August's Yves Behar and Jason Johnson unlock the smart home

Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel interviews Yves Behar and Jason Jason, co-founders of the smartlock company August about their new products, the state of the smart home, and making products that work in both European and American homes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

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• 1:05Nilay Patel?

  Hey, everybody. It's Sam from The Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, I visited famed designer Eve Behar and Jason Johnson. They're the co-founders of August, the smart lock company. Eve has also designed basically everything else in the world. We take this one just kind of like hanging out at CES, and I was very into the vibe. Like, we obviously talked about the new August Smart Lock, but we also chatted about the state of the smart home. What's it like working with the big platform companies? How to design stuff for humans? How all the different standards are coming together to make a better home? And also, how hard it is to make products that work in both European and American homes? It's apparently very difficult. I also asked them, of course, when they both get work done, which is my new favorite question. Jason gave me the CEO answer. Eve, the designer, a really fun answer. I think you're gonna like it. Check it out.

• 1:51Nilay Patel?

  Jason Johnson, Eve Behar, co-founders of August. How you doing? All is good. We're good. So the first voice you heard was Jason, the second. That's important for the audience. We're at CES again. It keeps happening to us. How's it going with you guys?

• 2:04Speaker 03

  It's great. It's been a very fun show for us.

• 2:07Nilay Patel?

  So you have some news here at CES? You have a new version of the Smart Lock? Tell us about it.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, so every year at CES, we unveil a new product. This year, we have a few products we're unveiling. The first, jump right into it, is the fourth generation August Smart Lock. So a couple of the things people have asked for is, one, to make it smaller. We think it looks great and it's obviously very popular, but make it smaller, make it even more popular. Secondly, they've asked for us to add Wi-Fi, you know, so it can be a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi device. We've managed to do both, make it smaller and add Wi-Fi capability, and it's launching today.

• 2:42Nilay Patel?

  How much is it going to cost?

• 2:43Speaker 03

  A very similar price to the current August Smart Lock. We haven't finalized. We're just starting production now. It'll come out in the late spring.

• 2:51Nilay Patel?

  When you say very similar cost, but you won't give me the number, that means a little bit more, doesn't it?

• 2:55Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, it definitely has more functionality, you know, you don't have to buy our separate Bluetooth to Wi-Fi bridge. We're putting that functionality into the product. It is more expensive to make. It's a very high-end specialty motor that helped us make it smaller. We're using, you know, higher-end batteries. So it is costing us more, but we're trying to keep the price as close to the today as possible.

• 3:16Nilay Patel?

  Got it. So it's smaller, it uses different batteries, has a different motor. I have two August Smart Locks. I think I have the second gen and the third gen Pro. A lot of names in there. But I have two of them. They go through batteries pretty fast. They use four double A's each. If you use them a lot, then you go through batteries. You're using CR123 stand, the little watch batteries, right?

• 3:34Speaker 03

  We are, yeah.

• 3:35Nilay Patel?

  How are you managing to run these things off of those batteries?

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Well, with the double A's, those are 1.5 volts. You have four of them. It's a six-volt system. We're still staying with six volts, but we're using two three-volt batteries. So, you know, going from four to two batteries, and they're smaller batteries too, and they're higher density, three volts each.

• 3:54Nilay Patel?

  And so that you're going to keep battery life the same?

• 3:56Speaker 03

  Well, when you add Wi-Fi, you're definitely going to impact battery life than just having Bluetooth. But we're still, you know, aiming for that three to six month range.

• 4:04Nilay Patel?

  And you think you're going to hit that with all day use with auto lock, auto unlock? Or is that kind of an average?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  I mean, certainly the more usage, if you turn on both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities, if you turn on HomeKit, that impacts battery. There's a number of things you can do that impacts battery life. We think that, you know, three months is good. We also have battery replenishment with Amazon. So when you attach any of our August or our Yale locks to your Amazon account, Amazon prompts you, they actually ask you if you want to be notified when your batteries are low and have automatic batteries sent to you.

• 4:38Nilay Patel?

  That's cool. That's through the dash service?

• 4:40Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 4:40Nilay Patel?

  And you can do that with the previous generation locks?

• 4:42Speaker 03

  Yep, any of our locks.

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Because that's one thing I've noticed is when you're near them, they'll tell you the batteries are low, but you can't get state information about the double As in particular. Is that something you're adding now?

