it will never be shared, never auto-shared, never opted in to share. There is no time that your data will be shared without you at the time saying, here, take this because I think it'll help you. And so the whole idea is to build a system where you have all these neighbors that want to live safer, but they also want their privacy protected. You have police that don't necessarily want your data unless it's pertinent to them at the time. And so building a system that allows that to happen is what we're doing. Making the ability for, at the time that something happens, for the police to say, hey, if we had this, it might help us. And you say, okay, sure, I have this and I'll help you with that.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  And so just making it so that everyone sort of is comfortable about what's happening. Because as soon as they're not, we are a security company. We're a neighbor's security company. We don't sell to police. We sell to people that live in communities. And as soon as they lose trust with us, that will be the day that we end our business.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Right. But, so for example, this comedian in Florida, this car gets burned, they catch the guy. Did Ring go and tell the local police department, hey, we've installed 10 of these cameras in the neighborhood. Here's how to participate in this system. Right? Do you have like a best practices for the cops, doc? Or you're just kind of letting it happen?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. We have, we have a whole team that's there to assist and help police in how to best work with the tools that we are building, you know, the infrastructure that we're now building in all of these communities, on how they can actually leverage it to make the neighborhood safer.

• 29:54Nilay Patel?

  What kind of feedback are you getting from police as you, as you roll these things out?

• 29:57Speaker 01

  The interesting thing, so police historically have not been able to use video efficiently because of the, it's so hard to, I just imagine if something happens in a neighborhood, you know, it's easy to think like, oh, like, the police will just get the video data. But how? Different cameras, different systems, it's, it's very hard for them. So having a place like the Neighbors app, where they can actually request footage from their desk, then neighbors in a, again, totally privacy protected way, say yes or no. Say yes, now they have the ability to actually go through, see what's happening, get a picture of what's going on. On any crime and then result in more, you know, more true prosecutions.

• 30:41Nilay Patel?

  So I used to be a lawyer, so I have a thousand like lawyer questions. I'll try to like zoom out a little bit, but you're like a third party data vendor. Can the police subpoena Ring to get video data out of a camera, even if somebody doesn't want it?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  So any data you have can be subpoenaed by police, but that's really, if you look at that, like those subpoenas are really between a governmental organization and the end user that really has very little to do with the company. As a company in the United States, we have to go by their laws. So this is really like completely outside of that. The problem is it's not about subpoenaing data because these are like lower level crimes, whether the package thefts, burglaries, you know, these are not like serial murder kind of things and, and those types of things where they're trying to go through and subpoena data. Subpooning usually also works with, when it's the person themselves is the one who has the data for the crime.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I, I, I'm thinking specifically of sort of like the iCloud example, or the FBI can go into your iCloud account, right?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is really very different from that. Anyone who's worried about that should really look at, because subpoenaing data is not about, it's not about company, it's about living in America.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Look at the laws of the country you live in, because that's what you're actually agreeing to as your terms of service. It's not any name XYZ company that has data.

• 31:59Nilay Patel?

  So I'll take you out of the legal side, because I think that focus on that security and the sharing with the police is where, I think, to be honest, most of your questions as you scale up are going to come with that, right? Like, right now, in this country, it just seems like people are calling the police a little too often, and not always the right ways. And I'm obviously interested in that.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  And that is a huge problem, but putting our head in the sand and just saying, okay, there's this problem, you have to then unpack it, you know? Do we need police? And I think everyone says yes. And then if that's the case, well, then shouldn't we help? Like, shouldn't we try to make the situation better? And I think that's, that's where we're coming at it. And we're doing it in a way that is 100% around protecting the privacy of our neighbors. And I think, I hope we inspire more companies. And more entrepreneurs to go out there and to look at this as a problem that needs help being solved, not just one we just kick the can down the street.

• 32:55Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. All right. So I got five minutes left with you. You've given us a lot of time. What's next for Ring? So you have this mission, which is clearly defined. You're part of Amazon. You've been there for almost six months. You know, you said that there's like a 24 month roadmap. Is it just hundreds of more products? Is it massive product line expansion? Is it improving the ones you got? Like, how are you thinking about the sort of next steps?

• 33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, I mean, it's a lot of improvement of current products, just continuing to sort of next generation things, making them better, faster, higher resolution. I mean, all the things that happen with technology products over time, just continuing to evolve it. There'll be a few new products that will come out that I think will be super beneficial to customers. We'll continue to invest heavily in also some of those services that are helping to make neighborhoods safer. But it won't be, it certainly is not going to be a, you know, like what you saw with the Amazon device group and Dave Limb going up and doing the 70 things, that is, you know, one part of how the Amazon business does devices. In the Ring group, you will not see that kind of high velocity of new products coming out

• 34:01Speaker 01

  because it's not, that's not like the foundation of what success for us is.

