Episode 555: Jamie Siminoff: Why "Acting Like a CEO" Killed More Startups Than Failure Ever Did

The biggest threat to a founder's success isn't failure. It's spending years trying to become someone they were never built to be. Jamie Siminoff never followed the CEO playbook. He followed the problem. He built Ring in his garage with a soldering iron, got publicly rejected on Shark Tank, never ran a single team meeting, and still built one of the most recognizable home security brands in the world. In this episode, Jamie shares why the traditional founder playbook is a trap, what actually drives a company to scale, and what AI is about to do to the entrepreneurs who never questioned how they build. If you have ever felt more pulled toward solving a problem than managing a team, this conversation will completely reframe how you think about building. What's Discussed: (02:01) Why "serial entrepreneur" is just a polite word for something else entirely. (05:13) The garage moment that started everything and why he almost missed it. (09:47) What pre-selling millions still couldn't save him from. (13:22) The Shark Tank rejection that became his biggest break. (21:15) How a lunch conversation changed the entire trajectory of Ring. (35:40) The Amazon courting story and why it took three years. (44:35) Why he never had a single team meeting and what he did instead. (51:20) The reason he walked away from a billion dollar company at its peak. (57:18) The wildfire that made him come back. (1:02:10) What AI just unlocked for Ring that wasn't possible before. (1:08:45) Why grit is about to become your most valuable asset. (1:19:46) The one thing he'd tell every founder who's still searching. Thank You to Our Sponsors! AirDoctor: Head to AirDoctorPro.com http://airdoctorpro.com/ and use promo code HUSTLE to get up to $300 OFF today! AirDoctor comes with a 30-day money back guarantee, plus a 3-year warranty (an $84 value) FREE! Kion: Visit getkion.com/habits http://getkion.com/habits or 20% OFF Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com http://livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% OFF your first subscription. Therasage: Visit Therasage.com http://therasage.com and use code JEN to get 15% OFF your order. Your skin deserves this level of care. Magic Mind: Head over to magicmind.com/jen http://www.magicmind.com/jen and use code JEN at checkout. Prolon: Prolon is offering listeners 30% OFF sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Program! Just visit prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN https://prolonlife.com/JENNIFERCOHEN and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Rho Nutrition: Go to RhoNutrition.com http://rhonutrition.com and try Rho's Liposomal Glutathione. Use code JEN20 for 20% OFF sitewide. Manna Vitality: Try it now by using the code Jennifer20 at mannavitality.com http://mannavitality.com. Find more from Jen Cohen: Website: jennifercohen.com https://jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen http://instagram.com/therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books https://jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements https://jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Jamie Siminoff: Instagram: @jsiminoff https://www.instagram.com/jSiminoff/ Find more from Jamie's Book: Facebook: Ding Dong Book https://www.facebook.com/dingdongbook Instagram: @dingdongbook https://www.instagram.com/dingdongbook TikTok: @DingDongBook https://www.tiktok.com/@dingdongbookYouTube: @DingDongBook https://www.youtube.com/@DingDongBook

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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi guys, this is Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Do you know the story of Rolex?

• 0:08Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  It's a non-for-profit.

• 0:10Jen Cohen?

  It is?

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Rolex is a non-for-profit company.

• 0:12Jen Cohen?

  Hold that thought. We should, okay, I'm gonna keep this in the podcast.

• 0:15Speaker 01

  It's really like insane.

• 0:16Jen Cohen?

  That is crazy. I wanna hear the story.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  So like you learned about this.

• 0:18Jen Cohen?

  Guys, I wanna tell people who you are, because I'm already going. This is gonna be on the podcast.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Alright, great.

• 0:21Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so we have Jamie Siminoff, just, by the way, then we're gonna tell you the Rolex story in two seconds. Jamie is the founder of Ring. He sold it for 1.1 billion dollars.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  1.15, but I mean, it doesn't matter.

• 0:35Jen Cohen?

  I mean, just like, you know, like semantics here, a little, okay? And it was bought by Amazon. He then went to, it was acquired, but now you're, you went to work with, for Amazon? And then you stopped?

• 0:47Speaker 01

  Stayed for five years.

• 0:48Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 0:48Speaker 01

  I was just, I mean, I was kinda burnt and whatever, left for a little bit, and then I came back last, I've been back like a year now.

• 0:55Jen Cohen?

  Okay, then you came back to run.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Been back.

• 0:57Jen Cohen?

  Now he's back at Amazon to run Ring. Okay, now, before we even talk about you, tell us the Rolex story.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Well, so these guys do this podcast called Acquired.

• 1:07Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:08Speaker 01

  And what I think is interesting is some of the ones they do are companies I just never would have known about. And Rolex, which we all know as, I guess, a company, or we thought.

• 1:16Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  Is actually like, it's, I think it's like the largest non-for-profit in the world or something, or one of them.

• 1:21Jen Cohen?

  I've never heard that.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  It's like secretive, non-for-profit thing that was started by this guy during the World War I.

• 1:27Jen Cohen?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  And he basically invented the watch, because when, when you're in, when you're fighting in a war, it turns out that everything was a pocket watch? And so to be able to see time, if you're like, sitting with a gun or something, like you can't, so like, he basically put the pocket watch on your wrist. So it's like a crazy story.

• 1:43Jen Cohen?

  Go on. How did it become a non-for-profit, though? Like, how did that?

• 1:46Speaker 01

  Uh, somehow, I think, because it was so old, I think when he died or something, like, gave it to this thing, it became like a charitable foundation.

• 1:56Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  And so it's like this gigantic company that's not a company, that's like, this brand, it's just wild. So it's a great, I mean, I'd say, anyway, it's, you know, it's a great podcast to listen to of a story that I... I think most people just had no idea.

• 2:11Jen Cohen?

  Oh, no, never.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  I certainly had zero, like, no, no idea about it.

• 2:14Jen Cohen?

  I was basically like schooling Jamie before you, you know, before this whole thing of what podcast he listens to. Has he heard of this? Does he like it? He's not wasting his time. People do listen to it. And then that's how this whole story happened in the first place. So this is like a, a unique way of start an intro.

• 2:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:30Jen Cohen?

  But, but, but I like the uniqueness of it.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Jen Cohen?

  Okay, now let's talk about you. Okay, so Jamie has a lot of, I'm sure we can glean a lot of great information from you because you really are like an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. I've read a ton of stuff about you and what I really loved, I was saying this to you before, like, I really like, what I love about you is that you, from what you've said about yourself and what other people have said, that you just have a lot of grit and you are just super persistent. And it wasn't that you, in your words, not the most savvy, smart guy, but you work really hard.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I, I mean, it's definitely my superpower is like, I just keep pushing, just keep grinding and grinding and grinding.

• 3:11Jen Cohen?

  And so this is what the show's all about. Like, I, that's obviously why it resonates so much, habits hustle. Similar to that with you, to you. So can you just start from the beginning? I know you, you were a serial entrepreneur before Ring even happened. So what were you doing? Like, how did this whole, the whole Ring thing even start?

• 3:28Speaker 01

  Serial entrepreneur is like another word for failing entrepreneur, I'd say.

• 3:32Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  I mean, because like, people would say like, oh, it's so great. You're a serial entrepreneur. And it's like, yeah, I mean, I've started all these things just because none of them actually like became anything impactful. And I think, and, and my type of entrepreneur is more of an inventor than an entrepreneur. So I, I think there's just different like types. We, we were talking even earlier, like, there's like, all these people that built, like, there's people that just build companies and sell them. There's like people that whatever, like, I'm more of an inventor. Like, I like to build something that solves a problem. And the best thing an inventor can do is solve a lot of people's problems.

• 4:01Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  So like, like, the more people you solve the problem for, the better. And so I had started a bunch of things. I did voicemail to text. So you could like read your voicemail, which when you had BlackBerrys and you were doing all these voicemails. But that was also at a time when voicemail was declining and it just never really took off. And so I kind of made a tiny bit of money with it, but not really. So I did a bunch of these things that were like cute, great ideas, didn't really take traction. I'm a serial entrepreneur, which means I just couldn't find anything that worked. And then I finally, I mean, it was like, when I hit Ring, like I finally hit something that really resonated at scale. And then I could work on to build something, you know, massive.

• 4:36Jen Cohen?

  Well, also you're solving, it's interesting because I think I heard you say this. Like if you were going to, if you were to build a doorbell company, it wouldn't have probably scaled and worked the way it is. But you kind of had a different approach or you kind of were solving more of a security, a neighborhood problem. Or can you talk about that?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I got, I mean, luck, luck has to be your co-pilot. And so I got there in a lucky way. I was in the garage, literally like working in my garage. And inventing stuff like all these other things. I couldn't hear the doorbell. I had just gotten an iPhone and I'm like, oh, well, the iPhone, like there must be a doorbell that goes to the iPhone.

• 5:13Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  Uh, this is in two thousand and eleven. I looked online, there's no doorbell that goes to the iPhone, so I built one.

• 5:19Jen Cohen?

  How did you know how to build one though?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  I just like, I'm, I am a tinkerer. Like I've always since I've been a kid, like I'm like, I like, when I needed something, I'd go in the basement and build it.

• 5:25Jen Cohen?

  Like MacGyver?

• 5:27Speaker 01

  I am like MacGyver. Like, yeah, I'm like a, like a gritty MacGyver, so.

• 5:30Jen Cohen?

  You basically had like a what, like a paper, like a, like a toothpick and a, and a paper clip?

• 5:34Speaker 01

  I mean, not far off. I mean, I basically, I, I went to Fry's, which was a, you know, back then, there was, there was Fry's, where it was like where all the electronic stuff was. Especially like that kind of longer tail of electronics. And I bought a wifi camera. And, because there was wifi cameras, there's lots of them actually. And I kind of soldered and hacked something up to make it work like a doorbell.

• 5:52Jen Cohen?

  But how did you even, like, how did you know how to do that? Like, at the time, it wasn't chat GPT. I guess you can Google, like, how to do this?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  I mean, I think the best way to do anything is just like get the soldering iron out and break it. Like, I mean, just shock yourself. Like, I mean, you know, like, it's like, just, I've, I've always been someone who like, like, the first thing I do is something is take it apart.

• 6:10Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay.

• 6:11Speaker 01

  So I mean, I just always like, that's, that's my natural curiosity. So like, to me, like, trying to build a doorbell from a wifi camera was like, okay. Like, let's see what happens. Like, let's see if it happens if I like, if I do this, if I spike this, can I get an alert to come out? Like, you know, it's like, and so I just kind of played with it, built this, like, kind of hacked this thing up. I called it Doorbot. Cause door robot sounded funny. I'm like a guy in a garage. Put it on my front door. It's this giant thing and my, I sort of like get my wife to use it and she said it made her feel safer at home. And that was the start of this aha moment of all sort of home. Security, everything around, like, everything until that time was not being built in a way to deliver presence to actually try to reduce crime in neighborhoods to like to impact it.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  It was all built in like a pre, pre-phone, pre-connection and that you could rebuild all home security basically in a new way. So that was the, and that aha wasn't like immediate, but that was like the start of that aha moment, which is till today's our mission is to make neighborhoods safer. Making neighborhoods safer is what built Ring into being the world's largest home security company, which I'm pretty sure it is today.

• 7:13Jen Cohen?

  If you really actually think about it, I, most people I know have the, like have a ring.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Most good people, yes.

• 7:20Jen Cohen?

  Like most good people for sure. Like you actually created like, you know, Kleenex, you know, tissue. Like that's kind of what you did. You created the same kind of, for that analogy, like an entire like vertical or iterate, like a whole different category.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a category and our brand is the brand of the category. I mean, you'll hear people say, you know, sometimes on the news, you'll see like another camera. I know it's another camera. They'll say, the Ring camera caught and I'm like, that wasn't a Ring camera. And I just smiled because it's, I mean, it's like, what an amazing, I mean, it's like pinch me. I'm like a kid from Jersey who likes to tinker in his basement and, you know, created something that like will be like, it's like multi-generational. I mean, it's the, it is incredible.

• 8:02Jen Cohen?

  So, okay, so how long did it actually take you to build? Like, was that the first iteration of how many? How many iterations of that did you do at the beginning?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Like I'd say hundreds of iterations overall, because you're just kind of constantly doing it. Like you're not even keeping track. And it took us till 2014. Like we, so it was about three and a half years of.

• 8:23Jen Cohen?

  Who's we, by the way? Who was with you?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  It was like me and then like, like one or two kids in the garage, basically. So like literally. And they both, August and John, and they still work for Ring today. So.

• 8:32Jen Cohen?

  Who were, who were these guys?

• 8:33Speaker 01

  John was kind of a, he was, went to Philadelphia University and was like a kind of a, like a designer, but like more like graphic designer who I forced to become a mechanical engineer. I'm like, John, if you can draw it, why can't you just do this? And he's like, okay, boss. Like, you know, we have like.

• 8:48Jen Cohen?