• 4:52Speaker 03

  Well, there's always been a battery gauge in the app that appears when the batteries get low. You don't see it until, until they get low. And then we push notifications to you and all that. So now we allow through our API to partners like Amazon, we allow them to know battery status so that they can do things like battery replenishment.

• 5:10Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Are there specific batteries that you want people to use? CR123s are like, I can't even think of what the difference between brands are. Like, they're not, they're not out in the world like Duracell. Like, here's a blue one, here's a red one. Like, is there a specific kind?

• 5:22Speaker 03

  I mean, if you go to Walmart and Walgreens and CVS, I mean, you'll see Energizer, Duracell. They're all there. And believe it or not, Amazon lets you choose other brands, not just the Amazon brand.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  Not just the Amazon base. Does this still have the sort of Z-Wave capabilities of the higher end ones that you did before?

• 5:36Speaker 03

  So, so, great question. So, the August Wi-Fi smart lock has all of the functionality of the version three lock people, people know and love, except Z-Wave. So we did not put Z-Wave in it. We'll still have, still have the V3 lock with Z-Wave. But now with Wi-Fi, you really obviate, obviate a lot of the need for Z-Wave.

• 5:59Nilay Patel?

  How's that? Don't you have to talk to the, you're still going up to your cloud now instead of doing it locally?

• 6:03Speaker 03

  Right, right. So if you think about Z-Wave, people have, you know, smart things hubs and, and, and other hubs in their home. And so they use, they use Z-Wave to talk to the, to the Gen 3 lock. But when you have a Wi-Fi connected lock, you talk to the cloud and you can talk to not only smart things, but all of the platform providers because you're cloud connected.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  Doesn't that cause some problem, particularly for access control? That's a lot of round tripping through the internet to open a door.

• 6:28Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, people aren't usually using, they're not using Alexa or Google Assistant to unlock doors, right, or smart things. They don't use that to unlock the door. They more use that for scenes, like if you want to say good night and have your doors lock and your lights turn off and blinds close. That's really when the cloud activity happens.

• 6:46Nilay Patel?

  Got it. So you obviously helped redesign this lock. You designed the first one. What were the big challenges in going from the original design to this smaller one?

• 6:53Speaker 04

  Well, I think one of the challenges and what's made this adventure really unique is in six years, we've done nine products and every version has gotten better. It's been really a huge effort of refinement, continue to build the trust. And it's gotten us to a place where we're the leader in the category, the best seller, 4.8 stars in the app, etc. So you want to continue that legacy. You want to continue building it product after product. But this product is a bigger evolution. It's a bigger change. So the design language, while we use the same materials that people want,

• 7:33Speaker 04

  you know, the steel and the aluminum and the sort of high quality that people expect out of a product on a door. We started to smooth out the design language a little bit, added sort of curvature to the front, made a transition between the chamfer and that curvature and then added tactility and texture as well as an indicator. So from afar, you can easily tell whether you're locked or unlocked without having to look at the app or without having to activate the lock.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  So what you're looking at for people who are listening is there's a big...

• 8:11Speaker 04

  There's a little bump.

• 8:12Nilay Patel?

  What did you call it? Yeah, a ridge.

• 8:13Speaker 04

  A ridge on top of it. And then the other functionality is similar. The magnetic door, battery door, that's really intuitive. And then the LED actually comes through the badge. For size reasons and limitations, we place the LEDs, you know...

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Onto the badge. So it's the same experience, just smaller, works better for smaller hands, kids' hands. You know, putting all in one, not having to manage the, you know, the, an external Wi-Fi element has been, is great.

• 8:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 03

  But it's, it's, it's a lot of integration. It took about two years.

• 8:50Nilay Patel?

  Two years?

• 8:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Because you're, I mean, you're obviously adding entirely other radio system in there on top of BLE.

• 8:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:56Nilay Patel?

  What was the bring up on that like?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  So we've been testing Wi-Fi in our locks for years, a whole bunch of different chipsets. And, you know, back to the battery life issue and, and also speed, right? So if you're going to unlock the door remotely, say for a delivery person or a, or a guest, you want it to happen instantly. You don't want to wait. And, and, you know, with some devices that have to wake up, like with the Wi-Fi chip, et cetera. And we finally settled on a very high quality chipset that could do that really fast. It's, it's, it's really a great experience.

• 9:24Nilay Patel?

  Are you able to take advantage? I mean, obviously you've done a number of products over a number of years. The industry has moved on. Are you taking advantage of sort of the chipsets getting smaller? Are the intended designs in the industry, in the supply chain getting better? Or are you doing this custom?

