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

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

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 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 or 20% OFF Momentous: Ready to try supplements that actually do what they claim? Head to livemomentous.com and use code JEN for 35% OFF your first subscription.  Therasage: Visit 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 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 and use the code JENNIFERCOHEN to claim your discount and your bonus gift. Rho Nutrition: Go to 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.  Find more from Jen Cohen:  Website: jennifercohen.com Instagram: @therealjencohen Books: jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements Find more from Jamie Siminoff:  Instagram: @jsiminoff Find more from Jamie’s Book: Facebook: Ding Dong Book Instagram: @dingdongbook TikTok: @DingDongBookYouTube: @DingDongBook

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it. Do you know the story of Rolex? No. It's a non-for-profit company. Hold that thought. We should, okay, I'm going to keep this in the podcast. That is crazy. I want to hear the story. Guys, I want to tell people who you are because I'm already going. This is going to be on the podcast. Okay, so we have Jamie Siminoff, just by the way. Then we're going to tell you the Rolex story in two seconds. Jamie is the founder of Ring. He sold it for $1.1.1 billion. 5.1.15. 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. Stayed for five years. Okay. I was just, I mean, I was kind of burnt and whatever. Right. Left for a little bit.

And then I came back last, I've been back like a year or now. Okay, then you came back to run. Been back. Now he's back at Amazon to run ring. Okay. Now, before we even talk about you, tell us the Rolex story. Well, so these guys do this podcast called Acquired. Yeah.

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. Yeah. It's actually like, I think it's like the largest non-for-profit in the world or something or one of them. I've never heard that. Secretive non-for-profit thing that was started by this guy during the World War I. Oh, wow. And he basically invented the watch because when, um,

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. Go on. How did it become a non-for-profit though? Like how did that? Somehow, I think, I mean, because it was so old, I think when he died or something, like gave it to this thing, it became like a charitable foundation. Oh.

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, to anyone, it's a, you know, it's a great podcast to listen to of a story that I think most people just had no idea. I certainly had zero, like, no idea about it. 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 unique way of start and intro. Yes. But, but, but, but, but, but, I like the uniqueness of it.

Yeah. 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. I mean, it's definitely my superpower is like I just keep pushing. Just keep grinding and grinding and grinding. And so this is what the show is all about. Like, that's obviously why it resonates so much. I have its hustle similar to that with you, to you. So can you just start from the beginning? I know yet you were a serial entrepreneur before ring even happened. So what were you doing? Like how did this whole, the whole ring thing I mean, serial entrepreneur is like another word for failing entrepreneur, I'd say. Okay.

I mean, 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. It's just because none of them actually, like, became anything impactful. And I think, and my type of entrepreneur is more of an inventor than an entrepreneur. So I think there's just different, like, types. 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. So 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 BlackBerry 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 that I finally hit something that really resonated at scale. And then I could work on to build something, you know, massive. Well, also, you're solving, you, 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? Yeah. Yeah, and I got, I mean, 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. Right. This is in 2011. I looked online. There's no doorbell that goes to the iPhone. So I built one. How did you know how to build one, though?

I'm just like, I am a tinker. Like, I've always, since I've been a kid, like, I'm like, when I needed something, I'd go in the basement. and build it. Like, MacGyver. I am like MacGyver. Like, yeah, I'm like a, like a gritty McGiver. So you basically, I had like a, like a paper pit, like a like a toothpick and a, and a paper clip? I mean, not far off. I mean, I basically, I went to fries, which was a, you know, back then there was, there was, there was fries, where all the electronic stuff was, especially like that kind of longer tail of electronics. And I bought a Wi-Fi camera. And because there was Wi-Fi cameras. There's lots of them, actually. And I kind of soldered and hacked something up to

to make it work like a doorbell. But how did you even, like, how did you know how to do that? Like, like, At the time, it wasn't chat GPT. I guess you can Google, like, how to do this. 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 always been someone who like, like, the first thing I do is something is take it apart. Oh, okay. So, I mean, I just always like, that's my natural curiosity. So, like, to me, like, trying to build a doorbell from a Wi-Fi 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, I kind of hacked this thing up. I called it doorbot because door robot sounds funny. I'm like a guy in a garage. Put it on my front door. It's this giant thing. And 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. Right. 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 impact it. It was all built in like a 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 a media, but that was like the start of that aha moment, which is still today's our mission is to make neighborhood safer. Making neighborhood safer is what built ring into being the world's largest home security company, which I'm pretty sure it is today. If you really actually think about it,

most people I know have the, like have a ring. Most good people, yes. Like most 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. Yeah. Like an entire like vertical or iterate, like a whole different category. 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. Yeah. 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. 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 the tinker in his basement and, you know, created something that, like, it's like, it's like multi-generational. I mean, it's the, it is incredible. 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?

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 still 2014. Like, we, so it was about three and a half years of. Who's we, by the way? Who was with you? It was like me and then 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 who were, who were these guys? John was kind of, he went to Philadelphia University and was like a kind of a, like a designer. But 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. I love that. And then August was just like 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 engineering people. Were they your partners or like equal partners?

Or were they working with for you? No. I was the founder. You were the founder, the only founder? Only founder. 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? They got some equity, but it was more salary.

Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, it's like you put yourself back in that position. I mean, I would have probably, if they said to me, no salary and I'll take 10%. I probably sure. Right. You know, at the time, but like they needed, they were like young guys that need money to live. And so I paid them. And, you know, I raised a little bit of money to do it.