  I love that.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  And then August was just like, I went to Berkeley, I went to Boulder. And was just a jack of all trades kind of guy. And so between the three of us, we just kind of did it and then, you know, brought in a couple of engineering people and.

• 9:01Jen Cohen?

  Were they your partners or like equal partners or are they working with for you?

• 9:05Speaker 01

  No, I was the founder.

• 9:07Jen Cohen?

  You were the founder, the only founder?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Only founder.

• 9:10Jen Cohen?

  And so did they get like, did you say, hey, if you do this with me, I'll give you 10% or did you just pay them a salary?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  I got some equity, but it was more salary. It's like, I mean, every, I mean, it was, you know, it's like you put yourself back in that position. I mean, I, I would have probably, if they said to me, no salary and I'll take 10% I probably sure.

• 9:25Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  You know, at the time, but like they needed, they were like young guys that need money and to live. And so I paid them and, you know, I, I raised a little bit of money to do it and.

• 9:34Jen Cohen?

  So how much did you initially raise?

• 9:36Speaker 01

  The first raise was under a million dollars. It was 500,000 bucks. I think it was the first one.

• 9:42Jen Cohen?

  And so what, how far along were you before you even started to raise like that?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Like that was right out, like that was in off the, out of the gates. Like I kind of, yeah, I kind of raised that.

• 9:52Jen Cohen?

  And so when did you go on Shark Tank and get rejected?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  That was 2013.

• 9:56Jen Cohen?

  Okay. So you started in 2010, you said 11?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  So you started like a, like, so I was, and I was in my garage trying to build other stuff. So that's actually what I raised the money for was this thing called Edison Junior, which was like a lab to build ideas, basically.

• 10:09Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:10Jen Cohen?

  Like a, like kind of like an incubator?

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Kind of like an incubator. Yeah. Like our own ideas. And that's like, I was, I had these other things I was trying to build. That's what I couldn't hear the doorbell. So.

• 10:20Jen Cohen?

  God, that's so funny.

• 10:21Speaker 01

  It's wild.

• 10:22Jen Cohen?

  So then what like, so how did it go from that and then two years later being on Shark Tank, not as a shark?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  So no, I mean, it's like so nonlinear that it's crazy. So, yeah, I, I looked for a doorbell, can't find one, build one. My wife says it makes her feel safer at home. Like that's kind of cool, but still not an aha moment. We're building this like thing called Edison Junior. We're trying to put, we had hardware products mostly. And we were trying to put them on Kickstarter to get them funded, you know, for pre-sale. Kickstarter at the time decided to kick off anyone that was a hardware product. So we launched a new Kickstarter called Christie Street and which is the street that Edison's lab was on. And I was going to a conference, this guy, Louis Lemur, who had this conference. Paris called La Web was a kind of a friend. And I said, Luke, you gotta let me launch this at your conference. And he's like, oh, Jamie, this is not very, you know, he's like, like, literally like Sergey Brin was speaking at his conference.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  And I'm like, he's like, you know, Jamie, uh, it's like the biggest conference, biggest tech conference in Europe. I'm like, you gotta do it, Loic. He's like, okay. So we get on the phone and we're like going through it and he's like his team and like what it's gonna look like, the presentation. And I'm like, we have to, we're gonna put a product up, but here's a bunch of ideas we have. The last one was the doorbell. And we get through them all and I'm like, do you have, like, what do you think will resonate with like the audience there? And he's like, the doorbell. And I'm like, really? You think so? And he's like, it has to be the doorbell. I'm like, okay. And so it wasn't even, it was like, kind of like a last minute, almost ad, I just put it on there. And the idea was to launch this site that people would sell hardware on and pre-sale and like a Kickstarter. And we'd kind of in essence sell off this doorbell thing and get out of it quickly. And all people talked about when we launched was the doorbell. It became the thing.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  We ended up killing the site, started selling the doorbell, then realized we had to build the doorbell, which was a disaster in itself. And, uh, and then through that I got on Shark Tank.

• 12:07Jen Cohen?

  Well, how, so there's like, how did you go from that to Shark Tank?

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Well, so I was

• 12:11Jen Cohen?

  They reproach you, because I know that's what happens a lot.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  They did a little, but I, I, so I went to lunch with another friend in LA. Like a guy who's building a little business here and like a friend of a friend's, like you guys should get together. And so I go to, go to lunch with him and he's talking about his business and all the stuff. And meanwhile, I'm kind of thinking in my head and I'm really thinking this, I'm like, this is why, like, basically you're not making it, Jamie, is like, you're out to lunch, like with some entrepreneur, like talking about like advice. And meanwhile, you're like, you're like, you're literally failing in your garage. Like, you're like, you're basically like tanking your entire family. And you're at lunch with this guy in Santa Monica, like talking about some whatever business. And at the end of it, he's like, what are you working on? I'm like, oh, this doorbell. And it was actually, again, kind of funny because put yourself back into that moment when someone said they're working on a doorbell. They'll go to your phone, you actually laughed.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Like, people would literally like, like viscerally laugh and be like, no, seriously, what are you working on? Like, everyone's working on cool stuff, like, oh, I'm doing this, I'm reinventing this, like, I'm doing whatever. And I'm like, oh, a doorbell that goes to your phone. And they're like, haha, no, seriously, what are you doing? And I'm like, no, that's seriously what I'm doing. Like, sorry. Like, you know, I'm an idiot. And so they, the guy's like, oh, that's really cool. The Shark Tank's looking for better products. Do you want me to introduce you to the, or here's the email of the producer?

• 13:23Jen Cohen?

  Is that like Clay Newbill?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  It's one of the guys that worked for Clay.

• 13:26Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  And he's like, you know, because they, they reached out like through like his connections, whatever. And they just said, like, if you know of anything good, send it over. So I literally sent an email like, hey, I'm Jamie Siminoff, you know, [email protected]. I started driving home from the lunch and they call and they're like, you need to be on Shark Tank. And I'm like, holy shit. There was 30,000 people plus applied the year that I got on. So it was like crazy.

• 13:49Jen Cohen?

  That many?

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, Shark Tank was like, at the time, like 2012, 13, 14, Shark Tank was like the number one show on TV.

• 13:56Jen Cohen?

  Were they still taking that 1% in perpetuity?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  So they, when I, when that guy called me, they were.

• 14:02Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  But they were just in the transition period of stopping that.

• 14:06Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Uh, which turned out to be Mark Cuban was the one who basically said, like, we're not going to do that anymore. They actually retroactively went and stopped. They, they gave it all back. So they ended up never taking a percentage of anyone's company.

• 14:17Jen Cohen?

  I, I didn't know that, really.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they went back and retroactively just nuked it all.

• 14:21Jen Cohen?

  Many, many years ago, when it was, I think the first or second, it was the second season of the show, they reached out to me. I had a shoe, like a weighted ship, a weighted shoe called No Gym Required Shoe. Anyway, they, Clay New, he, Clay reached out to me to be on the show and, eh, well, I'm Canadian. So it became an issue with the visas. But then it was this 1% in perpetuity. And my partner was like, there's no way that we're going to go on some show. Cause they, they were, the, the idea was they were going to take that 1% regardless if you even like got on the show or not, right?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Just to get the, for the ad, basically.

• 14:54Jen Cohen?

  Exactly. Like, even if you make a deal, not make a deal, whatever, you, you have to give up. Like, like they must have lost out on a lot of amazing, smart entrepreneurs. Cause no, not, people don't want to be doing that.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  It was an expensive ad at that point. Like, I mean, if you did that and it was like, yeah, and people didn't want to do it.

• 15:10Jen Cohen?

  Like for you, if you had, if that, if they took a 1% from your company?

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I was so desperate, I probably would have done it. Like, I would have taken money from Satan at the time. I mean, I was like, you know, I was desperate.

• 15:20Jen Cohen?

  Well, wait, so then at that time when you went on, did you, have you sold any?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, we, so we, the, the pre-sale started in 2012. So December 2012, we announced it.

• 15:31Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 15:32Speaker 01

  And then I went on Shark Tank. We filmed September of 2013. It went on November of 2013.

• 15:39Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And we started shipping doorbots. It was called Doorbot at the time, still, like the actual product. We started shipping them basically two weeks after we were on Shark Tank is when we had them come in from Asia. And we started shipping them out, so.

• 15:51Jen Cohen?

  But before you got on that show, did you actually pre-sell any of them?

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, we pre-sold like, like a couple million dollars worth.

• 15:57Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so then.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it was like, it was like, it was legit, yeah.

• 15:59Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so you already had that. Okay, so then you go.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  But it's still, but it's so funny, because it's like, we, if you had told me, like, when we launched it, you're gonna pre-sell a couple million dollars, I'd be like, oh my god, this is awesome.

• 16:08Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Problem was like, blowing through millions of dollars in hardware is like the easy, like, it's like,

• 16:12Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  You're done. I mean, like, we were spending them, like, the money engineering this, like, I mean, we were so negative on that product, it was crazy.

• 16:20Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 16:20Jen Cohen?

  How much were you negative at this point?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  I mean, we were, had to be at least, if we had shut it down, we'd at least owe a million bucks or two million dollars. Of, because we were ordering, like, supply, like,

• 16:29Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  ordering parts and ordering all this stuff. And like, I mean, it's just like, you're just dead.

• 16:33Jen Cohen?

  You're just, yeah, you're just like, just spending, spending money.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  And I, I did, I used the money, like, the pre-sale money, I used to design the product.

• 16:39Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  But then I didn't have money to buy the product. So like, like, part of why we, like, like, shipped right after Shark Tank is like, we got all this money, the, the sales went up after Shark Tank, which then I could turn that, you know, three days is how long it takes for a credit card to settle. So I'm sending that money to manufacturers

• 16:54Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  to clear out inventory.

• 16:56Jen Cohen?

  That's incre, okay, so wait, so you, because when you went on there, okay, you had about two million sales, blah, blah, blah. They all turned you down because of two reasons I saw or heard. Was, first was the fact that the hardware was expensive.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 17:09Jen Cohen?

  Right? And then what was the whole?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Well, it's expensive compared to a doorbell.

• 17:13Jen Cohen?

  Compared to a doorbell.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  Funny, remember, put yourself back in that time. Like, no one thinks about it like that now. Like, everyone's like, oh, it's a door, like a video doorbell camera, like a doorbell camera, like, like, there's a whole category.

• 17:23Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, let us, you created the category.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  And I still very much, like, have a good share in it, but, but the, back then, it was like, a doorbell is twenty dollars. Fifteen dollars.

• 17:34Jen Cohen?

  No, it's, yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Like, whatever. And it's like, yours is two hundred. Like, there's no way someone's gonna spend two hundred dollars on a doorbell. And I'm like, well, it's not a doorbell, doesn't, it's a doorbell. And so they, that was a big part of the mess. Uh, and then it was also, again, market size, like, how many doorbells sell a year? Now, at that time, And this is where data can be so wrong for people. Like when you follow data, it can be so wrong. And this is where opportunities are going to exist for entrepreneurs. As we get more lazy with AI, AI can only see the future based on the past. Like it's literally how it works. And real entrepreneurs are able to see the future completely in a orthogonal, different way. So you look at the data on doorbells and you're like, yeah, there's like a hundred million dollars a year of doorbells, whatever it is.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  But when did someone buy a doorbell? When it broke. The only time someone bought, or when they built a new house. So built a new house or when it, when it literally broke. And a doorbell lasts for 30, 40 years, whatever it lasts on a house. And so of course there was no market for doorbell. But if, what, what happens if you came up with something that people wanted on their front door? Now what's the market size? It turns out the market size was multiple billions of dollars.

• 18:41Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  And so people just didn't see the market. Uber was another great example of where no one could, everyone said like, well, taxi business is only this big. Uber can only be this percentage of it. It's like, yeah, what happens if you change how people travel? Like what is that market size?

• 18:57Jen Cohen?

  Absolutely.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  And I think that is like, again, I think especially with AI, we're going to look over a lot of businesses because you're going to type into AI. Like I'm thinking about doing a doorbell a lot and it's going to be like, the maximum size of this business could be this. And you're like, oh no, I'm not going to do it.

• 19:12Jen Cohen?

  That is so true, but and isn't that also not, I'll take a little small tangent about prompting, being really, really savvy and knowing how to prompt these things or which one to use. And it keeps on being like, AI, what I have, what I'm doing on it now was very different than what it was happening to even two weeks ago. It iterates every minute of the day.

• 19:31Speaker 01

  It is definitely getting better and smarter. I think it's going to be very hard though, to prompt it to make that big of a leap.

• 19:37Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  Like, I think it's going to be very hard to like, and I think that's where like an entrepreneur, an inventor, having like, you know, having true passion about something, mission, purpose. Is like, I, I do think that's still going to exist in the future as a differentiator between success and failure.

• 19:53Jen Cohen?

  And also AI does not have grit or perseverance and all those other work ethic things that I believe you need with luck, right? The combination. Okay, so let's go back to the shark tank. I find it so interesting. Okay. So then what was the other reason they gave you besides the hardware?