• 9:36Speaker 03

  Well, we, we've been doing this for quite a while now. So, so we, we do have the pleasure of working with the chipset manufacturers to do custom intended designs and, and, and other elements to help us fit it onto our, onto our PCBs, the, the boards inside the lock. And then simplify the design too. We, we had, we had two board design in previous locks. This is a one board design, so it, it's evolved.

• 9:58Nilay Patel?

  And that's able, helped you make it smaller?

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. It's all about small and, and, you know, and the feedback so far on the, on the size and the design has been very high. People really seem to like it.

• 10:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's really nice. You said that there was a custom motor in there? Talk about that a bit.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, so we, we've been using a partner in Japan for quite a few years now to make these custom motors for us. And they, they specialize in these really high-end tiny motors. They put them in, in, in hundred thousand dollar surgical equipments for operating rooms. And they came to us actually with this new design that has the same power output, right? I mean, this, this, this lock is capable of, if you could tune it, you could put out 20 pound inches of torque, which is a tremendous amount of torque. They were able to bring that same power, same capability in this smaller form factor. And, you know, it's all credit to them. I mean, they, they really know what they're doing.

• 10:47Nilay Patel?

  Kind of bigger picture, you're very focused on access control. You have a doorbell, you put out a doorbell last year. We're just kind of waiting for the second generation of doorbell to come on. Are you thinking about getting broader than access control with August?

• 11:01Speaker 03

  We are. So since being purchased two years ago by the world's largest lock and access control company, we in fact have been taking all the technology that we've developed. And even I always from the beginning thought about the user experience and how do you just create a great experience around access control? And all of that technology has been making its way to our parent company's Yale branded locks, right? So the Yale locks in North America now are all powered by our software and our backend. You can use the August app. And we're actually going to be releasing very shortly here a new app called Yale Access. It's just like the August app, but it's powering the Yale locks that we've already talked about

• 11:43Speaker 03

  as well as some new Yale Access products that we actually announced here today at the show.

• 11:48Nilay Patel?

  What are those?

• 11:48Speaker 03

  So the first up is a smart safe. So Yale's been making safes for many years. Now we have a safe that uses the August technology, the BLE inside of it, as well as our BLE Wi-Fi bridge and our keypad. All those things work with the smart safe. And also a smart cabinet lock. So we have a very small little cabinet lock that will retail for $79 and you can place it into a cabinet in your kitchen, a liquor cabinet, a drawer. And allow you to have all that same functionality you've had with an August lock, but now have that for these private compartments inside your home or your office.

• 12:23Nilay Patel?

  I feel like you are consistently targeting the Airbnb owner with a liquor cabinet that needs to just like keep the door closed.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Medicine cabinets.

• 12:31Nilay Patel?

  Like a list of secret compartments you need to unlock remotely. How are you thinking about that? As you envision those other products, everybody has a list, everybody has a priority list. How are you thinking about prioritizing that stuff?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Well, no surprise that our parent company, as we've worked on these new products, they've wanted us to focus on products that could be sold globally, right? So the two products I just mentioned, the Smart Safe and the Smart Capital Lock, these are global products. Those would be sold in countries all around the world. And that's a priority, is to take our technology and our user experience and expand that so people can use it everywhere. So along those lines, we also, this morning, announced a product that Eve and I have been wanting to deliver for quite a few years now.

• 13:12Speaker 04

  One of the things that happened when we launched August, the first one, the first version six years ago, is people in Europe, and really all over the world, asked us to ship it there. We didn't, but they went to the US and purchased it. And now we can see that we have actually people using August locks all around the world. But for them, it's somewhat of a hack because they have to install an American-style deadbolt on a door in England, or Germany, or Finland. And so, you know, we looked into designing or adapting our product for Europe, but the complexity is enormous. I mean, if you think of your electrical plug, and you think that's complex, and there's

• 13:54Speaker 04

  too many different versions in Europe, you multiply that by 10, and that's what locks and lock standards are. And so with Yale, we, you know, developed over the last year and a half or so, a version that actually will work all over EMEA, so from South Africa all the way to Northern Europe.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  Israel.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Israel, Turkey. We have now a lock that will work, and that will work across all those different configurations because of the approach we've had with plates in the back, these different plates that adapt to different standards. And also because of the position, so some really interesting things happen in Europe, right? Doors open out in some countries and open in in other countries. In some countries, the lock itself goes above the door handle, and in other countries, it's below the door handle. And so we have, we basically have this system that allows for, you know, the brand and the logo to be rotated depending on...