So how much did you initially raise? The first raise was. It was under a million dollars. I think it was $500,000. I think it was the first one. And so how far along were you before you even started to raise five? Like that first. Like that was right out. Like that was in off the out of the gates. Yeah, I kind of raised that. And so when did you go on Shark Tank and get rejected? That was 2013. Okay. So you started in 2010, you said, 11? So I started like a, like, and I was in my garage trying to build other stuff. So that's actually

when I raised the money for was this thing called Edison Jr., which was like a lab to build ideas, basically. Really? Yeah. And so... Like kind of like an incubator? Kind of like an incubator. Yeah, of 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, um, it's so funny. It's wild. So then what, like, so how did it go from that and then two years later being on Shark Tank, not as a shark? So no, I mean, it's like so nonlinear that it's crazy. So yeah, I look for a doorbell, can't find one. Build one. My wife says it makes her feel safe at home. Like that's kind of cool, but still not an aha moment. building this thing called Edison Jr.

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, which is the street that Edison's lab was on. And I was going to a conference, this guy, Leuick Lemur, who had this conference in Paris called LaWeb, was a kind of a friend.

And I said, Luke, you got to let me launch this at your conference. And he's like, oh, Jamie, this is not very, you know, he's like, it's like literally like Sergey Brin was speaking at his conference. And I'm like, he's like, you know, Jamie, it's like the biggest conference, the biggest tech conference in Europe. I'm like, you got to do it. Like, 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 going to look like, the presentation. And I'm like, we have that we're going to 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 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 his doorbell. I'm like, okay. And so it wasn't even, it was like a last minute almost ad. I just put it on there. And the idea was they launched the site that people would sell hardware on and pre-sale and like a Kickstarter. And we 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. 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 then through that, I got on Shark Tank. Well, how? Okay, so how did you go from that to Shark Tank?

Well, so I was- They reproach you because I know that's what happens a lot. They did a little bit. So I went to lunch with another friend in L.A., like a guy who's building a little business here and like a friend of a friend, 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 this 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?

me 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 like 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 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 like people would literally 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

I'm a doorbell it goes to your phone they're like ha ha 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 uh the guys 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 that like Clay Newbill it's one of the guys who work for Clay okay 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 literally send an email like, hey, I'm Jamie Siminoff, you know, Doorbock at Doorbott.com. I start 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. That many? Yeah. I mean, Shark Tank was like at the time, like 2012, 13, 14. Shark Tank was like the number one show on TV. Were they still taking that 1% in perpetuity?

So they, when I, when that guy called me, they were. Okay. But they were just in the transition period of stopping that. Okay. Which turned out of me, Mark Cuban, was the one who basically said, like, we're not going to do that anymore. And they actually retroactively went and stopped. They gave it all back.

So they ended up never taking a percentage of anyone's company. I didn't know that, really. Yeah, they went back and retroactively, just nuked at all. 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 shoe called No Gym Required shoe. Anyway, Clay knew, he, Clay reached out to me to be on the show and, hey, well, I'm Canadian. So it became an issue with the visas.

But then it was this one person in perpetuity. And my partner was like, there's no way that we're going to go on some show. Because they were, the idea was they were going to take that 1% regardless if you even like got on the show or not. Right? Yeah, right. For the ad, basically. Exactly. Like, even if you make a deal, not make a deal, whatever, you have to give up.

Like, they must have lost out on a lot of amazing, smart entrepreneurs because not, people don't want to be doing that. It was an expensive ad at that point. Like, I mean, if you did that, and it was like, yeah, people didn't want to do it. Like for you, if you had, if that, they took a 1% from your company. 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. Well, wait, so then at that time when you went on, did you, have you sold any? So, yeah, we, so the pre-sale started in 2000.

So December 2012, we announced it. Okay. And then I went on Shark Tank. We filmed September of 2013. It went on November of 2013. Okay. 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. But before you got on that show, did you actually pre-sell any of them? Yeah, we pre-sled like a couple million dollars worth. Okay. Oh, no, it was like, it was like, oh, okay, so you already had that. Okay, so then you go. But it's so funny because it's like, if you had told me like when we launched it, you're going to pre-sell a couple million dollars, but like, oh my God, this is awesome. Right. The problem was like blowing through millions of dollars in hardware is like the easy. It's like, 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. Really. How much were you negative at this point? I mean, we were had to be at least, if we had shut it down, we had at least out a million bucks for two million dollars. Because we were ordering like

Supply, like, ordering parts and ordering all this stuff. And, like, I mean, it's just like, you're just dead. Yeah, you're just like spending and spending money. And I did. I used the money, like the pre-sell money. I used to design the product. Right. But then I didn't have money to buy the product.

So like, like part of why we like shipped right after Shark Tank is like we got all this money. 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 to clear out inventory. That's incredible. Okay, so wait, so you, because when you went on there, okay, you have about two million sales, blah, blah, blah, blah. They all turned you down because of two reasons I saw or heard. First was the fact that the hardware was expensive. Yep. Right? And then what was the whole... Is it expensive compared to a doorbell? Compared to a doorbell? 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, there's a whole category.

Yeah, you created the category. And I still very much, like, have a good share in it. But back then it was like a doorbell is $20, $15. No, it's, yeah. Like, whatever. And it's like, yours is $200. Like, there's no way someone's going to spend $200 on a doorbell. And I'm like, well, it's not a doorbell.

It doesn't it? It's a doorbell. And so they, that was a big part of the mess. And then it was also, again, market size. Like, how many doorbell 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. You're like, yeah, it's like $100 million a year of doorbells, whatever it is. But when did someone buy a doorbell when it broke? The only time someone, or when they're they built a new house. So built a new house or 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 what happens if you came out 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. Wow. And so people just didn't see the market. Uber was another great example of where no one could see, everyone said like, well, taxi business is only this big. Uber can only be this percentage of it. It's like, what happens if you change how people travel? Like, what is that market size?

Absolutely. 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 adorable a lot. 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. That is so true. But 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'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. 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. Yeah.

Like, I think it's going to be very hard to like, and I think that's where like an entrepreneur and inventor, having like, you know, having true passion about something, mission, purpose is like, I do think that's still going to exist in the future as the differentiator between success and failure. 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 Sharkey. But it's so interesting. Okay. So then what was the other reason they gave you besides the hardware? So it was, yeah.

