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

Episode Date: January 23, 2020

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

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covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers, and moms of all kinds. dropping May 14th. Tap in with us. Hey everybody, it's Santa from the Vergecast. On this week's interview episode, I visited famed designer Eve Bayhart

and Jason Johnson. They're the co-founders of August, the smart lock company. Eve is also designed basically everything else in the world. We take this one just kind of like hanging out at CES and I was very into the vibe. Like we obviously talked about

the new August smart lock, but we also chatted about the state of a smart home. What's it like working with the big platform companies? How to design stuff for humans? How all the different standards are coming together to make a better home, and also how hard it is to make products that work in both European and American homes. It's apparently very difficult. I also asked them, of course, when they both get work done, which is my new favorite question. Jason gave me the CEO answer, Eve, the designer. A really

fun answer. I think you're going to like it. Check it out. Jason Johnson, Eve Behar, co-founders of August. How you doing? All is good. We're good. So the first voice you heard was Jason the second. That's important for the audience. We're at CES. Again, it keeps happening to us. How's it going with you, It's great. It's been a very fun show for us. So you have some news here at CS. You have a new version of the SmartLock. Tell us about it. Yeah. So every year at CS, we unveil a new product. This year we have a few products we're unveiling. The first jump right into it is the fourth generation August Smart Lock. So a couple of the things people have asked for is, one, to make it smaller. We think it looks great and it's obviously very popular, but make it smaller, make it even more popular.

Secondly, they've asked for us to add Wi-Fi, you know, so it can be able to. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi device. We've managed to do both, make it smaller and add Wi-Fi capability, and it's launching today. How much is it going to cost? A very similar price to the current August Marlock. We haven't finalized. We're just starting production now. It'll come out in the late spring. But you can say very similar cost, but you won't give you the number. That means a little bit more, doesn't it? Well, I mean, it definitely has more functionality. You know, you don't have to buy our separate Bluetooth to Wi-Fi bridge or putting that functionality into the product. It is more expensive to make. It's a very high-end specialty motor that helped us make it smaller. We're using

higher-end batteries. So it's, it is cost us more, but we're trying to keep the price as close to today as possible. Got it. So it's smaller. It uses different batteries, has a different motor. I have two August smart locks. I think I have the second gen and the third gen pro. A lot of names in there. I have two of them. They go through batteries pretty fast. They use four double-eas each. If you use them a lot, they do go through batteries. You're using CR-123. A little. watch batteries, right? We are. Yeah. How are you managing to run these things off of those batteries? Well, with the, with the double-a's, those are 1.5 volts. You have four of them. It's a six-volt system. We're still staying with six volts, but we're using two, three-volt batteries. So, you know,

going from four to two batteries, and they're smaller batteries, too, and they're higher density, three volts each. And so that you're going to keep battery life the same? Well, when you add Wi-Fi, you're definitely going to impact battery life than just having Bluetooth. But we're still, you know, aiming for that three to six month range. And you think you're going to hit that with all the use with auto lock, auto unlock, or is that kind of an average? I mean, certainly the more usage, if you turn on both the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi capabilities, if you turn on HomeKit, that impacts battery.

There's a number of things you can do that impacts battery life. We think that, you know, three months is good. We also have battery replenishment with Amazon. So when you attach any of our August or our Yale locks to your Amazon account, account, Amazon prompts you. They actually ask you if you want to be notified when your batteries are low and have automatic batteries sent to you. That's cool. That's through the dash service. Exactly. You can do that with the previous generation locks down to you. Any of our locks. Because that's one thing I've noticed is when you're near them, they'll tell you the batteries are low,

but you can't get state information about the double A's in particular. Is that something you're adding now? Well, there's always been a battery gauge in the app that appears when the batteries get low. You don't see it until until they get low. And then we push notifications to you and on all that. So now we allow through our API to partners like Amazon, we allow them to know battery status so that they can do things like battery reputishment. Yeah. Are there specific batteries that you want people to use? Like, CR123s are like, I can't even think of what the difference between brands are. Like they're not out in the world like Duracell. Like here's a blue one, here's a red one. Like, yeah. I mean, if you go to Walmart and Walgreens and CVS, I mean,