• 14:58Speaker 04

  Where you install, you know, above or below the door. And the size, it's bigger than the other lock, than the Wi-Fi smart lock or the other locks we made because actually in some countries in Europe, you need two to three times more power to overcome.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  It's a pill shape for those listening. It's like a pill.

• 15:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Your other, the sort of base model lock you have is very similar shape.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. So we, yeah, we have, we have our circular locks. We've already talked about today, but we do have, we do have an entry level lock in the US. It's also pill shaped.

• 15:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So again, you've been doing it for six years. You're expanding markets. You're able to overcome Europe, which I know is everyone's goal.

• 15:39Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 15:39Nilay Patel?

  At all times to expand your markets and especially with hardware. I know that's hard. How are you seeing the future of the smart? Like you were one of the earliest companies to try to do hardware in the home, to try to change people's behavior around how these things are going to connect to the phone, how people are going to use apps. Last year, when we were here, we were talking about smart home standards. We're talking about the big companies. You and I actually had a great conversation last year about what it's like to go inside of a big company. I'm always very curious about that with every startup. But it seems like the big platform providers are even more dominant this year. Literally this morning, Sonos sued Google for patent infringement. Like it seems like the ecosystem is vibrant in one sense as it was at the very beginning

• 16:23Nilay Patel?

  of this entire sort of movement. At the same time, there's more products than ever, right? But they all have to be sort of subservient to the platforms. How are you guys navigating that stuff?

• 16:31Speaker 04

  I think with locks for us, you know, from the very beginning, we thought and we built everything around this notion of trust. And this is the only thing that we do. This is, we're focused on locks with August. Different variations of locks, but it's all locks. It's, it's, you know, it's what we do every day. That's the difference between a large company approach and us is, you know, the, we're not trying to sell you anything. We're not trying to sort of optimize our commercial relationship with you. You know, everything is the data, everything is. And the background in this trust is something that we've earned over the years. So it's interesting that I think in this particular category, when it comes to security, when it comes to locks,

• 17:13Speaker 04

  I think there's a lot of trust that goes to small specialized companies that are focused on the subject.

• 17:19Nilay Patel?

  Just how are you seeing the industry develop? I mean, you took the jump into sort of going to the bigger company a little bit earlier than other companies may have. Again, we talked about it last year, but things have changed even in that one year pretty fast, I think, in terms of ecosystem.

• 17:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, in fact, I think when we talked last year, we also had unveiled some of our new locks with our other brands, with Yale, with M-Tech. M-Tech is a beautiful luxury lock brand that our parent company owns. It's now all powered by August. You know, I think this is really why Eve and I have stayed involved with August is the fact that we get to work with the world's largest access lock company and make these products that really are the best of class. And we don't compromise, right? I think it's safe to say that, you know, Eve and I wouldn't be doing this if we thought, you know, this is just making more stuff. We really believe that what we're making is meaningful, it's high quality, it's trusted.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And like I say, I'd say to people, you know, personally, when I choose technologies to use, I like to use products from companies that that's what they focus on. I use Dropbox for my file storage, I use Spotify for my music because they focus on it.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  Two companies that have famously expanded their offerings.

• 18:33Speaker 03

  Yes, but they're pretty focused and they deliver a great experience.

• 18:38Nilay Patel?

  It's like a podcast event. Put Spotify into that.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  And this is what we do. I mean, this is what we do is we focus on this and, you know, as Eve said, we're not trying to sell advertising, we're not trying to sell data, we're not trying to sell other products. This is all we do.

• 18:52Nilay Patel?

  So as you see that smart home ecosystem developing, it seems like the list of things people want to make smarter in their home, it's like lights is the first one, the door is the second one, and then maybe your TV if you have an engineering degree, you can figure out how to make that happen. Obviously, that means you have to interface with the other, the platform companies. How has that changed over the past year?