• 20:08Speaker 01

  So it was, yeah, so it was basically like, you know, it's too expensive. How big is the market?

• 20:12Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  I mean, those are, I guess, the two big. I think that was the two biggest one. They just couldn't see like, they couldn't see this product being big enough. You know, so like, they're like, you know, they're like, of course, someone will buy it, but it's not going to be big enough.

• 20:23Jen Cohen?

  Is, how about Nest? Is Nest considered to be your, your big competition?

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I would say at this point, no. I mean, like, I think, I mean, they're, they're out there and they, they, you know, they do the good job in their place. But no, they're not like, they're not that, not that big.

• 20:36Jen Cohen?

  They're not that big. Okay. So then, when the show actually aired, how much did your sales go up? Like a thousand percent, five thousand percent?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we were selling, we were like, doing like a couple hundred grand a month. And we, so, and that was actually the scariest thing about Shark Tank is, so you go on and they're like, you're gonna have this bump and like, no one knows exactly, like, each product sells differently. And so, we're like, okay, so I'm fearing the bump is gonna be like, within the first few hours of the show and that's it. Like, that, that's all we're gonna get. Funny side note, we were on Shopify, our site was on Shopify. I call up Toby, who's the CEO of Shopify. Now, remember, you gotta go back to, he was the CEO of Shopify. Shopify was not that big of a company. Like Shopify today is like a hundred plus billion dollar company. So like, calling up the CEO of Shopify today would be insane.

• 21:19Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Back then, it's like, calling like, the local person that, they don't like, the local person who runs the restaurant down the street. And I'm like, calling Toby, I'm like, hey, we're gonna be on Shark Tank, whatever, two weeks from now. He's like, okay, you're fine. And I'm like, no, you don't understand, if you go down, like, I'm gonna drive to Canada and kill you.

• 21:35Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  You know, basically, and, and we had this email exchange, which is very funny, which we still saved, of him and I going back and forth. And he's like, we've spent over a million dollars on servers. Now, like Shopify now, I mean, it's like hundreds of billions. And I'm like, no, you don't understand, the traffic's so big. So it's like, just very funny, these like, two entrepreneurs that are like, going back and forth. So I was really worried it was gonna go down, because I felt like it was gonna be such a bump. So we, you know, we go on Shark Tank, kind of wake up the next morning, basically, hungover as, you know, when the show actually aired. And it was like a hundred and something thousand in sales. So I was excited to have a hundred thousand sales, but I'm like, that's it?

• 22:10Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Like, oh my God, I did all this work for a hundred and, but all right, a hundred and fifty thousand in sales, whatever it was. Then the next day, hundred fifty thousand in sales. Next day, like, it was like, literally. It just and it then started going down slowly. It never went back to like, we were like maybe four or five thousand a day or something. You know, going into Shark Tank.

• 22:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  It never went below like, it was like, stayed at like thirty thousand or something. It like, it was crazy. It just like stayed up.

• 22:36Jen Cohen?

  So would you say that it was because of the Shark Tank, the exposure of Shark Tank that kind of catapulted the business then?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  I would say, I think there's, with any business, there's like a million, like literally a million things to make it successful, which is why it's hard to build a successful company, because it's never one thing.

• 22:53Jen Cohen?

  Right, right.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I would, Shark Tank, of the one things, I think it was the, one of the most impactful. I mean, it was like being on, it was like people being in a garage going on a Super Bowl ad.

• 23:01Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was that kind of level. And Shark Tank at the time was, it was like the number one show on TV. So it was not only were you on Shark Tank, you were on like the number one show on TV.

• 23:10Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  For twelve minutes. It was basically an ad on the whole business.

• 23:13Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent. And it wasn't like you were, like now you have social media to compete with, right?

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:18Jen Cohen?

  People, no one's even watching TV.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, this was when like TV was TV.

• 23:21Jen Cohen?

  Massive.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  This was right at the end of that, actually. It was like right there.

• 23:24Jen Cohen?

  I still like the show though, by the way. I think this is.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  It's a great show.

• 23:26Jen Cohen?

  I love that show. I really do.

• 23:29Speaker 01

  It's great for kids to watch. It like inspires people. It's inspired a whole generation. Like, I love Shark Tank.

• 23:35Jen Cohen?

  Me too. Who were the judges when you were on?

• 23:37Speaker 01

  It was, uh, so it was Robert.

• 23:39Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Kevin, uh, Lori, Damon, and Mark.

• 23:45Jen Cohen?

  So did any, when, when she like walked out of the tank or whatever.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:49Jen Cohen?

  What happened with, did you make a friend, like, did you become really good friends with any of them? Did they, any of them reach out to you?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  None at that point. So at that point, like, I mean, I walked out and like, you know, kind of nothing happened.

• 23:58Jen Cohen?

  And they're like, rat, rat.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  We aired, they saw immediately that like, from our airing and the response that they got, that like, this was something unique.

• 24:07Jen Cohen?

  Was it one of the highest rate, like in terms of products that like kind of didn't make it?

• 24:11Speaker 01

  Pretty quickly, yeah. It was like one of the, and then they, like our sales, like they ask you pretty, you know, they're like, Clay and the team that run it are pretty sharp. So they were like, how are your sales, whatever? And I'm like, oh, we've done, you know, we'd done like a million dollars in the first whatever. Like, so we were blowing out every number they had pretty quickly. So I think it was like, it was early that they realized they should stay in touch. I don't think they understood how big it would be. I didn't myself either.

• 24:34Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  But it was like, starting to already like, you know, become something. We did like an update episode, I think a year later in the next season. Um, and then it just kept.

• 24:44Jen Cohen?

  Going.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Kind of rolling from there.

• 24:46Jen Cohen?

  So wait, so when did you raise money, like the next round? So you did five hundred thousand?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  I mean, I was raising, I mean, during Shark Tank, I was raising, I was trying to raise a million dollars when we went on Shark Tank. I had three hundred thousand circled. I went for seven hundred thousand on Shark Tank. I actually needed that money and I didn't get it. So I just kept like, I mean, I was, I was fricking by hook and crook and whatever. I was trying to get every dollar in. I mean, I was like, literally just, just scraping at the barrel constantly to get money. Like, I mean, that was the, until we sold, basically.

• 25:18Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so how much in, in, in all the money you raised, how much did you raise altogether?

• 25:23Speaker 01

  It's like two hundred and twenty million or something.

• 25:25Jen Cohen?

  That's a lot.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  It was not a little, yeah.

• 25:28Jen Cohen?

  Wow. So how much did you get diluted with all that?

• 25:30Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 25:31Jen Cohen?

  Like eighty percent, forty percent, sixty percent?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the high, like eighties.

• 25:35Jen Cohen?

  Eighty percent. Wow. So like, even though you sold it for one point one five.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Billion, yeah.

• 25:42Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, it was just an insane amount of money. You like walked away with how much, like a hundred million, two?

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I mean, that range.

• 25:50Jen Cohen?

  Like you're not, you're not poor.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like, I, I, I like, I made more money than I ever thought I'd ever have, ever. And like, so I look like eighteen year old Jamie is very proud of forty nine year old Jamie, like super proud. But people on the outside certainly have this, like, they think I made like a hundred billion somehow. Like, not even like a, like, it's like they like, like hundreds of billions. And so like.

• 26:12Jen Cohen?

  It's so funny how that happens.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  It is funny, and I see it like a lot. It's like that, like, that's just, yeah, because you get diluted, you're like investor. I mean, it's, it's, it's, um.

• 26:20Jen Cohen?

  Well, talk about that. I think people don't know that. I mean, you know, I've had a few people on the show who talked about how, or in general, people I know. Let's say they sell their company for a billion or two billion, but they still, and that's for like the majority share. So they get to keep still like twenty percent of the company.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  A lot of private equity stuff, yeah.

• 26:38Jen Cohen?

  A lot of private equity, but that wasn't your situation at all. You sold the whole thing.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it was more of like, I mean, and this is where there's like, there's so many different ways to like skin the cat, kind of like to build a, a business. And there's people that are like, that build it profitably day one, and they just keep rolling and they own. A hundred percent like I have friends that own a hundred percent of some of these big businesses and they'll sell for three hundred million. No one even knows they sold and yet they made way more money than a lot of entrepreneurs that you know. And so, yeah, I think like the the outcome size is different than like what people sort of take and how that is.

• 27:10Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 27:10Speaker 01

  You know, for me, it's like my personality was to go big quickly and want to build something. I wanted to like hit the cover off the ball.

• 27:17Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And to do that, you gotta take a lot of money, go fast, like, you know, we spent it, marketing, like, we built the brand. Now, it worked. I mean, it's like,

• 27:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Ring is, I mean, over a hundred million devices out in the world today, super profitable.

• 27:30Jen Cohen?

  A hundred million people use Ring.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  Hundred million devices in the market, yeah, yeah, over.

• 27:34Jen Cohen?

  And is it still growing exponentially?

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Very, very fast, still.

• 27:38Jen Cohen?

  Because also you have a subscription model, so you're just caught into selling it and you're making money every month.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Was it really the like, we went from three million, the like, so the year I was on Shark Tank was like, you know, so like three millions, we kind of hit that. Then thirty million, one seventy, four eighty. And then we sold to Amazon and sort of hit billions after that. People look at those numbers and they're like, that's amazing. It's like, actually, no, it's terrible because the amount of cash you need to grow a business that has a physical product. So the business itself was just incinerating cash as a because of the growth, the actual like economics on a per customer basis were phenomenal. So the fundamentals of the business were actually very strong. The entire company collectively, because we're trying to build this stuff, it's very complex, like we're trying to like the scale you needed

• 28:26Speaker 01

  was burning money hand over fist. So the problem was it was a really scary business to build because it was like it was incinerating cash. The good thing was the on a per customer basis because of subscription, because of how we built it, like, actually, it was a very healthy, like, the economics were healthy as long as we got to scale. So we knew if we got to, and we always said, like, it was probably two, two and a half billion in sales is when we'll get profitable. And that was almost right on the numbers, like, that was kind of right where we had to be.

• 28:53Jen Cohen?

  So how much was your customer acquisition per, how much is it per person?

• 28:56Speaker 01

  It's, you know, it's, it's hard because when you're building a brand, this is always because people would ask you like, what's your customer acquisition cost?

• 29:02Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  What, what do you use to calculate that? We're built, you know, if I stop all my advertising today. Is our ring sales still gonna happen for the next one, two, three, four, five years? Yes. So then we'd have zero acquisition costs. So it's like, it's when you're starting to do like top the funnel, like, you know, you start to do TV and things like that. That's the problem is people attribute, they'll be like, well, you spent this month a million on TV. What, you know, and you've sold whatever, you know, you sold 10,000 units. So that means that, you know, you're like a thousand dollars, whatever, you know, per person. You're like, no, that's not like, if you stop marketing, we're still gonna sell. So it is very, very hard to get these, these customer acquisition costs, they're only working, it's like very clean, direct to consumer, programmatic.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  You know, you, you have an ad on Meta, you know, on Instagram, on Facebook. It converts or it doesn't convert, like, that's kind of it.

• 29:52Jen Cohen?

  Right. It's the performance marketing.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Like super performance marketing, but when you're trying to build a brand.

• 29:57Jen Cohen?

  It's different.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  It's different. And it's like, when do you, this is, but this is the problem. It's like, when do you stop? How much, you know, and then you have competition coming in and do you like, you know, it's, it's cheaper to build the brand when it's, when things are more infantile, when it's early.

• 30:10Jen Cohen?

  But was it subscription right off the bat?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  It was subscription. And so, uh, Doorbot wasn't when we launched that.

• 30:15Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  We knew, we, we actually, we knew we wanted to build the subscription. We just like, we just didn't even have it.

• 30:19Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  And then Ring, when we launched Ring, which was 2014, October of 2014, we announced that like, it's gonna be the subscription. And so like, that was like, when we announced like the real, like this was when we like showed what the thing could really do.

• 30:31Jen Cohen?

  So then when did, like, so give me the story with Amazon, like, who came to you? How did the whole Amazon acquisition happen?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  This is the, the problem with being an entrepreneur and doing other stuff is it's just like, it's such a long game. So we started talking to Amazon when I was Doorbot and just, I mean, just talking to them, like they had Alexa, like we were just like, I mean, just like, sorry, like, you know, like having conversations with their device team. And they had a little venture capital arm off of Alexa. So started, and then I literally flew up because it was Amazon, uh, when we were launching Ring. And a month before we, we put Ring out in the market, I wanted to preview that with Amazon. So I sat with Nick Camoros, who's now like one of the heads of Corp Dev, but it was like more junior at that time. And again, but this is a good lesson. He was way more junior then, like everyone always thinks you have to meet with. Like Jeff Bezos or

• 31:19Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Whatever. And here's like me and this guy who was kind of similar peer group in terms of like, he was early in his career too, but he needed to make it and, and he has. And I sat with him and showed him ring and we did the thing. He's like, this is so cool. I'm gonna break to this person, maybe this person. Cause again, Nick wanted to also like get shit out there and make it. That's 2014. And three years later is when Nick and I sat down basically, and he said, okay, like we wanna

• 31:44Jen Cohen?