So it was basically like, you know, it's too expensive. How big is the market? Yeah. I mean, those are, I guess, the two big. I think that was the two biggest way. 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. How about Nest? Is Nest considered to be your big competition? I would say at this point, no. I mean, like, I think, I mean, they're out there and they, you know, they do the good job in their place, but no, they're not, like, they're not that big. They're not that big. Okay. So then when the show actually aired, how much did your sales go up, like, 1,000, 5,000 percent? 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 of going to shark tank is so you go on

and they're like you're going to have this bump and like no one knows exactly like each product sells differently and so we're like okay so i'm figuring the bump is going to be like within the first few hours of the show and that's it like that that's all we're going to 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 got to go back that he was the CEO of Shopify Shopify was not that big of a company like Shopify today's like a a hundred plus billion dollar company. So, like, calling up the CEO Shopify today would be insane. Right.

Back then, it's, like, calling, like, the local person that, you know, like, the local person who runs the restaurant down the street. And I'm, like, hey, we're going to 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 going to drive to Canada and kill you. Right. You know, basically.

And we have this email exchange, which is very funny, which is 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 going to go down because I felt like it was going to be such a bump. So we, you know, we go on Shark Tank kind of wake up the next morning basically hung over 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 100,000 sales. But I'm like, that's it? Right. Like, oh my God. I did all this work for a hundred and, whatever, 150,000 of sales, whatever it was.

then the next day 150,000 sales. Next day. 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. Yeah. It never went below like, it was like stayed at like 30,000 or something. Like it was crazy. It just like stayed up.

So would you say that it was because of the shark tank, the exposure of Shark Tank that kind of catapulted the business then? I would say, I think there. 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. Right. Right. I would Shark Tank of the one things, I think it was one of the most impactful. I mean, it was like people being in a garage going on a Super Bowl ad. 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 where you're on Shark Tank, you were on like the number one show on TV for 12 minutes.

It was basically an ad on the whole business. 100%. And it wasn't like you were like now you have social media to compete with, right? Yeah. People, no one's even watching TV. Yeah, this was when like TV was TV. Massive. Like this was right at the end of that actually. It was like right there. I still like the show though, by the way. I think that's a great show.

I love that show. I really do. It's great for kids to watch. It like inspires people. It's inspired a whole generation. Like I love Shark Tank. Me too. Who were the judges when you were on? It was, so it was Robert. Yeah. Kevin. Laurie, Damon, and Mark. So did any, once you, like, walked out of the tank or whatever, 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? Not at that point. So at that point, like, I mean, I walked out and, like, you know, kind of nothing happened. Yeah. And they're like, we aired. They saw immediately that, like, from our airing and the response that they got that, like, this was something unique. Was it one of the highest rate, like, in terms of products that, like, kind of

didn't make it? It's pretty quickly. Yeah, it was like, 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. Right. 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.

And then it just kept going, kind of rolling from there. So wait, so when did you raise money, like the next round? So you did 500,000. 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 300,000 circled. I went for 700,000 on Shark Tank. I actually needed that money

and I didn't get it. So I just kept like, I mean, I was freaking 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 until we sold, basically. Okay, so how much in all the money you raise?

How much did you raise altogether? It's like 220 million or something? That's a lot. It was not a little, yeah. Wow. So how much did you get diluted with all that? A lot. Like 80%, 40%, 60%.

Yeah, like the high, like 80s. 80%. Wow. So like even though you. sold it for 1.15. Billion, yeah. Yeah, it was just an insane amount of money. You, like, walked away with how much?

Like, 100 million? Yeah, like, I mean, that range. Like, you're not, you're not score. It's like, I, like, I made more money than I ever thought I'd ever have, ever. And, like, so I look at, like, 18-year-old Jamie is very proud of 49-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, it's like. They like hundreds of billions. And so like, it's so funny how that happens. 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 a investor. I mean, it's, it's, um.

Well, talk about that. I think people don't know that. I mean, you know, I've had a few people on the show. We talked about how orange 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 20% of the company. A lot of private equity stuff. Yeah.

A lot of private equity. But that wasn't your situation at all. You stole the whole thing. 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 business. And there's people that are like, that build it profitably day one. And they just keep rolling and they own 100%.

Like I have friends that own 100% of some of these big businesses and they'll sell for 300 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 outcome size is different than like what people sort of take and how that is. Right. 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. Yeah. And to do that, you got to 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, like, like, Ring is, I mean, over 100 million devices out in the world today, super profitable at Amazon. A hundred million people use Ring. 100 million devices in the market. Yeah. Yeah. Over. And is it still growing exponentially? Oh, yeah. Very, very fast. So. Because also, you have a subscription model. So you're just selling it and you're making money every month. So we went from three million. So the year I was on Shark Tank, it was like, you know, so like three millions, we kind of hit that. Then 30 million, 170, 480. 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 because of the growth. The actual 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, the scale you needed 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 on a per customer base 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. So how much was your customer acquisition per, how much is it per person? It's, you know, 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? Yeah. Well, what do you use to calculate that? We're built, you know, if I stop all my advertising today. Is our ring sales still going to happen for the next by 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 spend 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 going to sell. So it is very, very hard to get these, these customer acquisition cost solely only working. It's like very clean direct consumer programmatic. You know, you have a ad on meta, you know, on Instagram, on Facebook. It converts or it doesn't convert. Like that's kind of it. Right. It's like performance marketing. Like super performance marketing. But when you're trying to build a brand. It's different. It's different. And it's like, when do you, 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 cheaper to build the brand when it's, when things are more infantile, when it's early. But was it subscription right off the bat? It was subscription. So Doorbot wasn't when we launched that. Right. We actually,

we knew we wanted to build the subscription. We just like, we just didn't even have it. Right. And then Ring when we launched Ring, which was 2014, October of 2014, we announced that like it's going to be the subscription.