you'll see Energizer Duracel. They're all there. And believe it on, Amazon let you choose other brands, not just the Amazon brand. Yes. Yes. Does this still have the sort of Z wave capabilities of the higher-end ones that you did before? So, great question. So the August Wi-Fi smart lock has all of the functionality of the version 3 lock people know and love except Z-Wave.

So we did not put Z-Wave in it. We'll still have the V3 walk. We'll still have the V3 lock with Z-Wave. But now with Wi-Fi, you really obvious a lot of the need for Z-Wave. How is that? Do you have to talk to the, you're still going up to your class?

now instead of doing it locally. Right, right. So if you think about Z-Way, people have, you know, smart things, hubs and other hubs in their home. And so they use Z-Wave to talk to the Gen 3 lock. But when you have a Wi-Fi-connected lock, you talk to the cloud. And you can talk to not only smart things,

but all of the platform providers because you're cloud connected. Does that cause some problem, particularly for access control? That's a lot of round-tripping through the Internet to open a door. Well, I mean, people aren't usually using, You're not using Alexa or Google Assistant to unlock doors or smart things.

They don't use that to unlock the door. They more use that for scenes. Like if you want to say good night and have your doors lock and your lights turn off and blinds close. That's really when the cloud activity happens. Got it. So, Eve, you obviously helped redesign this lock. You designed the first one. What were the big challenges and going from the original design to the smaller one?

Well, I think one of the challenges and what's made this adventure really unique is in six, years we've done nine products and every version has gotten better it's been really a huge effort of refinement continue to build a trust and it's gotten us to a place where you know we're we're the leader in the category the bestseller 4.8 stars in the app etc so you want to continue you know that legacy you want to continue building it product after product but this one this product is a bigger evolution It's a bigger change. So the design language, while we use the same materials that people want, you know, the steel and the aluminum and the sort of high quality that people expect out of a product on a door, we start to smooth out the design language a little bit, added sort of curvature to the front, made a transition between the chamfer and that curvature, and then added tactility and texture, as well as, an indicator. So from afar, you can easily tell whether you're locked or unlocked without having

to look at the app or without having to activate the lock. So what you're looking at for the people who are listening is there's a big... There's a little bump. What did you call it? A ridge. A ridge on top of it. And then the other functionality is similar. The magnetic door, battery door. That's really intuitive. And then the LED actually comes through the badge for size reasons. and limitations, we place the LEDs, you know, onto the badge. So it's the same experience, just smaller, works better for smaller hands, kids' hands, you know, putting all in one, not having to manage, you know, an external Wi-Fi element has been, is great.

Yeah. But it's a lot of integration. It took about two years. Two years. Because, I mean, you're obviously adding entirely other radio system in there on top of BLE. Yeah. What was the bring-up on the? not like. So we've been testing Wi-Fi in our locks for years, a whole bunch of different chipsets. And,

you know, back to the battery life issue and also speed, right? So if you're going to unlock the door remotely, say, for a delivery person or a guest, you want it to happen instantly. You don't have to wait. And, you know, with some devices that have to wake up, wake up with the Wi-Fi chip, et cetera. And we finally settle on a very high-quality chip set that could do that really fast. It's really a great experience. Are you able to take advantage? I mean, obviously, you've done a number of products over a number of years, the industry has moved on. Are you taking advantage of sort of the chipsets getting smaller, the intended designs in the industry, in the supply chain getting better? Are you doing this custom? Well, we've been doing this for quite a while now. So we do have the pleasure

working with the chipset manufacturers to do custom intended designs and other elements to help us fit it onto our PCBs, the boards inside the lock, and then simplify the design too. We had two board design in previous locks. This is a one board design. So it, It's evolved. And that's helped you make it smaller. Yes, exactly. It's all about small and, you know, and the feedback so far on the size and the design has been very high.