  I love, I love that you said that. That is such an important point, right? Because people are very myopic. They think either you're meeting at the top person or it's like you're out.

• 31:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:53Jen Cohen?

  You have to be so much more strategic, right? Cause everybody will, that person that you met with or in any business or company, like their trajectory is they can be, they can be running the whole thing. This happened to me many times with people I worked with, right? Which is means you should be nice to everyone. You should be, you should connect with everyone. No one's too small to, to, you know, connect with. Because look what happened to you. Like, and this is, by the way, this is happens, this is what usually happens in my experience. Whenever I thought the other way and I thought, oh, I'm, I'm having with the head person, I mean, nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  That's always, I mean, like even now, like I run ring and someone wants to do something with ring and they like, I wanna meet with you. And I'm like, it's like, I'm the last person that's gonna actually work on that. Like find, it is find, it's

• 32:37Jen Cohen?

  So true.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  Whatever. It's like, find the person who needs to make it. Like, I don't now need to make it work. Like, your product, like I don't need to make it work with ring.

• 32:47Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent.

• 32:48Speaker 01

  But like, there's a person at ring who's newer in their career, who if they could figure out how to make something really work, will make their career and find like that person in any place.

• 32:57Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  And, and by the way, it's also like, just play the long game. Like, first of all, be nice to people because it's just better than being a jerk. Like, that's like, that's just simple.

• 33:04Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  But it is like, find those people and then like grow with them and take a long approach at this. And I, and I do think with TikTok and our 15 second videos, like we just keep looking at shorter and shorter term thinking.

• 33:16Jen Cohen?

  I think because we have zero attention span.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:19Jen Cohen?

  And then we are like, we are also completely, we're not, we're not realistic in how things actually work in the real life. Like a lot of the people I deal with, I was nice to the interns and the coordinators. Those are the people who are running the companies now.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:34Jen Cohen?

  And the people that, you know, what you thought that were like such whatever, they retired, they left, they're not even there anymore. They could, and they could care less to your point.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  And it is just take, take the long game. Like it's, it's, it's a, it's a marathon for most. And I think the problem is of course, there's going to be some, you know, 20 year old that launches something and in two weeks sells it for a billion dollars. It's lottery tickets. So someone's going to scratch off, they're going to buy one lottery ticket in their whole life. They're going to scratch it off and win the big pot, whatever. That happens, but it's not likely to happen to you.

• 34:03Jen Cohen?

  It's not likely to happen to you. And a lot of people I know, unless it's nepotism, right? Where the dad or the family has friends with the CEO and they acquire your business or whatever, then they, then they get lucky.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:16Jen Cohen?

  But for the average person who's going on grit and hard work and like all the persistence, you gotta like play the long game. And you gotta be super, super strategic and be like, be nice to everyone, meet with everyone, like make everyone your friend.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I know a lot of the probably top VCs in the country now.

• 34:34Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  A lot of them I know, because I knew them when they were like, they were assistants or whatever at VC firms. And they grew like, it's incredible. The people that I know that like, were just so early in these things. And again, it's like, it also is like, but also it was like, it's just such a better world to be like, just nice to people and talk to people. And like, who gives a shit who someone is like?

• 34:55Jen Cohen?

  But that's, I, listen, I totally agree with you. But when you're, when you are struggling and when you're an entrepreneur and you feel like you have like mouths to feed, you can think very, very, you can be very focused on, I need that person, I need that person, only that person.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 35:10Jen Cohen?

  And that's typically, that person is not the one that actually is going to, you know, make your, make your dreams come true.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Typically not. I mean, there's always like some weird cases again, where someone heard something, but like, yeah, I mean, most of the time, and again, most of the time it's going to take longer. Like it's not like someone's going to meet you and just like hand over a check for a hundred million and you're going to.

• 35:27Jen Cohen?

  No.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  You know, make it.

• 35:34Jen Cohen?

  Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentous 3. I've been using their protein, their creatine and omega-3 combo for months now, and the results are undeniable. These nutrients are key for long-term health and performance, but hard to get enough of through diet alone. The Creapure Creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed whey tastes great with no weird aftertaste, and their omega-3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy, my recovery, and my overall well-being has really improved. So if you want better performance, this is the way to go.

• 36:16Jen Cohen?

  Visit livemomentous.com and use my code GEN for 35% off your first subscription. That's livemomentous.com code GEN for 35% off your first subscription. Trust me, you'll be happy you did.

• 36:42Jen Cohen?

  So then tell us, okay, so you meet this guy. What was his role at Amazon at the time?

• 36:47Speaker 01

  I mean, Nick was in corp dev, but he certainly wasn't like, he wasn't buying a billion-dollar company.

• 36:51Jen Cohen?

  Right, he was like a middle-management person?

• 36:53Speaker 01

  It was like middle, earlier career. Like, I mean, he was working his way up. Yeah, I mean, he wasn't like, nobody, I mean, but like, he was like, but he certainly wasn't like leading the way. Yeah, it wasn't Jeff Bezos or like the heads.

• 37:04Jen Cohen?

  And so he liked your company? Like, how did it, like, how did it go from day one to year three when they bought your company?

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Nick was like, this is super cool. Like, you know, like, let's do this. We can try to get like, you know, help you here. Like, because Nick, oh, again, the funny thing is, the higher you get, the less actual work and you do. And so Nick was at that level where the people he knew, his peers, like, the person over at e-commerce in Amazon was someone who was actually doing stuff.

• 37:28Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  The person in the device group was doing stuff. So like, it was like, the people that were actually at that level, that layer that were... So we got into like, oh, you know, we then quickly found out that Amazon was going to launch, they hadn't at the time, a screen device. Well, guess what you want to put on a screen? Camera. So now it's like, hey, we want to sign this big NDA with you because we want to have you as an early partner on this, and we want you to work on it with us. And so we helped like, kind of build the whole video thing with them of how it would work on a screen.

• 37:53Jen Cohen?

  Before they bought you?

• 37:54Speaker 01

  It was before, oh yeah, yeah, way before, yeah.

• 37:56Jen Cohen?

  So did they just pay you like a consulting fee?

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I worked with them as like, like they were more just, it was a channel that we would, you know, kind of

• 38:02Jen Cohen?

  Use, okay.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  Use.

• 38:02Jen Cohen?

  Like a partnership?

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, partnership. And so, but that's how we started to meet them and like, and so just, you know, but it took, it was like three years of courting. And I'd say not even with like, it wasn't like we're like, I think you're always, when you're small like that, you're like, oh, it'd be great if Amazon bought us. I mean, it's like, you know, sure. But it was really just like, let's just keep kind of just doing what's right. And we just kept working on stuff. And then all of a sudden it came to this point where they're like, we should, you know?

• 38:27Jen Cohen?

  Did you have anybody else who wanted to buy you guys?

• 38:30Speaker 01

  No, which is kind of interesting. You know, I didn't want to sell the company. So I was not, I do think a lot of times the reason companies have a lot of interest is because they're putting out sort of the scent. You know, they're putting like the pheromones of sale out there and they're trying to sort of bait people. Like, I really didn't want to sell the company. And I told Amazon many times that from working with them, and it was true, that it was the only company I would sell to because I like, Jeff was still leading it as the founder. And you could feel that like founder energy there.

• 39:01Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  And that they really backed the companies they bought. And I, I just was not done with Ring. I mean, as you can see, I'm still there eight years later. So like, I certainly wasn't done with Ring. But I really wasn't like done with it. Like, I really wanted to keep building it. So I didn't want to sell it. And so I think we didn't get other, because when we sold, a bunch of people came out of the woodwork and said, I wish we had known you were for sale.

• 39:23Jen Cohen?

  Like who?

• 39:24Speaker 01

  I mean, like just a bunch, you know, like big companies. Like big companies.

• 39:28Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I know, I know.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, like large ones. So but like, you know, but so.

• 39:31Jen Cohen?

  Is this what you told me before? You're like, don't worry, I know how to like stir questions.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I know how to like not get myself in too much trouble. I get in like, I get in just enough trouble to like go through life with like.

• 39:39Jen Cohen?

  What was the name of the company you start with?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Like, you know, like the ones that are big. And so, but like, you know, they called you, they're like, we didn't know you were for sale. And it was like, partly we, we weren't. The other part is like, I wouldn't have sold to them. Because I, I know how they are with companies. And I wasn't trying to sell.

• 39:54Jen Cohen?

  Like AT&T or Samsung?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  I wasn't trying to sell the company. I was trying to. Build still this mission and making neighborhood safer. And I was like very missionary with it. And I also felt to the team that I owed them because I said to the team, the most important thing we're doing is making neighborhood safer. That's what we're focused on. And when we sold to Amazon, like the thing that Jeff said is like, you just keep doing this and like, this is what we're buying. Like, we're buying a company that like.

• 40:17Jen Cohen?

  Have you met with him since?

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Since we sold?

• 40:20Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:20Jen Cohen?

  Like, do you see him all the time? Are you guys like golfing buddies?

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Jeff doesn't golf, but I mean, we're, we're.

• 40:26Jen Cohen?

  Do you work out with him?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Definitely like, I would consider him a friend. I mean, yeah, I think, I think, I hope he considers, I think he considers me a friend. I mean, he's, you know. You don't want to say the rich person while you want to like, say like.

• 40:34Jen Cohen?

  No, no, no. But like, when did he, when did he kind of enter the picture?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  So there, they, at that point, they had realized that Jeff loves entrepreneurs so much that if they got Jeff in too early, that he would like, it was like hard to negotiate. He'd basically.

• 40:47Jen Cohen?

  Just give me the.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Sort of a little bit. And then they, and then the problem was then they'd have to be like, well, that's not a price we can do like, you know, like, like, it sort of would become like crazy because Jeff just loves entrepreneurs. Jeff loves inventors and entrepreneurs.

• 40:59Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  And he loves people that build stuff. Like Jeff truly is like, just like loves to be around.

• 41:04Jen Cohen?

  Everyone's gonna now contact Jeff right now with their idea.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  I mean, if you can get to him, he loves to, he would talk to anyone forever about interesting things.

• 41:13Jen Cohen?

  I love that.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  He loves, he's, he's like a sponge of just wanting to understand. He's curious. He's like a very curious person.

• 41:20Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:21Jen Cohen?

  So then, when, so at what point did they, did they get you to meet him?

• 41:26Speaker 01

  So it was basically right after we signed the deal that I finally kind of like.

• 41:31Jen Cohen?

  Cause they thought.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I, I, I'd met him, but not like, you know, like met him like, oh, like this is, you know, like very like.

• 41:37Jen Cohen?

  Right, right.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Not like met, met. And then it was after that that we started to kind of like actually spend some time together and got to know each other, so.

• 41:45Jen Cohen?

  So then, when, before you got 1.15, what was the initial amount that they offered you?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Less.

• 41:53Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  So, but it was just funny because they offered me, but not that much less.

• 41:58Jen Cohen?

  Like more than 700 million?

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, more than that. But, but so then we had to get, the problem was, and this is like my, put my board in a terrible position, which is my board is like, we, you know, as, as a fiduciary, because we had so many investors and there's like, people are litigious. And so like, I don't care if someone put a dollar in like, if you sell, it's like, okay, well, why'd you sell for that price? Like you have this company that some, some people could, people could have said the company was worth 100 billion, people would say it's worth 500 million, whatever. It's like.

• 42:23Jen Cohen?

  No, you're right. I agree.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  The company's on one hand is losing money. It could have been worth $0. The other side is it could be worth, look at the growth rate. It could be worth 10 billion. And so you, as a board, you can, so you had, so we brought in JP Morgan.

• 42:34Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Noah Weintraub and JP Morgan as an investment bank. And it was hard because it was like, Noah was like, well, basically we'll go out and we'll get other offers. Like that's how you do it. And I'm like, well, I'm not selling to anyone else. And it's like, Noah's like, oh, you know, it's like.

• 42:48Jen Cohen?

  That's, that's why I asked you was there was not even like, you didn't even go out with an investment bank.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  This was like, again, I, I, and probably like, I, I was probably too crazy about this mission and like, I, I, I, looking back, like it, it probably hurt us. I was like so missionary, mission focused and driven that it certainly made us, we made mistakes. I probably would have been better, but I'm also not, I'm not a business person. So like, it's like, I think that's just is who I am. I'm just like a, like, um, so I said to Noah, like, we're not selling to anyone else. Get the most you can and then we'll sell to Amazon.

• 43:20Jen Cohen?

  Are you serious?

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:21Jen Cohen?

  So wait, you're not a business person, but you are an inventor, a founder. So who was the day to day every, like, were you the founder? Did you, were you the CEO of the company?

• 43:29Speaker 01

  So I think anyone can run a business if they recognize what they're good at. So like, I don't think running a business takes a specific trait other than knowing the things that you don't do.

• 43:40Jen Cohen?