• 19:13Speaker 03

  Well, you know, what we found is that most consumers are having to make choices, right? Are you going to be an Amazon house? Are you going to be a Google house? Are you going to be an Apple house, you know, Samsung, et cetera? And that's, you know, that's not a good experience, right? And I think you and I have talked about this in the past. I think the best companies in the smart home space are those that choose, like us, to be neutral. Like, I think Lutron and Hu are good examples of companies that, you know, that sort of play neutral, like play on all platforms. You know, you got to make it easy for consumers, right? They want to know if they spend their hard-earned money on these products, that they're going to work. With whatever phone they use or whatever smart speaker they buy. And you know, that is a challenge.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  It is exciting to see that some of those companies, in fact, maybe all of those companies I just mentioned are working on on an IP based initiative. Right. So, you know, we've always chose Bluetooth and Wi Fi because particularly with Wi Fi, you can assign IP addresses to to devices. And I'm excited to see that, you know, that they're planning to work together to make it easier for these things to interoperate.

• 20:16Nilay Patel?

  Are we going to talk about Zigbee? This is my dream. It's yes. Can I have the Zigbee conversation with anybody? I've been walking the casinos. Nobody, nobody has brought it up yet. Here you go.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Wow. Yeah.

• 20:27Nilay Patel?

  But you so you had Z-Wave, you dropped it. You just talked in, I would say affectionate terms about the Zigbee project. Are you making the shift?

• 20:36Speaker 03

  I mean, we love Zigbee, we love Z-Wave. We make, we make, you know.

• 20:39Nilay Patel?

  Only during this week at this time do people say we love Zigbee and Z-Wave.

• 20:44Speaker 03

  But yeah, as I've always told you, for years now, we've talked about this. I mean, I'm a believer in in in putting technologies, especially around consumer electronics, into people's homes that that are going to coexist with existing technology. Wi Fi is is pretty much universal. Right. So, yes, you want to make a Wi Fi lock. Right. You want to make, you want to make things that already work with this infrastructure that's there in the home. And, you know, and most people, by the way, don't go buy Wi Fi routers. Most of them, it gets delivered and installed by their Xfinity or their AT&T technician. So, you know, these other technologies, they're great. Obviously, we make products around them. I'm just personally very excited to see that there's there's an effort towards compatibility across these various RF and and protocol standards.

• 21:27Nilay Patel?

  Are you going to participate in that stuff? Are you going to wait to see it check out?

• 21:29Speaker 03

  I think it's safe to say that that that August and Yale will be very active in not only participating, but helping drive to make it happen. Because at the end of the day, again, this is all we do. We're not trying to protect any, any other part of our business. We don't have a, we don't have an ecosystem.

• 21:45Nilay Patel?

  You're not going to start a streaming service?

• 21:47Speaker 03

  We're not going to start a streaming service. We're not going to make smart speakers. We're not going to make, you know, we're not going to make kitchen gadgets. I mean, this is all we do. So it's in our best interest that it all works together.

• 21:55Nilay Patel?

  I feel like your Skunk Works kitchen gadget team is listening to this right now freaking out.

• 21:59Speaker 03

  I think, I think June is, and June O S is, if you want to follow the kitchen, I'm excited about what they're doing.

• 22:05Nilay Patel?

  So I gotta ask, last year we were here, there was a doorbell that came out.

• 22:09Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 22:09Nilay Patel?

  You pulled it.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 22:11Nilay Patel?

  Hasn't really, really appeared. What's going on with the doorbell?

• 22:13Speaker 03

  So it has quietly reappeared.

• 22:14Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 22:15Speaker 03

  I'm sorry we haven't let you know yet, but we do have it available now again on august.com. You know, it turns out it's really hard to make a battery-powered Wi-Fi video doorbell. And, and, and the best testament to that is the fact that there's only one on the market besides ours. Right? You have dozens of video doorbells. They're all wired. There's only one that's battery-powered. And it's because it's really, really hard to do. And we thought we had it right and we launched that product, you know, a year ago and we did not like the quality of it. So we pulled it and now we've just quietly re-released it and so far, so good. It's, it's performing pretty well.

• 22:52Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What did you have to change?

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Well, it's really back to battery life. It's all about how do you manage battery life? And, and it's a trade-off because especially with a, with a, with a video doorbell, you want the Wi-Fi radio to be ready and active when someone presses that button. You want to get the notification on your device and you want to answer and have that communication. But you also want to save battery life, right? So it's, it's that constant trade-off. And so we had to work with our chipset provider to come up with, you know, some ways to manage that power. Give it a good battery life, but also have it be highly responsive, no lag response.

• 23:25Nilay Patel?

  So you said you quietly reintroduced it. Are you gonna make some noise around it again? Or you're just gonna see how it plays out?