And so like that was like when we announced like the real. Like this one we like showed what the thing could really do. So then when did, like, so give me the story with Amazon. Like, who came to you? How did the whole Amazon acquisition happen? This is the problem with being an entrepreneur and doing us up.

Is it just like, it's such a long game. So we started talking to Amazon when I was DoraBot. And just, I mean, just talking to them like they had Alexa. Like we were just like, I mean, just like started like, you know, like having conversations with their device team. And they had a little venture capital arm off of Alexa. So we started. And then I literally flew up because it was Amazon when we were launching Ring.

And a month before we put Ring out. 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 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 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 going to break to this person, make this person. Because again, Nick wanted to also like

get shit out there, make it. That's 2014. And three years later is when Nick and I sat down, basically, and he said, okay, like, we want to buy this. I love that you said that. That is such a important point, right? Because people are very myopic. They think either you're meeting the top person or it's like you're out. Exactly. And you have to be so much more strategic, right? Because everybody will, that person that you met with or in any business or company, like, their trajectory is they can be running the whole thing. This happened to me. many times with people I worked with, right? Which means you should be nice to everyone.

You should connect with everyone. No one's too small to, you know, connect with. Because look what happened to you. And this, by the way, this is what usually happens. In my experience, whenever I thought the other way and I thought, oh, I'm happening with the head person, I mean, nothing ever happens. Nothing ever happens. That's always, I mean, like, even now, like, I run ring and someone wants to do something

with ring and they like, I want to meet with you. And I'm like, I'm the last person that's going to actually. actually work on that. Like, find, it is fine. It's so true or 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. A hundred percent. 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. Yep. And by this 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. Yeah. But it is like find those people and then like grow with them and take a long approach at this. And I do think with TikTok and our 15 second videos, like we just keep looking at shorter and shorter term thinking. I think because we have zero attention span. Yeah.

And then we are like we are also completely, 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 interned and the coordinator. Those are the people who are running the. companies now. And the people that, you know, 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. And it is just take the long game. Like it's a, it's a, 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. Someone's going to scratch you off. They're going to buy one lottery ticket in their whole life. They're scratch it off and win the big pot, whatever. That happens. But it's not likely to happen. It's not likely to happen. to you. 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 get lucky. But for the average person who's going on grit and hard work and like all the persistence, you got to like play the long game and you've got to be super, super strategic and be like, be nice to everyone, meet with everyone, like make everyone your friend. I know a lot of the probably top

VCs in the country now. Yep. 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's just such a better world to be like just nice to people and talk to people.

Totally. And like, who gives a shit who someone is? Like, 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'd be very focused on, I need that person, I need that person, only that person. And that's typically, that person is not the one that actually is going to, you know, make your, make your dreams come true. 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 $100 million and you're going to, you know, make it. Let me share my daily routine game changer with you. It's the Momentus 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 crea-pure creatine boosts both physical and your mental performance. The grass-fed weight tastes great with no weird after-taste, and their omega-3 is a must for recovery. Since adding these, my energy,

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Yeah, I mean, he wasn't like nobody. I mean, but like he was like, but he certainly wasn't like meeting the way. Yeah, it wasn't Jeff Bezos or like the heads. 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? 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, 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. Yeah. The person in the device group was doing stuff. So 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 you as a 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. Before they bought you? Before, oh yeah, yeah, way before. Yeah. So did they just pay you like a consulting fee? Or did they were like, more just it was a channel that we would, you know, kind of use. Okay. Like a partnership. A partnership. And so, but that's how we started to meet them. And like, and so just, you know, but it took, there 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 of Amazon bought us. I mean, it's like, 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. Did you have anybody else who wanted to buy you guys? 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. Yeah. And that they really backed the companies they bought. And I just was not done with ring. I mean, as you can see, I still there eight years later. So, like, I certainly wasn't done with ring.

But I really wasn't done with it. Like I really wanted to keep building it. And 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. Like who? I mean, like just a bunch, you know, like big companies.

Like big companies. Yeah, I know. What's big companies? So, but like, you know. Is this what you told me before? You're like, don't worry. I know how to like... 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 a What was the name when the company start with? 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 for sale. And it was like, partly we weren't. The other part is like, I wouldn't have sold to them because I know how they are with companies.

And I wasn't trying to sell. Like AT&T or Samsung. I wasn't trying to build still this mission and making neighbor 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, this mission. Have you met with him since? Since we sold? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, do you see him all the time? Are you guys, like, golfing buddies? Jeff doesn't golf.

But, I mean, we're, we're, we're, we're, I would consider him a friend. I mean, yeah, I think, I hope he considers me. I think he considers me a friend. I mean, he's, you know, you don't want to say, like, say, like, no, no, but, like, when did he, when did he kind of enter the picture? So they're, they, at that point, they had. realize 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, because he just sort of a little bit. And then then the problem was then they'd have to be like, well, that's not a price we can do. Like,

it sort of would become like crazy because Jeff just loves entrepreneurs. Jeff loves inventors and entrepreneurs. Really? And he loves people that build stuff. Like Jeff truly is like just like loves to be around. Everyone's going to now contact Jeff right now with their idea. I mean, if you can get to him, he loves to, he would talk to anyone forever about interesting things. I love that. He loves, he's like a sponge of just wanting to understand. He's curious. He's like a very curious person. Really? Yeah. So then when, so at what point did they, did they get you to mean him? So it was basically right after we signed the deal that I finally kind of like, and I, I, I, I, I met him, but not like, you know, like, met him like, oh, like this is, you know, like, very like. 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 then when before you got 1.15, what was the initial amount that they offered you? Less. Yes. So, but it was just funny because so they offered me, but not that much less. Like more than 700 million? 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 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. And, like, if you sell, it's like, okay, well, why did you sell for that price? Like, you have this company that some people could have said the company was worth $100,000. People could have said the company was worth $500, whatever. It's like, no, you're right. Like, I agree. The company's, on one hand, it's losing money. It could have been worth $0.00. The other side is, it could be worth, look at the growth rate. It could be worth $10. And so you, as a board, you can, so you had to, so we brought in J. P. Morgan. Okay. Noah Weintraub and J. Morgan as an investment bank. And it was hard because it was like, Noah's 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 it anyone else. And it's like, Noah's like, oh, you know, it's like,