  Yep.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  And so for me, like, uh, super missionary, like, by the way, like, what a, like, leadership. Everyone at the company knew what they were working on, like, why to work there, why to be there. Like, that's a pretty big one. Like, that's, you track people. That's pretty huge. But like, day to day stuff, like, I didn't do anything. I never, I've never had in the history of the company, I've never had a set meeting with my, my, like, direct team, ever.

• 44:03Jen Cohen?

  So who does that for you?

• 44:05Speaker 01

  So it's autonomous. So like, we have people that run their areas. They're all like CEOs. I look at like, everyone is like a CEO of their area. And you just kind of like, run your own area. So like, marketing's run by marketing. And they like, kind of are CEOs of that. Now, you have to make sure they work together. And so, in my job, I kind of like, come in and go out to fight fires, fix things. I drive a lot of the product and invention side of things. But like, day to day, I've never been like, the day to day, trying to run the company. I think that's the problem, is a lot of people who start things, feel like they have to, by the book, be like a CEO.

• 44:40Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  They have to have like, their weekly meeting, and they have to do this, and all this stuff. And it's like, it's just not who they are.

• 44:45Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  And because of that, it like, stops them from scaling and getting big. Because they're trying to fight to like, be this CEO. Like, in fact, I call myself the chief inventor. We didn't have a CEO.

• 44:55Jen Cohen?

  That's great, because I know that a lot of times, what companies do, right? Like, they have the person who's the founder in, until they get to a certain place, like 50 million, 20, whatever. And then like, the real CEO comes in to scale the business, right?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, that, anything, it can work. I mean, you saw it with Eric Schmidt, with Google. Like, he had these, like, you know, the Google guys, the founders were like, young and whatever. And Eric Schmidt comes in, who's like, more of like, a seasoned, you know, person. I think that was actually more luck than anything else. Because if you, like, if you look at 100 of those examples, they're probably one of the few that actually work.

• 45:29Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Because usually, when you bring in that CEO, they destroy...

• 45:33Jen Cohen?

  The whole company.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  The whole company.

• 45:34Jen Cohen?

  Exactly.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  And so, I stayed...

• 45:36Jen Cohen?

  Because of what you said. Like, first of all, what you just said was so smart, was so, so true. And I've seen this a million times. Because you, as a CEO, you're bringing the vision, you're bringing the, the passion, and you're leading the ship, right? So if people, to, to build a really great team of people, they have to really look up to the person with the, have like, a mission-driven reason why they're working so hard. And have a corporate culture. Like, you're setting the corporate culture.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 46:02Jen Cohen?

  Right?

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said, I said the culture, I said the, and also, I'm, I'm super driven, I wanted to win.

• 46:07Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  So you're setting all these macro, big things. But I wasn't doing like, a weekly team meeting. Being to go over whatever. I don't even know. I don't even know how people run a business. Like, I couldn't even tell you. Like, I don't. I just don't know how it works. But I know how to build a business. I know how to like win a business. I know how to win. And like, and again, I always look at the inputs. Like, to me, the business is like the output side.

• 46:26Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  The inputs are like, do we have the right product? Are we fixing customers' needs? Like, like, if you fix, if you, I always said, if we make neighborhoods safer, if someone believes that Ring, when they walk into Best Buy or Home Depot or whatever, if you see Ring on a package, like, just that name, and you're like, I know whatever's in there is going to make my neighborhood safer and make my home safer, my family safer, you're gonna buy it.

• 46:47Jen Cohen?

  One hundred percent.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  And you're gonna reward me with that purchase. And so, like, all I have to focus on is making sure that you know that. Everything else will fix itself. Like, how that box got there? Like, someone can figure that out.

• 46:58Jen Cohen?

  That's so true. Then, why did you come? Like, so you were there for all those years. So when they bought you, why did, like, why did you stay? Was that part of the deal? Like, okay.

• 47:09Speaker 01

  I mean, it's kind of, it's funny. It's like, people say, like, part of the deal, meaning like, that they paid to keep, like, that, like, I was there because they were paying me. It's like the opposite. Like, part of the deal was like, I get to stay and keep running this. Like, I told them, like, I'm staying.

• 47:20Jen Cohen?

  Right. Did you get a salary on top of them?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, I mean, yeah, yeah, no, it's, it's, that's been good.

• 47:27Jen Cohen?

  But no, but what I'm saying, but then you left. And then why did you come back?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  So I, so I stayed, so I, we sold in two thousand eighteen. I stayed for five years. And I took it from, literally, like, the year before I sold, so two thousand seventeen, we did four hundred and eighty million. The year before that, one seventy. We go to Amazon and we grow like a frickin' weed. I mean, we just, I crushed it. And I was like.

• 47:46Jen Cohen?

  How much did you sell?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  It was crazy. Like, it just grew.

• 47:49Jen Cohen?

  You won't even tell me that?

• 47:50Speaker 01

  It grew and grew and grew. I mean, billions. And so, and we, and I got a profitable, so into twenty-three, profitability, crazy growth, uh, incredible invention, you know, every, every, like, whatever you want to look at, like, whether it's reviews, CSAT scores, whatever the things, like, everything was like, kind of ten out of ten. And I was just toast. Like, my brain was mush. Like, I had just not, like, it's funny, because people say, like, when you sold, like, where'd you go? What'd you do? And I'm like, I went to work. Like, I was like, this is great. Because now I have a big balance sheet to work, work off of. Like, we're gonna go faster and harder. So for five years, I was like, I went to like full grit grind mode.

• 48:25Jen Cohen?

  Like, what was your schedule like? Give me an example.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  I mean, it was, I never stopped, just like.

• 48:29Jen Cohen?

  What time did you start work in the morning?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  I'm not like a, like, I'm not like a, like, I just kind of start, I just kind of go all, I'm like, never stop.

• 48:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I just keep on going.

• 48:37Speaker 01

  It's more like, it's like a constant than it is like a actual like.

• 48:39Jen Cohen?

  Did you go to the office or did you do it from home?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Office, traveling, I mean, a lot of travel, a lot of like, I, in person is big for me.

• 48:45Jen Cohen?

  Really? Like the in-person meetings, you mean?

• 48:47Speaker 01

  In-person meetings, obviously COVID was a weird one, but, but, but besides that, it's like, you know, retailers and like, I think, you know, you gotta just be out there and, you know, I'm, I'm like the Sham Wow guy, you know, I'm like Billy Mays, you know, like, I'm, I'm like an infomercial, so.

• 49:01Jen Cohen?

  That's, you are, look at your shirt.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know, I mean, like, literally, I wear Ring stuff, I mean, I, like, it's like, but that's who I am, like, I'm a, I'm, so I go there.

• 49:09Jen Cohen?

  It's amazing.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  And that energy and that's, that's what we, you know, that's how we get, you know, go to a retailer and say like, this is what we're launching and this is why we're excited about it. And this is how it's gonna make neighbors safer and people safer and, you know, and.

• 49:20Jen Cohen?

  You're like the promotion guy.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  I'm a promoter.

• 49:22Jen Cohen?

  The enthusiast.

• 49:22Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 49:23Jen Cohen?

  You bring the enthusiasm, which is also so important.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  But that also, it also like sucks your energy, like that's, it kills you, like, I mean, like, I don't care how you're flying, I don't care what you're doing, like, it is like, you're grinding. And so I just got to this point where I like, felt like I delivered to Amazon way more than they had expected. It's, I think it's probably the best purchase they've ever done from a company side.

• 49:44Jen Cohen?

  Totally right.

• 49:45Speaker 01

  And so I, I, I just was burnt out, I'm like, I needed to just do something else, like, I need to re, like, I just, my brain needs to reset. And so I worked with them and we transitioned out and so I left at the end or like middle of 23. And then I was pretty quickly miserable.

• 50:00Jen Cohen?

  So you, as I was gonna say, cause it's not that like, like you went back pretty quick.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  I left like a year and a half, yeah.

• 50:05Jen Cohen?

  So what made you go back so quick?

• 50:07Speaker 01

  Couple of things, one is, I mean, I was, it is like my baby, like, I mean, I wear the Ring shirt, like, cause it's like, it's like my baby, it's like my baby, it's like my, it's like, I have one son and I have like this one, so I have like two kids.

• 50:17Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  So I, I, I do love it, I love what it does, I love the stories of it, I'm super attached to it, like, people know my face, they come up to me, they're like, Ring did this for my family, Ring did this for me, Ring stopped this thing, like, I, so I, I, I love all of that and feed on that. And then with AI, I could see really what Ring could do and it was the, the fires and the palisades that was like the breaking point for me of, of we like, there's so much more we can do.

• 50:42Jen Cohen?

  Like what? Tell me.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  So I was, I mean, like, my house is in the Palisades, so it was like, you know, like, it was on fire and so we put it out and.

• 50:51Jen Cohen?

  I'm sorry.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was just, I mean, it's like, you know, if you've been up there, it's like, it's just such a terrible thing. And so we had over 10,000 cameras in that area. And I was just thinking like, this thing's jumping and whatever, and no one knows where it is. And like, that's part of the problem. And like, firemen are like, being dispatched to the wrong places. And I'm like, shit, like, we could, like, we know where the fire is to the cameras. Like, we could build something to do this. And so that was like, one of the things that I was like, and like, cause AI, like, before AI, you could not have, it would just wouldn't, like, you can't just dump 10,000 cameras into a, anything, it wouldn't have helped. It would have like, who cares? Like, with AI, you can like, look for smoke, fire, embers, like, whatever. And with people's permission, of course, like, you know, so now we have this thing called Firewatch, which we launched off of this.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  And so if, if a big fire event happens, when they do, we actually do it now all the time. We send out an alert to people in that area. And we say, would you like to basically let your camera be used for the next 24 hours to help WatchDuty, which is the app that basically builds the fire map for all the command centers and the police and fire to help them. And so we then look through AI when the fire is happening and we try to figure out where it's jumping to, to try to build a more real time fire map to help the resources go and fight it faster.

• 52:02Jen Cohen?

  Wow.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  And so that was like, that was, but that was like, that's the product and that's kind of the thing. But that was like, the breaking point of like, me going to Amazon and being like, I have to come back and do this. Like, this is just like, we need, like, this network of, of, that we've built, this mission we've built, this base of neighbors, which is what we call our customers. Like, we need, like, with AI, we can do so much more.

• 52:22Jen Cohen?

  So you went back to them and said, I want to come back?

• 52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:25Jen Cohen?

  That's incredible.

• 52:25Speaker 01

  And they were super cool. They were like, that's great. Like, okay, like, we'll have you back. I was like, sweet.

• 52:32Jen Cohen?

  Well, who, did you, did anyone take over your job when you left?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, someone took over, yeah.

• 52:35Jen Cohen?

  So they kick him out? Or what happened to that person?

• 52:38Speaker 01

  They, they decided they wanted to go do something else. Yeah.

• 52:40Jen Cohen?

  Oh, so it kind of was like,

• 52:42Speaker 01

  It was, hi.

• 52:43Jen Cohen?

  It, it worked out just fine.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  It seemed to work out.

• 52:51Jen Cohen?

  You know I'm all about finding an edge. The small daily habits that give you more energy, focus and resilience. But that's why I am hooked on MANA Vitality. Most people are mineral deficient, and that means low energy, brain fog, slow recovery and dull skin. But MANA flips the switch by giving your body a complete spectrum of minerals it actually knows how to use. We're talking Shilajit from the Himalayas, Ormas from the Dead Sea and Marine Plasma from the ocean, plus amino acids and 88 other trace minerals. The benefits are real. We're talking steady all-day energy, sharper focus, faster recovery,

• 53:33Jen Cohen?

  a stronger immunity plus glowing skin. But the biggest win? It fuels your cells for real longevity. Think of it as like a cellular switch-on formula, not as a stimulant, but the raw power your body needs to create energy and repair itself. Try it now and I bet you'll be hooked too. Go to MANAVITALITY.COM and use code JENNIFER20 for a discount. That's MANA VITALITY DOT COM. M A N N A VITALITY DOT COM and use code JENNIFER20.

• 54:17Jen Cohen?

  What's with all the privacy issues? Like, why are people always giving you such a problem with privacy?

• 54:21Speaker 01

  I mean, a couple of things. I think whenever you're doing something that matters.

• 54:25Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  And it's almost funny. I would say even whenever you do something that matters and that's good for people, you always get pushed back. Like, it's just funny, but it's almost like if you do something that's big and impactful and no one pushes back, you're probably not doing something big and impactful. Like, as crazy as that sounds, is like what I've learned.

• 54:43Jen Cohen?

  It's so true.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  So we launched this thing. You know, we launched Dog Search Party.

• 54:47Jen Cohen?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  So we launched Search Party for Dogs. Got a similar idea where we have, right now, we have in the Ring app, in Neighbors, our Ring app, we have people post, you know, almost a million lost dogs a year get posted in the app already, like from previous, like, like it's, lost dogs are actually like a huge thing.