• 23:30Speaker 03

  You know, it's, it's a great accessory to our locks. You know, we haven't brought it into retail stores yet. You know, we're, we're just, we're making sure it's a, it's a really, really good product. And, and it's performing well before we, you know, put it in more places.

• 23:43Nilay Patel?

  What is, does that mean that your first set of customers were like quietly discovering it on your website? You're just seeing how it goes for them before you?

• 23:49Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, they say that, first of all, people that did buy the first product, we certainly refunded all of them, right? I mean, we, you know, we, we recognized it was our mistake. And likewise, you know, if, if for some reason the, the newly re-released product doesn't perform, because we're selling them all directly, it's very easy to, you know, take care of those customers if necessary. But like I said, so far, so good. It's performing well. We're pretty happy with it. I'm not going to oversell it. I'm not going to hype it, you know? We, it's, it's a, we have to, we have to prove to everybody that we can deliver a good battery-powered video doorbell.

• 24:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it does seem quite hard.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:24Nilay Patel?

  This brings me to HomeKit. Like, HomeKit is, seems like it's changing. Apple's part of the Zigbee stuff. The HomeKit video stuff has been very difficult. How are you feeling about that particular world of standards?

• 24:36Speaker 03

  So, we still love HomeKit. The August Wi-Fi smart lock will support HomeKit, as will the Yale Linus smart lock that we just told you about that we're launching for Europe. So, we love HomeKit. It would be great if it was more interoperable and there was more products. You know, I personally am a big fan. You know, everything in my house has to be HomeKit compatible because I'm an Apple user and I like HomeKit. I like that it's offline architecture, right? There's lots of great things about it and I look forward to seeing them work with Google and Amazon and the others to make it more cross-compatible.

• 25:11Nilay Patel?

  I do too. I just feel like you might know more about that than I do, which is why I'm asking.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, they haven't told me anything just yet.

• 25:17Nilay Patel?

  Okay, this is a question I'm asking everybody this year. It's my newest resolution. Because I don't know the answer for myself. And I think you two will have different answers. I'm very eager to ask you. When do you work? When do you see, well, co-founder, CEO of this company, when do you sit down and actually think and work and produce versus go to meetings, have jerks interview on their podcasts, do all the stuff, all the stuff you have to do?

• 25:41Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I certainly, you know, have an incredible team. And one thing that I learned after I kind of moved beyond the early years of the startup, right? That we were an established company, right? Selling hundreds of thousands of locks. I learned that, you know, as CEO, my job is really to hire really good people and to help them and support them in what they do and really get out of their way. So, you know, I love to attend product planning meetings and be involved. But the truth is, you know, my job is to support them and get out of their way and let them do what they do best. And we've hired some of the best people from, you know, from Apple and Google and other places. And, you know, they are professionals and I support them and...

• 26:25Speaker 03

  You know, I guess the the one thing that I kind of have to do is is, you know, is, you know, come to see us and have conversations with folks like you, which, you know, hey, it's pretty good.

• 26:35Nilay Patel?

  They do all the work, I say yes and take the glory. It's a strong organizational principle. It's how I operate too, I'll be honest with you. But do you think that you, when you make time, how do you manage the time between managing your team, supporting them, and actually doing stuff? That's actually the heart of my question.

• 26:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, let me be clear, I really don't manage my team. When you hire, when you hire senior level executives, and I think this goes for most tech companies in Silicon Valley, you hire really high quality people. Frankly, many of my direct reports could replace me. I mean, they're capable of being CEO of August. And so I don't manage them. I mean, I really am there to support them and let them do what they do. You know, now that, of course, we're part of a giant global company, you know, there's certain things you have to do to, you know, to keep the parent company happy. And in many ways, I'm trying to shield them from some of those issues and, you know, I take care of those things.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  I sympathize with that, too. All right, I feel like you're gonna have the best answer to this question.

• 27:29Speaker 04

  How do I work? When do I work? You know, for me, it's, it's similar, but it's a decision I made a long time ago, which was the, you know, business side, the legal part, HR, etc., isn't, I have a team of about 90 people, 95 people at Fuse Project. And where, you know, I, for a long time, I've had incredible leaders that do that part, that really, that are focused on that, that are really good at that. And so my role is really creative. And, you know, some days I'll be sketching, some days I'll be kind of directing brainstorms

• 28:09Speaker 04

  and trying to sort of support the team through, through research and exploration and trial and error. But this is, that's really my passion. You know, my passion is sitting down, understanding the potential of the product, and then pushing that forward, coming up with new ideas, drawing, which I still do every day.