that's why I asked you was, there was not even like, you didn't even go out with a business thing. Because I said, this was like, again, I, I'm probably like, I was probably too crazy about this mission and like, 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. Right. I'm just like a, like, so I said to know, like, we're not selling anyone else, get the most you can, and then we'll sell to Amazon. Are you serious? Yeah. 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? 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. Yeah. And so for me, like, 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. So who does that for you? 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 buy the book be like a CEO. Right. They have to have like their weekly meeting and they do this and all the stuff and it's like, it's just not who they are. Yeah. 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 I in fact, I call myself the chief inventor. We didn't have a CEO. 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 50,000, 20, whatever. And then like the real CEO comes in to scale the business, right? And, you know, that, like anything, it can work. I mean, you saw it with Eric Schmidt, with Google. Like, yeah, 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 look at a hundred of those examples, they're probably like one of the few that actually work. Right. Because usually when you bring in that CEO, they destroy the whole company.

The whole company. Exactly. And so I stayed. Because what you said. Like first of all, what you just said was so smart, was so true. And I've seen this a million times. Because you as a CEO, you're bringing the vision. You're bringing the passion.

And you're leading the ship, right? So people, 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. Like you're setting the corporate culture. Yes. I said the culture.

I said the, and also I'm super driven. I wanted to win. Yes. So you're setting all these macro big things, but I wasn't doing like a weekly team meeting to go over whatever. I don't even know how people run a business. Like I couldn't even tell you. Like 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 again, I always look at the inputs. Like to me, the business is like the output side. Right. The inputs are like, do we have the right product? Are we fixing customers' needs?

Like, if you fix, if you, I would say, if we make neighborhood 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 going to buy it. 100%. And you're going to 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. 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.

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

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, like, it's like, that's been good. No, but what I'm saying, but then you left. And then why did you come back? So we sold in 2018. I stayed for five years.

And I took it from literally the year before I sold, so 2017, we did $480 million, the year before that $170. We go to Amazon and we grow like a freaking weed. I mean, we just, I crushed it. And I was like. How much did you sell? It was crazy. Like it just grew and grew and grew and grew and grew.

I mean, billions. And so, and I got a profitable. So into 23, profitability, crazy growth. incredible invention, you know, every, every, like, whatever you want to look at, like, whether it's reviews, C-Sat scores, whatever the things, like, everything was, like, kind of 10 out of 10, 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? Would you do it? I'm like, I went to work. Like, I was like, this is great because now I have a big balance sheet to work off of,

like, we're going to go faster and harder. So for five years, I was like, I went to, like, full grit grind mode. Like, what was your schedule? Like, give me an example. I mean, I mean, It was never stopped. What time did you start work in the morning? 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 stopped. Yeah, I just keep on going on. It's more like it's like constant than it is like an actual like. Did you go to the office or did you do it from home?

Office traveling. I mean, a lot of travel. A lot of like I, in person is big for me. Really? Like I think in person meetings, you mean. In person meetings. Obviously COVID was a weird one. But, but besides that, it's like, you know, retailers and like, I think, you know, you've got to just be out there.

And, you know, I'm like the sham wow guy. You know, I'm like Billy Mays, you know, like, I'm like an infomercial. So like getting, you are. Look at your shirt. 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. It's amazing. And 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 going to make neighbors safer and people safer. And, you know, and you're like the promotion guy. I'm a promoter. For sure. For sure. You bring the enthusiasm, which is also so important. 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'd expected. It's, I think it's probably the best purchase they've ever done from a company side. Totally. And so I, like, I just was burnt out.

I'm like, I needed to just do something else. Like, I need to, 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. So I was going to say because it's not that like, you went back pretty quick. I left for like a year and a half, yeah.

So what made you go back so quick? A couple things. One is, I mean, I was, it is like my baby. Like, I mean, I wear the ring shirt because it's like, it's like my baby. It's like my baby. It's like I have one son and I have like this one. So I have like two kids. Wow.

So 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.

So 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 fires and the Palisades that was like the breaking point for me of we like, there's so much more we can do. Like what? Tell me. So 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 I'm sorry.

Yeah. And it was just 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, because AI, like, before AI, you could not have, like, you can't just dump 10,000 cameras into a anything. It wouldn't help. It would, 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. And so 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 watch duty, 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. Wow.

And so that was like 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 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. So you went back to them and said, I want to come back. Yeah.

And they were super cool. They were like, that's great. Like, okay. Like, we'll have you back. I was like, sweet. Well, did anyone take over your job when you left? Yeah, someone took over, yeah. So did they kick them out or what happened to that person?

They decided they wanted to go to something else, yeah. Oh, so it kind of was like. It worked out just fine. It seemed to work out. 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'm. I am hooked on mona vitality.

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Jennifer 20 for a discount. That's mana vitality.com. M-A-N-N-A-Vitality.com and use code, Jennifer 20. What's with all the privacy issues? Like, why are people always giving you such a problem with privacy? I mean, a couple of things. I think whenever you're doing something that matters. Yeah.

And it's almost funny. I would say even whenever you're doing something matters and that's good for people, you always get pushed back. Like, there's, 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. It's so true. So we launched this thing. We launched dog search party. So we launched search party for dogs. It's 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, lost dogs are actually like a huge thing 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 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.