People really seem to like it. Yeah, it's really nice. You said that there was a custom motor in there? Talk about that. Yeah. So we've been using a partner in Japan for quite a few years now to make these custom motors for us. And they specialize in these really high-end, tiny motors. They put them in $100,000 surgical equipment for operating rooms.

And they came to us, actually, with. with this new design that has the same power output, right? I mean, this lock is capable of, if you could tune it, you could put out 20 pounds, which is a torque, which is a tremendous amount of torque. They were able to bring that same power, same capability in this smaller form factor. And, you know, it's all credit to them.

I mean, they really know what they're doing. So kind of bigger picture, you're very focused on access control. You have a doorbell. You put out a doorbell last year. We're kind of waiting for the second generation the door will come on. Are you thinking about getting broader than access control with August? We are. So since being purchased two years ago by the world's largest lock and access control

company, we in fact have been taking all the technology that we've developed. And, you know, Eve and I always from the beginning thought about the user experience and how do you just create a great experience around access control. And all of that technology has been making its way to our parent companies Yale branded locks. So the Yale locks in North America. America now are all powered by our software and our back end. You can use the August app. And we're actually going to be releasing very shortly here a new app called Yale Access. It's just like the August app, but it's powering the Yale locks that we've already talked about, as well as some new Yale Access products that we actually announced here today at the show.

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

I feel like you are consistently targeting the Airbnb owner with a liquor cabinet that needs to just like keep the door closed. Medicine cabinets. A list of secret compartments. Yes. remotely. How are you thinking about that? As you envision those other products, everybody has a list, everybody has a priority list. How are you thinking about prioritizing that stuff?

Well, no surprise that our parent company as we've worked on these new products, they've wanted us to focus on products that could be sold globally. Right. So the two products I just mentioned, the smart safe and the smart capital lock, these are, are global products. So this would be sold in countries all around the world. And, you know, that's a priority is to take our technology and our user experience and expand that so people can use it everywhere. So along those lines, we also this morning announced a product that Eve and I have been

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

too many different versions in Europe, you multiply that by 10 and that's what locks and lock standards are. And so with Yale, we developed over the last year and a half or so a version that actually will work all over EMEA, so from South Africa all the way to northern Europe, Israel, Israel, Turkey. we have now a lock that will work and that will work across all those different configurations because of the approach we've had with plates in the back, these different plates that adapt to different standards. And also because of the position, so some really interesting things happen in Europe, right? Doors open out in some countries and open in other countries. In some countries, the lock itself goes above the door handle and in other countries that's below the door.

handle and so we have we basically have this the system that allows for you know the brand and the logo to be rotated depending on where you install you know above or below the door and the size it's it's it's bigger than the other lock than the Wi-Fi smart lock or the other locks we made because actually in some countries in Europe you need two to three times more power to overcome It's a pill shape for those listening. It's like a pill. Yeah. Your other, the sort of base model lock you have is very similar shape.

Right. Yeah. So we have our circular locks. We've already talked about today. But we do have an entry level lock in the U.S. it's also pill shaped. Yeah. So again, you've been doing it for six years.

You're expanding markets. You're able to overcome Europe, which I know is everyone's goal at all times, to expand your markets. And especially with hardware, I know that's hard. How are you seeing the future of the smart? You were one of the earliest companies to try to do hardware in the home, to try to change people's behavior around how these things are going to connect to the phone, how people are going to use apps. Last year, when we were here, we were talking about smart home standards. We're talking about the big companies. You and I actually had a great conversation last year about what it's like to go inside of a big company.