• 34:05Nilay Patel?

  Are you thinking that there's, like, there's obvious things you could do around security, right? Are you gonna make a door lock? Has that come up?

• 34:12Speaker 01

  I mean, all, I mean, name X Y, like, name X Y Z product in home and it's like, are you going to make X? Well, I obviously can't comment on that. We always go back to, you know, does it help with the mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods? Are we going to be the best at, at building that? Is it differentiated, whatever we'll build? Like, do we have an idea that it really is going to evolve, you know, evolve things? Or is it really just a me too product? Because one thing that Amazon has, and we always had it ring, is we don't need to build me too products, we can partner with them. And so, you know, we, we definitely believe that partnering with the best third parties in areas that are adjacent to helping our mission is great. In places where we can invent something like our floodlight cam, that no one had anything like that, our outdoor lights, like,

• 34:56Speaker 01

  no one even thought about that stuff being smart, or how it could be connected, or how it could make a customer's experience better. That's the places where we'll continue to invent and launch products.

• 35:05Nilay Patel?

  Do you think the future for Ring is gonna continue to be? You know, I'm a relatively nerdy guy. I want a, I want a doorbell. I'm gonna go buy it from Amazon and install it myself. Or are, you know, you sell packages. You've got Shack on the website. Buy the Shack package. Or are you gonna start talking to integrators and service providers and say, we're gonna build you a whole solution. Just press this button. Somebody shows up and they're gonna install it all for you.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  I think, you know, as we get bigger, I think you'll see it in all of, like, sort of all the above. I don't think it'll be a focus on one or the other. And actually Ring, I mean, the amazing thing about Ring and why it has been so successful. We sell to really every demographic right now. And one of our great channels is on QVC, and that is a certainly aged up customer from the, you know, from the tech. You know, if you're talking about like a technical person who's going out to buy a gadget. And we do very well there. So we've done well in sort of, I'd say, every single category so far. Now getting into more installation assistance or high-end integrators. I think, you know, we want to hit all parts of the market because again, I always say to make neighborhoods safer.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  We want to make all neighborhoods safer. Neighborhoods are comprised of many different demographics, many different homes, many different economic areas. And so we want to have from a very low cost entry point to a high cost entry point to sort of cover all the different homes and variabilities that happen in neighborhoods.

• 36:27Nilay Patel?

  So last question on Ring, and then I'll definitely let you go. But there's obviously like a set of products you can make to make the home safer. And then you're gonna run that out, right? Like at the end, like you're not gonna build machine guns for the roof, right? Like you're gonna-

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Now you say that, I'm gonna write that one down. That's a good idea.

• 36:42Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like you're gonna help arm all the entry points. You're gonna put cameras everywhere. You're gonna build the neighbors app out. Do you see the next turn? Have you, have you thought that far ahead?

• 36:52Speaker 01

  What we've always seen is, I think when you focus on an area that is impossible to solve. I mean, the thing I like about our mission, which is really kind of also our goal, is it's one that is impossible to solve. You'll, you'll never zero out, or I don't believe anyone will ever truly zero out crime across the globe in every neighborhood. And so it's one of these problems where as technology evolves, as other things come out that we weren't even dreaming of or even thinking of, but someone else was. How that's applicable to our goal and our mission will be interesting over time. And just, I'd say like, who knows where that goes? But I think that's the great thing about having a long-term beneficial- Goal for society is that you don't need to have the 20-year roadmap exactly out there, but you know that over that 20 years, there's going to be things that are coming

• 37:37Speaker 01

  out that you'll be able to integrate in to continue to make your goal closer to being achieved.

• 37:42Nilay Patel?

  That's awesome. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us. It's, again, we're like time shifted. So I look forward to seeing you on Shark Tank. The listener, if you are listening to this on Tuesday, go back, watch Jamie on Shark Tank. He was on just this past Sunday.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  Everyone watches on TV anyway, so it's good.

• 38:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, check out Shark Tank. Jamie has, of course, promised to tell every entrepreneur that he's going to take them to the next level. So listen for that.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:09Nilay Patel?

  Looking forward to that. But no, Jamie, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to having you back.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Hey, thanks so much.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

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