Right. It's like literally no different than like a dog now walking in your backyard. We like, oh, that's a weird thing. 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. Yeah.

And so 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 when, you. You know, I mean, it was like a group of people went sort of like full tilt. I never understood this. 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, it doesn't take anyone's privacy. Like it's actually you're clicking to say I want to call my neighbor. Like you're with a fire thing. You're clicking to say like I want to help in the fire.

So we've made everything, like, I think what it is 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, wait a second, we can have a middle ground that, like, I can help my neighborhood when I want to 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, this like sort of middle world. Let's the world we're living in general. There's a thing. I think everything's polarized, right? so polarized, like, super one side or the other.

Yeah. Like, the reality is, like, the middle is where everything should be. The middle's where everything should be, but that's everything in life. But then how about, like, the Savannah Gunthery thing with her mother? Remember, because you, well, how was that affecting ring? It affects a couple ways. I mean, one is, you know, first of all, it's like, it's probably the saddest thing I've ever seen. Oh, terrible.

And there's still no, there's, it's still inconclusive. I mean, at this point, you, I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like there's just, I mean, I don't, she doesn't feel like there's just, I mean, I don't, she doesn't feel like it's enough evidence. Like, they just don't have... But on the ring, they saw the guy at the front death, at the front of the door. Yeah, so it was actually a nest. Oh, it was a nest. Okay, there you go. See? But... See, that's... I know. Everyone assumes it was ring. Yeah. The thing that was, but the thing that was really, you know, and most of these things like this when they happen, like some, some big event in an area that happens like this, usually 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 a neighborhood in Los Angeles or something happened like that, you'd probably have a hundred people submit videos of cars coming in, cars going out, things, whatever, you know. 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

have done more stuff to kind of maybe catch the person? I mean, you know, they were massed. 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. Like, is what, what, and we don't even have to say them. Yeah. But like in general, like, what is,

like, how is the ring so far? What is some of the attributes that or, you know, things that, things that the ring has that other competitive people don't. You know, it's funny. I mean, I was, I think our cameras to the price, every, price point, I think we deliver the best camera quality. So it's not about being... I mean, not to say that means anything. No, but it's not like... People say, do you have the best cameras?

And like, the best camera is like a little bit... Because like, if you spend $100,000 on a camera... Yeah. Like, there's... 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 do is 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 think they're the best at every price point. And then we've created things like their 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 very quickly. Yeah. 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 talk to this person. I can see it on a video.

Okay. And 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. Wow. Okay. In terms, I didn't even ask you in 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? I certainly have, like, I'd say at different times, I think it's different people because if 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, you know, it takes a village.

I mean, for sure. Is there, is there like one piece of advice that you've gotten over these years that really kind of sticks out? I don't think there is like a single. I mean, I think that's the biggest piece of advice I've ever gotten, I think, is actually that is like, don't give advice. Yeah. Is that, you know, we're all unique. Like, we're all a fingerprint. Our businesses are all unique.

Like the time, people ask me like, oh, I'm building this product. Like, what should I do that Ring did that made it successful? And the reality is like the world's shifted. Yeah. You know, 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 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 for a different time. 100%. And their experience with it.

That's a great line. History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes. Yeah. Where did you hear that? Kevin Sistram told me that, the founder of Instagram. I love that. 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 sort of does, but it doesn't repeat itself. It repeats the same sort of things happen because humans, themes, exactly, which is like the rhyming. So I do, yeah.

I love that. So we never, I got to 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. Yeah. 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? 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, is the largest by far of a shark tank company at that point that it's. sold. For sure. And so it's 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, 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, like a person, like as an entrepreneur. That was like going on to the Olympics. And then I like Michael Phelpsed it. Like, you know, like I won like every medal. 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. How many times were you a shark? Just a couple. I mean, it turns out to 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. No, but a lot of 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. Lurie does a lot. Lori is like super busy. Lori does a lot. Mark does a lot. Mark does the most. But there's a couple people. They're all great though. Like they've all become like that. Okay. But there's a couple of people who don't do anything. 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, went. You did? Yeah, it's one called Moinck, M-O-I-N-K, M-O-O-N-K. And we do direct-to-consumer meat, like, sort of packages of meat from ethically farmed from all these small farmers. It's out in Missouri. Wonderful woman runs it, Lucinda Cramsey. And it's done really well.

It went from doing $750,000 a year to $20 million now. Really? profitable. How much money did you give her? I gave her like a little over 700,000 in the end. And I got it back. She paid it all back. Really? Yeah, which is crazy. And I, so this is my personality why I can't invest in companies. It's 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 of the people. We put a barbecue contest on every year there. Like, I love it. Really? I love that. Bell, Missouri. 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, you will really... Because I'm not an investor. Right. Like, you are not, like, you really want to, you're like a doer.

Yeah. And I can't like have my, yeah, like I have to have my hands into this thing. Yeah. I have no interest in like, like, like, investing is such a boring thing to me in terms of like, it's just making money. Like, it's like just, like a passive investor is literally, yeah. You're just making money, which is like, but there's, it's, I'm glad they exist and it's cool and whatever. It's just like for me. Not for you. Yeah, no. What was another company that you actually invested in? Shark Tank was the only one I did. That's the only one. Today, like in real life, are you an investor now? Yeah, my investor. I have another one called Clayton Farms, which we're just building now a... You like farming stuff, huh? So I do. I like food,

like food state, 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-thru salad place. It's like a sweet greens. Oh. But where it's actually grown in the building. And so your salad is like 45 minutes old. Stop it. World's Fresh's Salad. And we have a location opening up in San Francisco at a couple months. That sounds amazing. It's amazing. It's epic. Where did you find it? So Clayton pined me after I was on Guy Raz's podcast and said he wanted to build the John deer of 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. Really? And I met him. Yeah. And then, of course, I put way too much money in this thing and it's crazy. And like, I will say, like, when I've learned about quick serve restaurants and fast food is if you want to make money, go into fried chicken or burgers. Yeah. For sale. 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 love it. And so I think Clayton Farms is like the greatest thing ever. It's so cool. What kind of sound? How much money did you give the guy, first of all? I think I'm in it for a million now.