• 55:05Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  All the time. And so I'm like, wow, with AI, we can like take that dog, that picture and like look for that dog in the neighborhood and when we find it, tell you. So, so we have now, like, we built the technology, we built it with privacy. So it is like if a dog is lost in my neighborhood, it'll say, Jamie, like, this dog, like this picture that was posted, looks like this dog in front of your house. Do you want to contact your neighbor? If you don't contact your neighbor, I mean, you're not probably a good person, but no one knows that you didn't do it.

• 55:32Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  It's like literally no different than like a dog now walking in your backyard. We like, oh, that's a weird thing. That's like a, and I look at the tag and I see the number on it and I'm like, no, I'm not going to call it. And I throw the dog out of the yard. Like, that would be the same thing. Like, no one knows you did that, but like WTF?

• 55:48Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  And so we, we launched this thing, we're literally every day, we're reuniting over one family per day with their dog, using it today already, like, it's actually happening. We did a Super Bowl commercial on it and the people went, you know, I mean, it was like a group of people went sort of like.

• 56:03Jen Cohen?

  Well, I, I never understood this.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Well, because it's like, this could be for surveillance, this could be to track this, this could be to track that. And it's like, I think people just, you know, and I get it, like, they just can't, they imagine this like utopian world and they get like, they just get freaked out to like super quickly versus being like, okay, how does this thing work? And when you look at how it works, you're like, oh, like I, like, it doesn't take anyone's privacy. Like, it's, it's actually, you're clicking to say, I want to call my neighbor, like, you're, with the fire thing, you're clicking to say, like, I want to help in the fire. So we've made everything like, you, I think what it is that people have gotten so polarized. It's like you either have, like, you have no privacy and these things happen, or you have your privacy and nothing can happen. There's like no like, wait a second, we can have a middle ground that like, I can help my neighborhood when I want to.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  And when I don't want to, like, I can sort of, I can control it. Like, no one can imagine that that world can exist. It's like, sort of, middle world.

• 56:56Jen Cohen?

  Well, that's the world we're living in in general. Everyone, everything's polarized, right?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Everything's so polarized, like, super one side or the other. When, like, the reality is, like, the middle's where everything should be.

• 57:04Jen Cohen?

  The middle's where everything should be, but that's, that's everything in life. But then, how about, like, the Savannah, Savannah Gunther thing with her mother? Remember, could you, how, how was that affecting Ring?

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It affects us a couple of ways. I mean, one is, um, you know, first of all, it's like, it's probably the saddest thing I've ever seen.

• 57:20Jen Cohen?

  Oh, terrible. And there's still no, there's, it's still inconclusive.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  At this point, you, I, I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like there's just, I mean, I don't, it just doesn't feel there's enough evidence. Like, they just don't have.

• 57:31Jen Cohen?

  But on the Ring, they saw the guy at the front de, at the front of the door.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was actually a nest.

• 57:37Jen Cohen?

  Oh, it was a nest. Okay, there you go, see?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  But.

• 57:40Jen Cohen?

  See, that's.

• 57:41Speaker 01

  No, I know.

• 57:42Jen Cohen?

  Everyone assumes it was Ring.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, the, the thing that was, but the thing that was really, you know, in, in most of these things like this, when they happen, like, some, some big event in an area that happens like this, usually you have a lot of footage now, like, you have a lot of cameras. In this particular area of Tucson, the homes are on bigger lots. There's a lot of, like, brush and stuff in front of them. And so it just turned out that, like, the streets there from the homes, like, are just not covered by cameras. And so whatever happened there just was not, like, just no one had, you know, sort of, no one caught it. Because in, in a neighborhood in Los Angeles, if something happened like that, you'd probably have a hundred people submit videos of cars coming in, cars going out, things, whatever, you know?

• 58:25Jen Cohen?

  But if it was, and I'm not to throw anyone under the bus, Nest or whoever, but if it was a Ring camera, would it have been the picture clearer? Would it have shown more angles? Could it have had, done more stuff to kind of maybe catch the person?

• 58:37Speaker 01

  I mean, that, you know, they were masked. I think, I think what you really needed on this one was not just that. You needed to have some idea of where they came from, where they were going, like, a little bit more of that sort of part. Because they were somewhat professional, it seems, in what they were doing. But I think if you had video of, like, the car where it went, then you could sort of, like, then you can usually breadcrumb it, like, try to go farther. Whereas, like, they don't even know what car they were in, or, as far as I know, like, I don't, you know, I'm just, like, from the public side.

• 59:07Jen Cohen?

  Like, is, what, what, and we don't even have to say them.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:10Jen Cohen?

  But, like, in general, like, what is, like, how is the Ring so far, what is some of the? Attributes that or

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:19Jen Cohen?

  Things that, things that the Ring has that other competitive people don't.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny, I mean, I think our cameras to the price, every price point, I think we deliver the best camera quality.

• 59:30Jen Cohen?

  So it really, I have one. I mean, not to say that means anything.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  Same, but it's not like, it's people say, do you have the best cameras? And like, the best camera is like a little bit, because like, if you spend a hundred thousand dollars on a camera.

• 59:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Like, there, there are like, super extreme cameras that are available, of course, but they're also at a price. And so I think what we've been able to just democratize home security and bring it to a price point that's affordable and give you an incredible value for that. So I think like, our cameras are, I do, I do think they're the best at every price point. And then we've created things like the neighbors and community requests and like, all these like, things around it that then make the experience so it has more impact. So, you know, like in the Brown shooting, for example, the police were able to send an alert to all the Ring customers asking for footage.

• 1:00:12Jen Cohen?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Very quickly.

• 1:00:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  And then they were able to get that back and use that. And that's kind of, again, how they breadcrumbed their way into that was like, okay, this person talked to this person, I can see it on a video. Okay. Like, and then again, all, but by the way, to the middle, submitted with people that all gave their permission at that time. So like, they got an alert and if they said no, they were anonymous. If they said yes, then they were able to submit that.

• 1:00:32Jen Cohen?

  Wow. Okay. In term, I didn't even ask you any of these questions yet, but in terms of like advice, right? Or mentor, do you have a mentor? Have you ever, do you have one that you speak to regularly?

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  Like, I'd say at different times, I think it's different people because like, you have different needs. But I certainly, there's lots of people that I talk to constantly about things and just like, you know, mentors and sort of just like people that you, it takes a village, I mean, for sure.

• 1:00:58Jen Cohen?

  Is there, is there, is there like one piece of advice that you've gotten over these years that really kind of sticks, sticks out?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  I don't think there is like a single, I, I think, I mean, I think that's the biggest piece of advice I've ever gotten, I think, is actually that, that is like, don't give advice.

• 1:01:11Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Is that, you know, we're all unique, like, we're all a fingerprint, our businesses are all unique, like, the time, like, people ask me like, oh, I'm building this, this product, like, what should I do that Ring did that made it successful? And the reality is like, the world shifted.

• 1:01:25Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  You know, like, like, to start a business, to start Ring today would be different than starting Ring, you know, 15 years ago. It's like, I mean, there wasn't TikTok when I started. There wasn't, so it's like, so I think it's. But but history doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme. And so I think like when you realize that it rhymes, then it's like, listen to people and try to like, extract understanding of like the rhyming. And then how does that sort of relate to you? So to me, it's more about like, listening and understanding how things relate to your situation, not taking advice, because when people want to give advice, it's again, it's also coming from, it's even coming from a different time.

• 1:01:58Jen Cohen?

  A hundred percent, and their experience with it. That's a great line. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:04Jen Cohen?

  Where'd you hear that?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Kevin Systrom told me that, the founder of Instagram.

• 1:02:08Jen Cohen?

  I love that.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  And I did love it. I don't even know if it's his line, but it's like, when he said it, I was like, because I love it because people say history repeats itself, and it actually, it it sort of does, but it doesn't repeat itself. It it repeats the same sort of things happen.

• 1:02:22Jen Cohen?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  Because humans, themes, exactly, which is like the rhyming. So I do, yeah.

• 1:02:26Jen Cohen?

  I love that. So we never, I gotta circle back to the Shark Tank, because you didn't tell me how you ended up as a shark. So then you become very successful.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Jen Cohen?

  And then did they call you and say, hey, you want to be a shark? Because you were the biggest reject that we made a mistake on?

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Well, we sold, when I sold it to Amazon, you know, for like, you know, the sort of the billion, I mean, and for that, like, the billion is like, you know, a billion dollars, which was like, you know, it was, I think it was the largest by far of a Shark Tank company at that point that it sold.

• 1:02:53Jen Cohen?

  For sure.

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  And so it was just such a big headline, and they said, you know, do you want to come on and be a shark? And it was like, I mean, talk about like, I, to me, I looked at going on Shark Tank as like an amateur athlete going to the Olympics, you know, like, to me, like, being on Shark Tank as a, as a like a person, like as a, as an entrepreneur, that was like, going on to the Olympics. And then I like, Michael Phelps did, like, you know, like, I won like every medal.

• 1:03:15Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  And then I like, Michael Jordaned it, like, I went to the pros. Like, to be on Shark Tank as a shark was like insane. Like, it was like, literally, like, you could not even set your goal that high. It was crazy. So that was a pretty cool thing.

• 1:03:27Jen Cohen?

  How many times were you a shark?

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Just a couple. I mean, it turns out it's a lot of work. I mean, these people are real that are on it. You have to like, invest in their companies. I don't have a back office or anything.

• 1:03:36Jen Cohen?

  No, but a lot of the people, you know, not to say any names, but don't do any investment. Like, Mark Cuban actually does a lot of, he puts money in.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Mark does a lot, Lori is like, super busy.

• 1:03:45Jen Cohen?

  Lori does a lot, Mark does a lot, Mark does the most. But there's a couple of people.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  They're all great, though.

• 1:03:51Jen Cohen?

  Okay, but there's a couple of people who don't do anything.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  It's but it's just really hard. Like, I mean, it's like each one is like a real business that like matters to that family. And so like, I realized like I invested in one and I like.

• 1:04:01Jen Cohen?

  You did?

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one called Moink, M O I N K, Moo Oink. And we do a direct to consumer meat, like sort of packages of meats from ethically farmed from all these small farmers. It's out in Missouri. Wonderful woman runs it, Lucinda Ramsey. And it's done really well. It went from doing seven hundred fifty thousand a year to twenty million now. Profitable.

• 1:04:23Jen Cohen?

  How much money did you give her?

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  I gave her like a little over seven hundred thousand in the end. And I got it back. She paid it all back.

• 1:04:29Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is crazy. And I, so this is my personality, why I can't invest in companies is like I now own a farm in that town. I've worked on rebuilding the town. I own the bar in the town, the coffee shop. I've done the sidewalks, the streets, like I'm friends with the people. We put a barbecue contest on every year there. Like, I love it.

• 1:04:49Jen Cohen?

  Really? I love that.

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  LaBelle, Missouri.

• 1:04:53Jen Cohen?

  That's amazing. So then, okay, so that's what you mean by a lot of work, because you, the kind of person you are.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:00Jen Cohen?

  You will really.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Cause I'm not an investor.

• 1:05:02Jen Cohen?

  Right, like you are not, like you really wanna, you're like a doer.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I can't like have my, yeah, like I have to have my hands into this thing. Like, I don't, I have no interest in like, like investing is such a boring thing to me in terms of like.

• 1:05:14Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, being passive.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  It's just making money. Like, it's like, just like a passive investor is literally.

• 1:05:18Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  You're just making money, which is like, but it's, I'm glad they exist and it's cool and whatever. It's just like for me.

• 1:05:24Jen Cohen?

  Not for you.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 1:05:25Jen Cohen?

  What was another company that you actually invested in?

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Shark Tank is the only one I did.

• 1:05:30Jen Cohen?

  That's the only one? Today, like in real life, are you an investor now?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm an investor. I have another one called Clayton Farms, which we're just building now a.

• 1:05:38Jen Cohen?

  You like the farming stuff, huh?

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  So I do, I like food, like food, like the whole idea of like, we need to eat better and wholesome. And so Clayton Farms is the only, right now we have one in Ames, Iowa. It's the only quick serve restaurant where we grow the lettuce and the food on site. So literally, like, it's a drive through salad place. It's like a Sweet Greens.

• 1:05:58Jen Cohen?

  Oh.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  But where it's actually grown in the building. And so your salad is like forty five minutes old.

• 1:06:03Jen Cohen?

  Stop it.

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  World's freshest salad. And we have a location opening up in San Francisco in a couple of months.

• 1:06:08Jen Cohen?

  That sounds amazing.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  It's amazing. It's amazing. It's epic.

• 1:06:11Jen Cohen?

  Where'd you find it?

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  So Clayton.

• 1:06:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Uh, pinged me after I was on Guy Raz's podcast. And said he wanted to build the John Deere of, of, uh, indoor farming. And he was in Iowa and because I have this place in Missouri, I said, you can come down to my farm in Missouri if you want to meet. And he said, okay. So he drove down.

• 1:06:29Jen Cohen?

  Really?