I'm always very curious about that with every startup. But it seems like the big platform providers are even more dominant this year. Literally this morning, Sonos sued Google. or patent infringe. It seems like the ecosystem is vibrant in one sense as it was at the very beginning of this entire sort of movement. At the same time, there's more products than ever,

right? But they all have to be sort of subservient to the platforms. How are you guys navigating that stuff? I think with locks for us, you know, from the very beginning, we thought and we built everything around this notion of trust. And this is the only thing that we do.

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

I think there's a lot of trust that goes to small specialized companies that are focused on the subject. Jason, how are you seeing the industry develop? I mean, you took the jump into sort of going to the bigger company a little bit earlier than other companies may have. Again, we talked about us here, but things have changed even in that one year pretty fast, I think, in terms of the ecosystem. Yeah, in fact, I think when we talked last year, we also had unveiled some of our new locks with our other brands, with Yale and with MTech. EmTech is a beautiful luxury, a lock brand that our parent company owns. It's now all powered by August. I think this is really why Eve and I have stayed involved with August, is the fact that we get to work with the world's largest access lock company and make these products that really are the best of class. And we don't compromise, right? I think it's safe to say that, you know, Eve and I wouldn't be doing this if we thought, you know, this is just making more stuff.

we really believe that what we're making is meaningful. It's high quality. It's trusted. And like I say, let's say to people, you know, personally, when I choose technologies to use, I like to use products from companies that's what they focus on. I use Dropbox from my file storage. I use Spotify for my music because they focus on it. Two companies that have famously expanded their offerings. Yes. Yes, but they're pretty focused. And they deliver a great experience. There's like a podcast event. It's probably Spotify's in to that. And this is what we do. I mean, this is this is what we do is we focus on this. And, you know, as you've said, we're not trying to sell advertising. We're not trying to sell data. We're not trying to sell other products. This is, this is all we do.

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

Are you going to be an Amazon house? Are you going to be a Google house? You're going to be an Apple house? You're going to be an Apple house, you know, Samsung, etc. And that's, you know, that's not a good experience, right? And I think you and I've talked about this in the past. I think the best companies in the Smartom space are those that choose, like us, to be neutral. Like I think Lutron and Hugh are good examples of companies that, you know, that sort of play neutral.

I play on all platforms. You know, you've got to make it easy for consumers, right? They want to know if they spend their hard-earned money on these products, that they're going to work with whatever phone they use or whatever smart speaker they buy. And, you know, that is a challenge. It is exciting to see that some of those companies, in fact, maybe all of those companies I just mentioned,

are working on an IP-based initiative, right? So, you know, we've always chose Bluetooth and Wi-Fi because particularly with Wi-Fi, you can assign IP addresses to devices. and I'm excited to see that, you know, that they're planning to work together to make it easier for these things to interoperate. Are we going to talk about Zigby? Wow. This is my dream.

It's, yes. Can I have the Zigby conversation with anybody? I've been walking the casinos. Nobody has brought it up yet. Here you go. Wow. Yeah. So you had Z-Wave, you dropped it.

You just talked in, I would say, affectionate terms about the Zygby project. Are you making the shift? I mean, we love Zigby. We love Z-Wave. We make, you know. Only during this week. at this time, do people say we love Zip, ZigB and Zingway. But yeah, as I've always told you for years now, we've talked about this.

I mean, I'm a believer in putting technologies, especially around consumer electronics, into people's homes that are going to coexist with existing technology. Wi-Fi is pretty much universal, right? So, yes, you want to make a Wi-Fi lock, right? You want to make things that already work with this infrastructure that's there in the home. And, you know, and most people, by the way, don't go buy Wi-Fi route. Most of them, it gets delivered and installed by their Xfinity or their AT&T technician. So, you know, these other technologies, they're great. Obviously, we make products around them.

I'm just personally very excited to see that there's an effort towards compatibility across these various RF and protocol standards. Are you going to participate in that stuff? You're going to wait to see it check out. I think it's safe to say that August and Yale will be very active in not only participating, but helping drive to make it happen. because the end of the day, again, this is all we do. We're not trying to protect any other part of our business.