So then, and then are they, how much, are they making money at all? No, no, I mean, I know you're not profitable. I mean, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Ames location is actually, like, very profitable. It's like, for, like, a one single location. Yeah. The business is not profitably. Right. And then hopefully launching, I think we, I probably pushed them to make a mistake, which is, like, to try to, like, build it kind of, like, in the Midwest. and like these places where their food deserts. Come to L.A. That would be so well.

I think what we realized is. So we're going 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 really did it because I want to bring fresher food to places that are eating too much processed food. Yeah. It's going to be a two put. I'm going to have to first, I think, build it in the big cities, use that money to then reinvest it in.

And but the Clayton's mission is to do that also. The founder is like super aligned with them. that, but I think we need to, like, grow first in, like, New York, L.A., San Francisco, like, you know, Chicago, Miami. Well, you know what'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. I, you know?

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. And this is like, this is insane. Like, it's like, the taste is different. Oh, it sounds amazing. Yeah. So give me an example, like what kind of salad?

Would it be like a chicken salad? I mean, it is like regular, like whatever, like, we have like, so great salad. I'm going to Google this after. Yeah, the base is great. I mean, 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. 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. That sounds so good. I just do like there. Like, I just get like the mixed greens and like chicken and like, you know, like a raspberry vinaigret. and it's like, that's, I'm done. Like, that's some avocado chopped on there. That sounds so good.

Boom. Those are good. I like those companies. Is there any of the ones that you did? I have one that does firefighting with dry ice. So if you think about it, water is like we've used water since we've had fire. So like whenever we created, whoever created fire, like some caveman, use 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. fire because fire is both, it's basically heat and oxygen, and dry ice is cold, and it sublomates carbon dioxide. So if you think about it, dry ice basically makes it cold, so it takes away the heat. Right. And it puts off carbon dioxide, which chokes the fire. Oh, that's interesting. So it's a really, and it does, leaves nothing behind. So if like a house caught on fire and you spray dry ice into it. Right. It wouldn't ruin the house. 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. It 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, this guy who's doing it just launched the first product with it, which is more for industrial. That's a good one also. Battery fires. That's cool. Yeah. These are interesting. Yeah. I'll lose all my money at some point in all these. Oh, that's okay. But listen, you have a lot. I mean, not a billion, but you have a lot. And so how much long, like how long is your deal with Amazon? You're just going to say they're indefinitely. At this point, it's just indefinitely. I mean, it's like, 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. Yeah, I totally understand that. 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 20, 21, 22, 23, it was like more iterative, which is still fine. I mean, I think we still did great products, but there were more iterations. Like, we're going to go higher on the, kilobits on the camera and better audio. 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 going to 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 want to do something else and I'll figure it out. But for right now, I'm just like all in and just building stuff. So you, okay, so I didn't even ask you this because it was not that important, but, well, it is important, but I was more interested in the Rolex watch apparently in the nonprofit. But so you're from New Jersey.

When did you move to L.A.? And where did you go to school? So I grew up in New Jersey. I went to Batson College in Boston. What did you get? Entrepreneurship, actually. Oh, even though you hate being an entrepreneur or not an entrepreneur and all the things. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. So 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.

Okay, so you've been on the West Coast. We moved to San Diego, met a girl in L.A. She said she, I was going to move back to East Coast. Like, I was just like here temporarily. Right. And she's like, and I literally on our first day, 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. My wife. Aaron. Oh, wow. And so, 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 these coast. And you're like, oh, that's nice to know now. I was like, that's really great. I'm like, you're, that's really, give me the ring back. Yeah. No, no, it's fine. Yeah. 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. 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? I worry about that. Right? Because there's no, like, no business is even here anymore. I mean, the, the, the seizure tax, if that passes, will really, uh, I mean, it's already had a huge impact on California. And I think it's just, 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 is, this place has been built on crazy

inventors. But they all leave. once they, before they sell their business, they're all leaving for obvious reasons. I think the hopeful side is there's always more coming in and California has always been a place that just like inspires invention. But yeah, I think it's, 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 Lurie 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.

Are you going to keep on with the ring or is there any other invention in you that you're curious to kind of explore? 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. Right. 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 are your parents so proud of you uh sadly my dad passed away before ring came out so like that was a bummer um 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 uh she's a 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 what did your dad do he was like the

a 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, he was like he was always like the CFO kind of of the company. Like the 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 of your 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 and B.elli. And so all like, it's just like, my dad be telling me this. And I'd be like, looking at Adam and be like, I'm going to be that guy. Right. Oh, wow. So it was just kind of a funny thing of how kids are and, you know.

And then look what happened. You created an entire category that was never even existing before. Yeah. Wow. Did your mother even understand the caliber of what she's doing, like what you did? I think, like, I don't think I did. Well, that's why you kept going to go. I think, like, you know, honestly, until I left Ring, you know, five years after Amazon.

Yeah. Even after I sold it, like, I don't think I fully recognize the impact we had. I think there's 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. Like 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. I'm sure. Are you still, are you still friends with all your old friends like before you became not a billionaire? Yeah. 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, 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 like I've tried to retain friends with a lot of the guys from college or still friends. 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? I think it's actually 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. 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 worse 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 I think it is like if you're, you know, because venture capitalists, like the good thing is they were aligned with what I was doing. Yeah. Like they wanted me to go fast. They wanted me to take the money and like just rip it and rip it. How much do you think it's your likeability and your, you're the kind of person you are versus the idea?