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  And I met him. Yeah. And then of course I, I put way too much money in this thing and it's crazy and like, I will tell you like, in, what I've learned about quick serve restaurants and fast food is if you want to make money, go into fried chicken or burgers.

• 1:06:40Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  Salads, salads are a hard sell, but I don't, but I'm also like, this is my problem. Like, I don't care. Like, I, I love it. And so I think Clayton Farms is like the greatest thing ever. It's so cool.

• 1:06:50Jen Cohen?

  What kind of, how much money did you give the guy, first of all?

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I think I'm in it for a million now.

• 1:06:55Jen Cohen?

  So then, and then are they, how much, are they making money at all?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  No, no, not yet.

• 1:06:59Jen Cohen?

  I mean, I know you're not profitable.

• 1:07:00Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the, the.

• 1:07:01Jen Cohen?

  Are they selling? Are they?

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  The Ames, so like, the Ames location is actually like very profitable. It's like, for, for like a one single location.

• 1:07:07Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Uh, the business is not profitable yet.

• 1:07:09Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  And then hopefully launching, I think we, I probably pushed him to make a mistake, which is like to try to like build it kind of like in the Midwest and like these places where they're food deserts.

• 1:07:18Jen Cohen?

  Come to LA. That would do so well.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  I think what we realized is, so we're going to San Francisco. I think we're going to hit the like, but like, it's like, sort of like, it's like bringing sand to the beach here. But yes, people will use it here and whatever. But I, I really did it because I want to bring fresher food to places that are eating too much processed food.

• 1:07:34Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna have to, it's gonna be a two putt. I'm gonna have to first, I think, build it in the big cities, use that money to then reinvest it in. And but Clayton's mission is to do that also. Like, the, the founder is like, super aligned with that. But I think we need to like grow first in like New York, LA, San Francisco, like, you know, Chicago, Miami.

• 1:07:54Jen Cohen?

  Well, you know, it's funny because I don't really, everyone says it's like bringing sand to the beach, but yet the sand's always doing better, does well here.

• 1:08:00Speaker 01

  I, yeah.

• 1:08:01Jen Cohen?

  And I will also say there's not that many great salad places here. There really aren't. If you really think about it, there's not.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  And this is like, this is insane. Like, it's like, the taste is different. Like, I mean, like, like.

• 1:08:11Jen Cohen?

  Oh, it sounds amazing.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:13Jen Cohen?

  So give me an example, like what kind of salad? Would it be like a chicken salad or?

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like, it is like regular, like whatever, like, we have like, so great salad.

• 1:08:21Jen Cohen?

  I'm gonna Google this after.

• 1:08:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, the base is great, because it's the, it's all like fresh grown, like, like whether it's like, you know, romaine or like mixed greens, whatever the whole stuff is. Google, I don't know, he's the salad guy. And then we have, we have great dressing, like good fresh dressing. And then the ingredients are like, yeah, like, it's just like, you know, good, you have like organic chicken and like, whatever.

• 1:08:39Jen Cohen?

  That sounds so good.

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  It's a simple thing, like, I just get like the mixed greens and like chicken and like, you know, like a raspberry vinaigrette. And it's like, that's, I'm done, like, that's some avocado chopped on there.

• 1:08:48Jen Cohen?

  That sounds so good.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 1:08:51Jen Cohen?

  Those are good, I like those companies. Is there any other ones that you did?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  Um, I have one that's, that does firefighting with dry ice. So if you think about it, water is like, we've used water since we've had fires. Like whenever we created, whoever created fire, like some caveman.

• 1:09:06Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  Used some water to put it out, like, that's like what we've used. And we have never, we have not evolved at all in how we fight fires in anything. And dry ice is a great way to fight fire, because fire is both, it's basically heat and oxygen. And dry ice is cold and it sublimates carbon dioxide. So if you think about it, dry ice basically makes it, makes it cold, so it takes away the heat.

• 1:09:26Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  And it puts off carbon dioxide, which chokes the fire.

• 1:09:29Jen Cohen?

  Oh, that's interesting.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  So it's a really, and it does, leaves nothing behind. So if like a house caught on fire and you sprayed dry ice into it.

• 1:09:35Jen Cohen?

  Right, it wouldn't ruin the house.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  There's no water. So the problem is the water, like in a house fire, usually why a house is like, sort of, you know, it's like maybe one room, but like the water goes through the ceiling and like destroys the whole thing and fills the whole thing up. And so it's a really interesting, it's very hard to like, how do you store it, all this stuff? So that's what we've been figuring out. So he has some stuff now, he actually just launched the, the, this guy, he's doing, just launched the first product with it, which is more for industrial.

• 1:09:59Jen Cohen?

  That's a good one also.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Battery fires, that's cool, yeah.

• 1:10:01Jen Cohen?

  These are interesting.

• 1:10:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll lose all my money at some point on all these, so.

• 1:10:04Jen Cohen?

  Oh, that's okay, but listen, you have a lot, I mean, not a billion, but you have a lot. And so how much, like, how long's your deal with Amazon? You're just gonna stay there indefinitely?

• 1:10:13Speaker 01

  At this point, yeah, just indefinitely. I mean, it's like, I, I, it's, AI has made Ring feel like it's back in the garage again. Like, there's just so many things we can do with it.

• 1:10:22Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, I totally understand that.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  And like, every day, I mean, I'm on calls now, like, building product that feels like we're back to, because it's like, they're groundbreaking. You know, whereas I'd say when we got to the end, when I was in like 2021, 22, 23, it was like more iterative, which is still fine. I mean, we, I think we still did great products, but they were more. Iterations, like we're gonna go higher on the kilobits on the camera and better

• 1:10:44Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:10:45Speaker 01

  Audio and like it was just fine. But now we're like just iterating at like a level that's just I haven't like it's crazy the stuff we're gonna come out with. And so I think if that slows down at some point, which I maybe it's five years, 10 years, 20, I don't know, whatever it is. Maybe then I'd be bored again and wanna do something else and I'll figure it out. But for right now, I'm just like all in and just building stuff.

• 1:11:04Jen Cohen?

  So you, okay, so I didn't even ask you this cuz it was not that important, but well, it is important, but I was more interested in the Rolex watch, apparently.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:11Jen Cohen?

  The nonprofit, but so you're from New Jersey.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Jen Cohen?

  When did you move to LA and where'd you go to school?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  So I went to school, so I grew up in New Jersey, went to Babson College.

• 1:11:21Jen Cohen?

  Okay.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  In Boston.

• 1:11:22Jen Cohen?

  What did you get?

• 1:11:23Speaker 01

  Entrepreneurship, actually.

• 1:11:25Jen Cohen?

  Oh, you're not being an entrepreneur or not an entrepreneur and all the things, okay?

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I I got a degree in entrepreneurship and then started like a little telecom business that I met a guy doing that. Had a business plan thing and then through that met another guy in telecom and he was doing phone cards and he wanted to move it to San Diego. And so I just moved to San, I was like 23 years old.

• 1:11:50Jen Cohen?

  Okay, so you've been on the West Coast since then?

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Moved to San Diego, met a girl in LA, she said she, I was gonna move back to the East Coast, like I was just like here temporarily.

• 1:11:57Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  And she's like, and I literally on our first date, I'm like, just so you know, like I'm moving back to Boston at some point. She's like, oh, okay, like, you know, I'd like to live in Boston, she's a liar.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  My wife, Erin.

• 1:12:10Jen Cohen?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so literally we got engaged like the next morning, like literally, I'm not kidding, like the morning after we got engaged, she's like, just FYI, we're not moving back to the East Coast.

• 1:12:19Jen Cohen?

  And you're like, oh, that's nice to know now.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  I was like, that's really great. I'm like, that's really, give me the ring back.

• 1:12:23Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  No, it was fine.

• 1:12:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  But I, and I love, so I've been now in California a long time, so I love Southern California, I love Los Angeles. I wish we could get maybe some better people to run some things here, but I do love the place and the people.

• 1:12:36Jen Cohen?

  Well, it's funny because most people who have a business or made a lot of money, they've already left. Like the last person should shut the lights off, you know?

• 1:12:43Speaker 01

  I worry about that.

• 1:12:44Jen Cohen?

  Right? Cuz there's no, like no business is even here anymore.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  I mean, the, the

• 1:12:48Jen Cohen?

  Very few, very few.

• 1:12:50Speaker 01

  The seizure tax, if that passes, will really, I mean, it's already had a huge impact on.

• 1:12:56Jen Cohen?

  Oh, me.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  California, and I think it's a sad one because it goes after like the very core of what we are here, which is like the one thing we really are in California is entrepreneurs. Like, we are inventors. Like, this place has been built on crazy inventors.

• 1:13:08Jen Cohen?

  But they all leave. Once they, before they sell their business, they're all leaving.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Luckily, there's more. I think the hopeful side is there's always more coming in, and California has always been a place that just inspires invention. But yeah, I think it's, you know, I love it, so I hope it lasts for a long time and can go through its stuff. San Francisco is a good example of a place that actually is becoming, you know, like Daniel Lory has really turned San Francisco around, which is kind of cool to see. And so hopefully, depending on like where we go here, like I'm hopeful that California will be a great place to do business again at some point.

• 1:13:41Jen Cohen?

  Are you gonna keep on with the Ring? Or is there any other invention in you that you're curious to kind of explore?

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  It's funny because I, that's like my problem is like I couldn't find, it's not invention, it's like the thing that impacts people.

• 1:13:54Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  At scale. And so like, once you've had a hundred million devices out there stopping crime and doing this, and when things happen, you're sort of seeing it literally on like TV in the morning without doing anything, you're seeing like, Ring was, well, you know, it's like, I think it's really hard to then just go and like build something. Because it's like, what is it?

• 1:14:13Jen Cohen?

  Are your parents so proud of you?

• 1:14:14Speaker 01

  Sadly, my dad passed away before Ring came out, so like that was a bummer. I mean, a bummer for many reasons, including that he died. But, but he would have loved to have like, he would have gotten a kick out of this. My mom is funny, she still lives in Jersey, like kind of like same place. And she's, she's a funny little sparky lady and like, yeah, she's, she's pretty proud. My brother is great and he's proud. And so, yeah, it's been cool.

• 1:14:36Jen Cohen?

  What did your dad do?

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  He was like the guy behind an entrepreneur. So he would always tell me like, James, you need to just take a small amount and just work for someone, you know? It was like, he was always like the CFO kind of.

• 1:14:48Jen Cohen?

  Right.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Of the company.

• 1:14:49Jen Cohen?

  Like the second in command.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Second in command kind of guy, like the guy working for the guy. And he was like, that's what you want to be. You never want to be out front. And I'd always be like, you're out of your mind, Dad. Like, I just want to. And so he had this business partner, the guy he worked for, Adam Ambielli. And so, all like, it was just like my dad be telling me this, and I'd be like looking at Adam and be like, I'm gonna be that guy.

• 1:15:07Jen Cohen?

  Right. Oh, wow.

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  It was just kind of a funny thing of how kids are and, you know.

• 1:15:11Jen Cohen?

  And then look what happened. You created an entire category that was never even existing before.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Jen Cohen?

  Wow. Did your mother even understand the caliber of what she's doing, like what you did?

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  I think, like, I don't think I did.

• 1:15:24Jen Cohen?

  Well, that's why you kept the goat.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  I think like, you know, until, honestly, until I left Ring, you know, five years after Amazon.

• 1:15:31Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Even after I sold it, like, I don't think I fully recognized the impact we had. I think there is something about being inside of a company, because you're seeing, like, I see the problems every day. Like, I see my emails on every box. Like, we're not perfect. Like, there's a customer service that, like, because customer has an issue. So, so I think until I, like, left and all that noise went away, and I could just see the world, like, clean slate, it was like, holy cow, like, this thing is really, like, wow.

• 1:15:58Jen Cohen?

  I'm sure. Are you still, are you still friends with all your old friends, like, before you became not a billionaire?

• 1:16:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm friends with, I'm friends with, yeah, like, all my, like, my friends from high school. I mean, it's hard because I grew up in New Jersey, so there's a little bit of, but like, I go back to New Jersey at least once a year. We get together and have a big dinner and stuff. And so, like, yeah, like, it's, it's like, I've tried to retain friends with a lot of the guys from college are still friends and.

• 1:16:20Jen Cohen?

  Do you have any advice for people who are listening to this and how to structure businesses where they don't get diluted? Like, you got diluted like this, or it's all, it's also unique.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  More of if you're, I think the biggest problem is not dilution or not dilution. I think it's the problem is when someone raises a little bit of money, but they're like worried about their dilution. I think you either got to be like, if you're going to raise money from venture capitalists, drop the hammer.

• 1:16:43Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Go as fast as you can, as hard as you can, raise as much as you can. Who cares what you own? Just freaking go. And if you're not going to do that, do the opposite, which is like, raise a tiny bit of money, be super careful, go slower. Like, I think it's like one or the other. I think the one where people I see the worst is that they go a little slower because they want to hold their value, but yet they never build the value because they're going too slow. And so I think it is like, if you're, you know, because venture capitalists, they're, like, the good thing is they were aligned with what I was doing.