We don't have an ecosystem. You're not going to start a streaming service? We're not going to start a streaming service. We're not going to make smart speakers. We're not going to make kitchen gadgets. I mean, this is all we do. So it's in our best interest that it all works together. I feel like your SkunkWorks Kitchen Gadget team is listening to this right now freaking

out. I think June is, in June OS, is if you want to follow the kitchen, I'm excited about what they're doing. So I got to ask, last year we were here, there's Doorbell. came out, you pulled it, hasn't really, really appeared. What's going on with the doorbell? So it has quietly reappeared. I'm sorry, we haven't let you know yet, but we do have it available now again on August.com. You know, it turns out it's really hard to make a battery-powered Wi-Fi video doorbell. And the best testament to that is the fact that there's only one on the market

besides ours, right? You have dozens of video doorbells. They're all wired. There's only one that's battery powered. And it's because it's really, really hard to do. And we thought we had it right, and we launched that product a year ago, and we did not like the quality of it. So we pulled it. And now we've just quietly re-released it. And so far, so good. It's performing pretty well. Yeah. What did you have to change? Well, it's really back to battery life. It's all about how you manage battery life. And it's a trade-off because especially with a video doorbell, you want the Wi-Fi radio to be ready and active when someone presses that button. You want to get the certification on your device and you want to answer and have that communication. But you also want to

save battery life, right? So it's that constant trade-off. And so we had to work with our chipset provider to come up with, you know, some ways to manage that power. Give it a good battery of life, but also have it be highly responsive, no lag response. So you said he quietly reintroduced there. Are you going to make some noise around it again? Or you're just going to see how it plays out? You know, it's a great accessory to our locks. You know, we haven't brought it into retail stores yet. you know, we're just, we're making sure it's a really, really good product and it's performing well before we, you know, put it in more places. What is, does that mean that your first set of customers who are, like, quietly discovering

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

battery-powered video doorbell. Yeah, and it does seem quite hard. Yes. The stringing a home kit. Like, HomeKit is, seems like it's changing. Apple's part of the Zigby stuff. The HomeKit video stuff has been very difficult. How are you feeling about that particular world of standards? So we still love HomeKit. The August Wi-Fi Smart Lock will support HomeKit, as will the Yale Linus Smart Lock that we just told you about that we're launching for Europe. So we love HomeKit. It would be great if it was more interoperable and there was more products. I personally am a big fan. Everything in my house has to be HomeKit compatible because I'm an Apple user and I like HomeKit. I like that it's offline architecture, right?

There's lots of great things about it, and I look forward to seeing them work with Google and Amazon and the others to make it more cross-compatible. I do, too. I just feel like you might know more about that than I do, which is why I'm asking. Yeah, no, they haven't told me anything just yet. Okay, this is the question I'm asking everybody this year. It's my newest resolution, because I don't know the answer for myself. And I think you two will have different answers. I'm very eager to ask you.

When do you work? When do you, well, co-founder, CEO of this company? when do you sit down and actually think and work and produce versus go to meetings, have jerks interview on their podcasts, do all the stuff, all their stuff you have to do? Well, you know, I certainly, you know, have an incredible team. And one thing that I learned after I kind of moved beyond the early years of the startup, right, that we're an established company, right, selling hundreds of thousands of locks, I learned that, you know, as CEO, my job is really to hire really good people and to help,

help them and support them in what they do and really get out of their way. So, you know, I, I love to attend product planning meetings and, and be involved. But the truth is, you know, my job is to support them and get out of their way and let them do what they do best. And we've hired some of the best people from, you know, from Apple and, and Google and in other places. And, you know, they are professionals and I support them. And, you know, I guess the one thing that I kind of have to do is, you know, is, you know, come to see us and have conversations with folks like you. Yeah. It's, you know, hey, it's pretty good. I, you know, like, they do all the work. I say yes and take the glory. It's a strong organizational principle. It's how I operate to, I'll be honest with you.