I mean, I think people invest in. Which one do you think people invest in more? I mean, to create like to create something that's like a ring is luck. 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 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 different companies take different types of people at different times that 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. Crushing. 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. Do you think they're going to take over chat GPT in terms of popularity and use and everything else? I mean, it looks like they could be a runaway. It looks like they could be the Nvidia. You know, like, invidia, 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 Amidia. There's people that make chips, but no one's even close to them, it seems. I mean, it actually just looks like Amazon might have now with these like tranium and some of the stuff actually might be sort of catching up which is which is 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 something 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 fascinating to watch it is it's a whole different time yeah is there anything I haven't asked you

or that I miss that you think is important to add? No, I think the most important thing that people are listening is just like, I think it is like go for something, to me it's like go for something you're passionate. If people are listening? I meant, yeah, I guess if, I mean, I shouldn't say if. Hopefully.

Those that are listening. Hopefully have one or two people. No, but I mean, it's like, you know, I'm humble, if, you know. Yes, humility. 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 best developers and the best this. It's like the best developers clod. Exactly. Like it's not no, and 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 100 AI agents at their disposal and then managing that, that's the most powerful thing they can do. Well, there's nothing also that could ever take the place of human connection, relationships, community. Let's hope.

I know. I know. Let's hope is true. 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. Oh, for sure. And EQ is grit.

Yes. Like IQ's not great. EQ is grit. Believe me. I talk about this at nauseam. I mean, if you're listening, people who are listening, this is like my speech every day. Grit, you know, going after things, not overthinking it, like, you know, all the things, right? Like persistence. But what was amazing is like there was a time in the last 10 or 20 years where like intelligence trumped grit. When? Oh, I would say for sure. There's a lot of examples of companies where like,

tell me. Give me three. Kee three. Oh, God. See? I mean, they put me on the spot with that. I want to know three companies where intelligence was more important than grit. Like, write an email later. Yeah. No, but I think there was a time.

How about two? No, I think there's definitely a time when you can't even think of any. I can't think of. I mean, I was on my head. I mean, like, yeah. Well, no, you made a very arching statement. Maybe, maybe you got me. I don't really think if there's any that I think of.

Yeah. I did an entire TED talk on this topic. Yeah, you might be right. So that's why I'd be curious to hear what you have to say. Maybe I always just like to think that like grit matters more with it. I think I want to think that grit matters more they I, because the more you democratize information. No, I'm saying, I agree with it.

But then I was like thinking, I guess it's always been grit. When it's not grit, it's nepotism. Maybe, you know, maybe you still needed when you're, maybe you need a gritty person needs less of the super intelligence stuff. Like now it's like, because it used to be still like, like Facebook still needed, Google still needed. Yes. So maybe it's like you could.

build those now without having to find you. Because you used to be like that was part of the hard part was like finding these engineers to come on there with you. I hear what you're saying. Maybe it's that. Well, what I would think is what you need for a deadly, 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 because usually one doesn't come with the other. Right. Street smarts is very different than academics. Yeah. I'm a big street smart person. you know but i do think the world's going to go more to the street smarts now because the academic side has been democratized yes okay that's i guess maybe that's my but i don't 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 well i guess maybe you could look at like the founders a lot of companies had to code before like like mark zuckerberg yeah okay like mark zuckerberg the the next mark Zuckerberg is not going to be, not going to necessarily be someone who, like, came for a place where they had to, like, code and they were, like, Mark Zuckerberg is incredibly intelligent. Yes, he's incredibly. Like, insanely intelligent. Is he your friend also? I actually, I don't really know Mark that well.

Oh, okay. Go ahead. But, like, but he is insanely intelligent. Yeah. 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 all the coding, the apps, everything else. They're just doing it. They don't know anything about coding.

but they're building this stuff. Who's the most impressive entrepreneur that you can think of? There's a ton. Who's the most impressive entrepreneur? I mean, 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. And it stands for someone who's like a great human too.

So it's kind of like all of it in one. Have you ever have you ever? Never met him. No, I know, I got to, I need to like, it's like, I don't know, I keep always saying I got to reach out to. I just have never, I've never met someone that seems to know him to like get, yeah. Interesting. So I got to, I got to, I got to, I do need to make that happen because 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. Yeah. When you go into a store and you see Dyson on a box, whatever that box is, a hairdryer, a vacuum. You're like, I know this is the best. So true. And that, I wanted ring to stand for that in our own way, in our, not the best, like, in the Dyson way, but the best in like home security. But it does. Like, that's what's really, it's synonymous with it.

Exactly. It is synonymous with it. Like, when you think of any type of camera like that, like, why if I can't, camera. Ring is the only one. It's synonymous of Kleenex or whatever. I keep on saying and so Dyson is like the Dyson vacuum. Yeah, the Dyson. Like my wife said the other day, I'm going to grab the Dyson. She came and she

vacuum something. You know, it's not a Dyson. Yeah, exactly. Like you said to Mueller, that was Nest or like that wasn't a ring. What a great compliment of something. It's like, yeah. Like that's what I'm saying. What you did was like incredibly just impressive and every way. 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 who've done incredible things. But that's like my space of what I look at. And that'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're...

You should definitely buy a ring. Yeah, 100%. But 100 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. We have lots of high features coming out. So, yeah, I mean, the ring, 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. I know. I like my, thank God I have my ring. I love it. Thank you. And I'm not just saying that to be polite. I mean it. No, I appreciate that. All right. Well, thank you for being on the habits and hustle. I think we're done. I think I've asked you every question that. Thanks, I mean, people can, I came out with a book called Ding Dong. Why did you say so? 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. But that is like ding don't. When did it come out? It came out last year. Okay. 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. Can I say one thing that's driving me crazy?

Okay, you're sure 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 as a coffee stain. I've been staring at it the whole time. This is like an older one. So like this is probably, the sure is probably. But I don't know. Maybe I should.

I don't know. That's just like something I know. 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. 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, please let me know. And then thank you to Jamie. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Bye.