• 1:17:13Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Like, they wanted me to go fast. They wanted me to take the money and, like, just rip it and rip it.

• 1:17:17Jen Cohen?

  How much do you think it's your likability and your, you're like, you're the kind of person you are versus the idea? Do people invest in, which one do you think people invest in more?

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  Like, to create something that's like a ring is luck.

• 1:17:34Speaker 01

  Because it's just like, there's just too many things outside of your control. Timing, market conditions, like, there's just so many things that are outside of your control. Now, I think different times call for different people and whatever. And I think like, like a ring needed, like whoever was going to build the ring of that time needed to be my type of personality, which is like grit, go fast, you know, sort of break everything in the process kind of thing. And I think that like, different companies take different types of people at different times. It become these like, like Anthropic, like, you know, talk about a company that seems to be just like breaking out right now and doing stuff that's like, I mean,

• 1:18:13Jen Cohen?

  Crushing.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  And like, breaking everything, I mean, like, you know, and it's like, Dario is a totally different type of person than I would be. I mean, just like, could not be more, from what I've seen, like, I don't know, I don't know him, but like, could not be more different. So I think it is, you know, it's like, there's just different people for different businesses in different times.

• 1:18:32Jen Cohen?

  Do you think they're going to take over ChatGPT in terms of popularity and use and everything else?

• 1:18:37Speaker 01

  I mean, it looks like they could be a runaway. It looks like they could be the Nvidia, you know, like Nvidia, which is, which is insane. Like, I don't think people even like, recognize how insane it is that in the most important part of the most important market that maybe has ever existed in the world, there's one company that basically controls it all, which is Nvidia. There's people that make chips, but no one's even close to them, it seems like it seems, I mean, it actually just looks like Amazon might have now with these like Tranium and some of this stuff, actually might be sort of catching up, which is, which is I'm very hopeful for, because I'm an Amazonian. But, I mean, even if, even if Amazon catches up, it'd be two, like, it's crazy.

• 1:19:13Jen Cohen?

  Isn't that crazy?

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Something that's like, literally the biggest, most important market ever in history of the world. And like, right now, and it looks like Anthropic might be breaking out to just be ahead of everyone in such a way that's like, it's, it's fascinating to watch.

• 1:19:26Jen Cohen?

  It is, it's a whole different time.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:28Jen Cohen?

  Is there anything I haven't asked you or I, that I missed that you think is important to add?

• 1:19:34Speaker 01

  I know, I think like the, I think the most important thing is like people are listening and like is just like, I think it is like, go for something, to me is like, go for something you're passionate.

• 1:19:43Jen Cohen?

  If people are listening?

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:19:44Jen Cohen?

  If people are listening.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  I meant, yeah, I guess if, I mean, I shouldn't say if, like,

• 1:19:47Jen Cohen?

  Hopefully.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Those that are listening.

• 1:19:49Jen Cohen?

  Hopefully have one or two people.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  No, but I mean, it's like, it's like, you know, I'm humble, if, you know, it's a.

• 1:19:55Jen Cohen?

  Yes, humility.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  But, you know, it's like, the thing you're, go for the thing you're passionate about, be who you are, and like, work hard. And I do think with AI, the grit side is going to become way more valuable than all this other crap that's been like, you know, the Stanford person and the, the best developers and the best this. It's like, the best developer is Claude.

• 1:20:16Jen Cohen?

  Mm hmm, exactly.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Like, it's not, no, and but that's not putting down engineers, it's just, the best engineers are the ones that know that they're not the best, that using a hundred AI agents at their disposal, and then managing that, that there, that's the most powerful thing they can do.

• 1:20:32Jen Cohen?

  Well, there's nothing also that could ever take the place of human connection, relationships, community.

• 1:20:39Speaker 01

  Let's hope.

• 1:20:40Jen Cohen?

  I know, I know, let's hope it's true.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  I actually agree with you. I'm very hopeful that, basically, you know, I think that no matter how intelligent AI becomes, there is a reason why humans, it's the EQ side becomes more valuable.

• 1:20:54Jen Cohen?

  Oh, for sure.

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  And EQ is grit.

• 1:20:56Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  Like IQ's not grit, EQ's grit.

• 1:20:59Jen Cohen?

  Believe me, I, listen, I talk about this ad nauseam. I mean, if you're listening, people who are listening, this is like my, my speech every day, grit, you know, going after things, not overthinking it, like, believe, you know, all the things, right? Like persistence.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  But what was amazing is like, there was a time in the last ten or twenty years where like, intelligence trumped grit.

• 1:21:22Jen Cohen?

  When?

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Oh, I would say for sure, there's a lot of examples of companies where like.

• 1:21:26Jen Cohen?

  Tell me, give me three.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Three, oh god. I mean, they could put me on the spot with that.

• 1:21:31Jen Cohen?

  I wanna know three companies where intelligence was more important than grit.

• 1:21:35Speaker 01

  Like, write an email later.

• 1:21:36Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  No, but I think there was.

• 1:21:37Jen Cohen?

  Okay, how about this? How about two?

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  No, I think there's definitely a time when.

• 1:21:40Jen Cohen?

  You can't even think of any.

• 1:21:41Speaker 01

  I can't think of, I mean, off the top of my head, I mean, like, yeah.

• 1:21:44Jen Cohen?

  Well, no, you, you made a very arching statement.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  That's right, you got me.

• 1:21:47Jen Cohen?

  I don't really think, if there's any that I think of.

• 1:21:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:52Jen Cohen?

  I, I did an entire TED Talk on this topic.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you might be right.

• 1:21:55Jen Cohen?

  So, that's why I'd be curious to hear what you have to say.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  Maybe I always like to think that, like, grit matters more with, I think, I, I think I wanna think that grit matters more than AI, because the more you democratize.

• 1:22:06Jen Cohen?

  No, I'm saying, I agree.

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  No, I know you agree with that, but then I was like, thinking, I guess it's, but I guess it's always been grit.

• 1:22:11Jen Cohen?

  When it's not grit, it's nepotism.

• 1:22:12Speaker 01

  Maybe, you know, maybe you still needed when you, maybe you need, a gritty person needs less of the superintelligence stuff. Like, now it's like, cause it used to be still like, like, Facebook still needed, Google still needed, like. So maybe it's like you could build those now without having to find, because it used to be like, that was part of the hard part, was like, finding these engineers to come on there with you.

• 1:22:32Jen Cohen?

  I, I hear what you're saying.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe it's that.

• 1:22:34Jen Cohen?

  Well, I, what I would think is, what you need for a deadly, like, it's like a deadly, whatever, like, to be like the secret weapon, is someone who's incredibly gritty, and then who also has the, like, the analytic intelligence. Cause usually one doesn't come with the other, right? Street smarts is very different than academics.

• 1:22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:53Jen Cohen?

  I'm a big street smart person, you know?

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  But I do think the world's gonna go more to the street smarts now, because the academic side has been democratized.

• 1:23:01Jen Cohen?

  Yes, okay.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  That's, I guess, maybe that's my.

• 1:23:04Jen Cohen?

  But I don't, I, I mean, I would be curious later on, doesn't it, I'll let you take a few days, even a week, and get back to me on which companies did intelligence versus.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  Maybe you could look at, like, the founders of a lot of companies had to code before, like, like Mark Zuckerberg.

• 1:23:18Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  Like, Mark Zuckerberg, the, the next Mark Zuckerberg is not gonna be, not gonna necessarily be someone who, like, came from a place where they had to, like, code and they were, like, Mark Zuckerberg is incredibly intelligent.

• 1:23:29Jen Cohen?

  Yes.

• 1:23:29Speaker 01

  Like, insanely intelligent.

• 1:23:31Jen Cohen?

  Is he your friend also?

• 1:23:33Speaker 01

  I actually, I don't really know Mark that well.

• 1:23:34Jen Cohen?

  Oh, okay, go ahead.

• 1:23:35Speaker 01

  Um, but like, but, but he is insanely intelligent.

• 1:23:38Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  And he needed to be to build what he had to build, to do it, to like, structure it in the code. And I think the next, like, I'm seeing, I'm seeing entrepreneurs now that are like, the, all the coding, the apps, everything else, they're just doing it, they're, they don't know anything about coding, but they're building this stuff.

• 1:23:52Jen Cohen?

  Who's the most impressive entrepreneur that you, you can think of?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Um, there's, there's a ton. I'm trying to, who's the most impressive entrepreneur? I mean, I, I think James Dyson is probably the one that sticks out the most for me because he's the balance of invention, engineering, business building, brand building, like personal brand, like all of it together, like, and, and, and stands for someone who's like a great human too. Like, so it's like, kind of like all of it in one.

• 1:24:20Jen Cohen?

  Have you ever, have you ever?

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Never met him. No, I know. I got, I got, I, I need to, I need to like, it's like, I don't know. I keep always saying I gotta reach out to him. I just have never, I've never met someone that seems to know him to like get, yeah.

• 1:24:34Jen Cohen?

  Interesting.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  So I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I, I do need to make that happen. Cause he, he was, I did look with Ring, like he was like, what, not like my mentor, but I sort of had him as a mentor of, when I said to you, like, if you go into a store and you see Ring, to me, it was like, that was the thing that I was able to type that off of was Dyson.

• 1:24:52Jen Cohen?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  When you go into a store and you see Dyson on a box, whatever that box is, hairdryer, vacuum, you're like, I know this is the best.

• 1:25:00Jen Cohen?

  So true.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  And that, I wanted Ring to stand for that in our own way, in our, not, not the best, like in the Dyson way, but the best in like home security and like.

• 1:25:10Jen Cohen?

  But it does, like, that's what's really, it's synonymous with it.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:25:13Jen Cohen?

  It is synonymous with it. Like, when you think of any type of, uh, camera like that, like wifi camera, Ring is the only one, it's synonymous with Kleenex or whatever. I keep on saying.

• 1:25:22Speaker 01

  And so Dyson is like the Dyson vacuum.

• 1:25:24Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, the Dyson vacuum.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  Like my wife said the other day, I'm gonna grab the Dyson. She came and she vacuumed something. I was like, you know, it's not a Dyson.

• 1:25:30Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, exactly. Like you said to Mueller, that's, that was Nest or like, that wasn't a Ring.

• 1:25:34Speaker 01

  What a great compliment of something. And it's like, yeah.

• 1:25:37Jen Cohen?

  Like, that's what I'm saying. What you did was in, like incredibly just impressive in every way.

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  So I think of like what he's done, I think it's like, that's probably one of the most impressive people. Again, in my space of things, there's lots of entrepreneurs have done incredible things, but like, that's like my space of what I look at.

• 1:25:52Jen Cohen?

  And, yeah, it's amazing. Okay. Well, where do people find, like, I guess you can buy a ring if you don't have one, probably if you were.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  You should definitely buy a ring.

• 1:26:00Jen Cohen?

  Yeah, a hundred percent. But a hundred million, I'm sure most people already who are listening have a ring, but maybe use the different features, like the dog feature, the other feature.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  We have lots of high features coming out. So, yeah, we've, I mean, the, the, I mean, that's the cool thing. Ring right now is like, the amount of features we're putting out every like week, month is unbelievable. So it's really cool.

• 1:26:18Jen Cohen?

  I know. I like my, thank God I have my ring. I love it.

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:26:21Jen Cohen?

  And I'm not just saying that to be polite. I mean it.

• 1:26:24Speaker 01

  No, I appreciate that.

• 1:26:25Jen Cohen?

  All right. Well, thank you for being on the Hapson Hustle. I think we're done. I think I've asked you every question that.

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  Thanks. And people can, I came out with a book called Ding Dong.

• 1:26:33Jen Cohen?

  Why did you say so?

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  Because, you know, it's like I'm a promoter. It's funny. I'm like a promoter for Ring, not for myself. I'm like, I don't like.

• 1:26:39Jen Cohen?

  But that is Ding Dong. When did it come out?

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  It came out last year. And it's kind of the story of Ring up until the day we sold. So it's not like post sale, but it's like all these hijinks and things we did and stuff that we went through and crazy stuff. Yeah.

• 1:26:52Jen Cohen?

  Can I say one thing that's driving me crazy? Okay, your shirt, it looks like the eye, the dot on the eye, it looks like it is a coffee stain. Why did you not make it orange or a different color? It just looks like it's a coffee stain. I've been staring at it the whole time.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  This is an older one. So like this probably the shirt is probably, but I don't know. Maybe I should.

• 1:27:10Jen Cohen?

  I don't know. That's just like something I, I know, we're, okay, bye guys. Have a great day. Oh, I should also say, guys, if you have not subscribed, please subscribe if you're watching this. Um, also any type of comment or anything you want to share is always great for us to kind of make this podcast as good as it can be. If you have a guest that you'd want me to reach out to, uh, please let me know. And then thank you to Jamie.

• 1:27:33Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having me.

• 1:27:35Jen Cohen?

  Bye.