• 28:31Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 04

  You know, that's.

• 28:33Nilay Patel?

  Do you have to tell people, like, leave me alone, I'm drawing right now? I have to tell people, leave me alone, I'm writing right now. I'm just, I'm asking if you have the same.

• 28:40Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, you know, I think, I think some of that work has to be done in solitude, you know, and in a culture that's very sort of open, flat, I don't have a private office, never had one, in a culture where you encourage people to come and ask for feedback and ask for input, you do have to find that focused work, you know, and you do have to get into that flow in order to come up with three or four ideas you want to continue to explore. And I think that's, that's the hard part of being in a horizontal, open, you know, contemporary culture with a lot of young people who, you know, love to shoot the shit with you and, and, and get your feedback and input.

• 29:21Nilay Patel?

  Does your office have Slack?

• 29:23Speaker 04

  My office has Slack, but one of the things I do it, I don't, I don't get on Slack.

• 29:28Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 29:28Speaker 04

  So that I can focus on drawing and doing other things.

• 29:31Nilay Patel?

  So you just quit, you just quit out and you're done, or you just don't have it at all?

• 29:33Speaker 04

  I have it, but I don't think I've opened it in months.

• 29:35Nilay Patel?

  What about you?

• 29:36Speaker 03

  I, I, I have it, but I don't, I don't use it.

• 29:41Nilay Patel?

  Whenever I ask people if they have Slack, they're like, I, we have Slack.

• 29:44Speaker 03

  I will give you a little secret. I'll give you a little secret on the, on the, on where do you work issue, when do you work? So I, I, you know, I'm co-founder of a, of a private coworking space called Founder's Den. It's just like two blocks from the August headquarters. And, and I never told him about this before, but when I really need to have solitude, be by myself and work on something, I sneak over there and I work from Founder's Den.

• 30:09Nilay Patel?

  Two things about that answer. One, you just blew your own cover.

• 30:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did.

• 30:13Nilay Patel?

  You're deeply burnt. And two, not the most actionable piece of advice for most people, like I founded a private.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  But open, open plan offices, like Eve, I sit in open, people sit all around me. It's distractible, you know?

• 30:26Nilay Patel?

  My favorite piece of advice like this was one time Walt Mossberg was like, here's how you get a raise. You go to the CEO's office and say, give me a million dollars and a key to your executive washroom or I'm quitting. And I was like, well, Walt, you are Walt Mossberg. I don't think I could do that. So we don't have private washrooms like this in the Wall Street Journal in 1995, but it's great advice. It was something. Do you find context switching is difficult when from creative? Because you have to go to meetings. Every startup in the valley that makes hardware wants you to design something. Presumably you have to go and like-

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Eve is amazing in context. I'll tell you, he's amazing at it. I've seen him do it very fast. It's impressive.

• 31:02Speaker 04

  I think, you know, I think when you're a designer, you have the multitasking is and sort of addressing a multitude of different problems across a multitude of different fields. I'm quite comfortable with that. I mean, I think it's something that I've been doing for so long. You know, I can, I can jump into software opportunity, hardware opportunity, engineering problem, design, you know, design exploration. I like it. You know, when things are a little bit too linear and a little too programmed, I think it's hard to stay creative. Some, some, some of what happens in, in chaos is actually contributes to the outcome.

• 31:40Nilay Patel?

  See, any of this would be, everyone else is like, you have to block your time and like only do one thing at a time. I knew I'd get a good answer out of you. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much. It was exciting to see the new things. We gotta talk, we gotta get on a faster schedule than once a year.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  That would be great.

• 31:53Nilay Patel?

  That's an important piece of this. When does the lock come out?

• 31:55Speaker 03

  In the spring.

• 31:56Nilay Patel?

  In the spring.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, both of them. Yep.

• 31:57Nilay Patel?

  Very cool. Well, thank you very much. We'll see you soon.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 31:59Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  All right. Thanks to Eve Behar and Jason Johnson. I love talking to them. It's always such a good time. We'll be back later this week with a chat show again on Tuesday with the interview show. Tweet at me, I'm at reckless. I love your feedback. I love hearing what you think of who we're talking to, what we're talking about and who we should talk to next. That's actually really important. So hit me up, let me know and we'll talk to you soon.

• 32:23Speaker 05

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