But do you think that you, when do you make time, how do you manage a time between manager your team supporting them and actually doing stuff? That's actually the heart of my question. Yeah. Well, let me be clear. I really don't manage my team. When you hire, when you hire senior level, senior level executives, and I think this goes for most tech companies of Silicon Valley. You hire really high quality people. Frankly, many of my direct reports could replace me. I mean, they're capable of being CEO of August. And so I don't manage them. I mean, I really am there to support them and let them do what they do. Now that, of course, we're part of a giant global company, you know, there's certain things you have to do to, you know, to keep the parent company happy.

And in many ways, I'm trying to shield them from some of those issues. And, you know, I take those things. I sympathize with that too. All right, I feel like you're going to have the best answer this question. How do I work? When do I work? You know, for me, it's similar, but it's a decision I made a long time ago, which was the business side, the legal part, HR, et cetera, isn't, I have a team of about 90 people, 95 people. It's a huge project. And where, you know, I, for a long time, I've had, incredible leaders that do that part, that really, that are focused on that, that are really good at that. And so my role is really creative. And, you know, some days I'll be sketching. Some days I'll be kind of directing brainstorms and trying to sort of support the team through research and exploration

and trial and error. But this is, that's really my passion. You know, my passion is sitting down, understanding the potential of the product and then pushing that forward, coming up with new ideas, drawing, which I still do every day. Yeah. You know, that's... Do you have to tell people, like, leave me alone, I'm drawing right now? I have to tell people, leave me alone, I'm writing right now. I'm just, I'm asking you if you have the same...

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

love to shoot the shit with you and get your feedback and input. Yeah. Does your office have slack? My office has slack, but one of the things I do it, I don't get on slack. Really? So that I can focus on drawing and do it. So you just like quit out and you're done? Or you just don't have it at all?

I have it, but I don't think I've opened it in months. What about you? I have it. But I don't use it. Whenever I ask people, they have slack, they're like, we have slack. We'll give you a little secret. I'll give you a little secret on the where do you work issue, when do you work? So I, you know, I'm co-founder of a private co-working space called Founders Den.

It's just like two blocks from the August headquarters. And I never told me of this before. But when I really need to have solitude to be by myself and work on something, I sneak over there. And I work from Founder's Den. Two things about that answer. One, you just blew your own cover. Yeah, I did. You're deeply burnt.

And two, not the most actionable piece of advice for most people like co-founded private. But open, open plan offices, like, I sit and open, people sit all around me. It's distractible, you know. My favorite piece of advice like this was one time Walt Mossberg was like, here's how you get a raise. You go to the CEO's office and say, give me a million dollars in a key to your executive washroom where I'm quitting. And I was like, well, Walt, you are Walt Mossberg.

I don't think I can do that. So we don't have private washrooms. Like, this is in the Wall Street Journal in 1995, but it's great advice. It was something. Do you find context switching is difficult when, from creative, because you have to go to meetings. Every startup in the valley that makes hardware wants you to design something, presumably you have to go in like... Even an idea context. I'll tell you, he's amazing at it. I've seen him do it very fast. It's

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

Everyone else is like, you have to block your time and, like, only do one thing in time. I knew I'd get a good answer to you. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much. It was exciting to see the new things. We got to talk. We got on a faster schedule than once a year. That would be great. That's an important piece of this. When does a lot come out? In the spring. In the spring. Yeah, both of them. Yep. Very cool. Well, thank you very much. We'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thanks to Eve Behaar and Jason Johnson. I love talking them. I love talking to. I love talking to. Thanks to talk to them. It's always such a good time. We'll be back later later this week with the chat show again on Tuesday with the interview show. Tweet at me. I'm at Reckless. I love your feedback. I love hearing what you think of who we're talking to what we're talking about and who we should talk to next. That's actually really important. So hit me up. Let me know. and we'll talk to you soon.