This Week in Startups - E1129: Ring Founder Jamie Siminoff on launching the Always Home Cam – an autonomous indoor drone, taking his company from bad reviews to a billion-dollar acquisition by Amazon & more

Episode Date: October 23, 2020

Check out Ring: https://ring.com FOLLOW Jamie: https://twitter.com/jamiesiminoff FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

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My friend Jamie Siminoff, the founder of VIII. ring.com and a shark on shark tank and a great friend of mine, a great creator. And one of my biggest misses as an angel investor, we were just laughing about it before we went on air. If you want to see Jamie's prior appearances, episode 90 in October of 2010, he was in the first 100 episodes, episode 277 in 2012, episode 700, 2017, and back, again for his fourth appearance, Jamie Siminoff. How you doing, brother? I'm doing great. Thanks for her. Thanks for having me back on for the fourth time.

Fourth time. You're almost in the five guest club. That's when we send you a blazer. You get a blazer and it just has the twist, bulldog. The green jacket? You get the green jacket, absolutely. We're going to make them. It's definitely going to happen now that we're in our 11th year of the show. You remember the show back in like when I started it. Totally. I think you used to have people at like the Mahalala. when you were doing it there. Yes. We'd have people at the Mahalo office,

and it was kind of like sometimes I do it on Friday nights. People come by for a drink and hang out, and you were on those early shows. And people don't remember your early days as an entrepreneur, but I was always super impressed, but how you understood consumers' behavior. One of the things you created was phone tag, correct? Yep.

And this was a brilliant service. You would let somebody forward their messages. voicemails to Manila, where the Philippines are somewhere, where somebody would transcribe it, send it back to you with an MP3 in your email. Greatest service ever. Is that service still running and people still using it? It literally just sold again to a company called U-mail, which was just like crazy to see that happen. And now that's built into every phone, I believe, right?

Like people transcribe them and use AI to do it. Back then, AI didn't work. So you did that. Then you did something called unsubscribe.com, which was a Chrome extension where you would press any button and you would get that person unsubscribed from spam email or any newsletter. And that, too, had some level of automation. Explain how that service worked. And you sold that one as well, right? So best product, worst business ever.

And it was just basically getting rid of everything that the hard sort of spam bots were not able to get. So the gray mail, the newsletters, and you just would hit a button unsubscribe, and then we would go through and crawl and figure out where the links were and where to put in your email address and make it automatic. It was amazing because it's still 50% of email is gray. So if you look at the amount of time people spend on it, it's still a huge problem. It was just one that no one wanted to pay for. And so, you know, that was that.

That's a big lesson, isn't it? like you can find something that's a pain point in your life. You can build the perfect solution to it. But if people won't pay for it, it's not going to work. Yeah. And then we've, and on that one, I played out sort of, at least for what I could figure out every single, like every avenue it could go down. And the only way I could figure out how to make money was to do the wrong thing, which would be to try to figure out how to, in essence, get people back in to pay to come back. in to your mailbox.

And so to kind of go the other way. And I just said, you know what? It's like, and that's where I kind of started my missionary sort of business career of saying, you know what, I'd rather lose than do the wrong thing. That's interesting. You are the opposite of some entrepreneurs who are in hot water with the government right now with antitrust because sometimes you get to that juncture and just decide, you know, what, F it, I'm just going to take all this user data.

and I'm going to sell it to somebody like Facebook did or other folks. And then the next thing, I remember you and I went for a hamburger, and you were in your creative phase. And I was just starting as an angel investor. I had Sequoia's little checkbook. I write my little 2550K checks. And you pitched me on the worst idea, I think top 10 worst ideas I've ever been pitched on. And explain what you pitched me on over hamburgers because you took it out of your bag.

That was the pop charger, correct? That was the pop charger, correct? Yeah. The intersection of charging and design. Yeah. Give me that pitch. Just so I know I'm not crazy. You know, I was exploring.

I literally had opened up, as you know, this lab in my garage called Edison Jr., my little garage in the Palisades. And one of the first products was this idea that charging, you know, it's actually looking back, I still think you were wrong because it was, you know, charging, like, our mobile phones were dying faster and were more valuable to us. And so I was, I was trying to build sort of these mobile charging stations and sort of portable charging, you know, point of power, pop. I thought that was very creative. Charging stations and, you know, throw it on Kickstarter. At the time, Kickstarter was just sort of starting out. This is 10 years ago.

Yep. I think we were at the time. I think we were in the top 10 or something Kickstarter. And that was like $140,000. So it's just like crazy. And it basically looks like a little garbage can, like a waste bin. And there are some design elements that I will say are dope. Because the top of the garbage can, the waste pocket opens up and you can put your cables in there.

Yeah. And then underneath you had cables you could basically pull out and plug in. And it was retractable cords, correct? Correct. So this was like, you know, one of those hoses that theoretically gets pulled back in. Of course, those hoses never work, but theoretically they're a good idea. And I remember the really cool thing was at that time there was like micro USB and then there was Apple's horrible iPod connector, which was the first connector.

The long one, like the 30 pin. Yeah. Which was gigantic. And you made it so it snapped out and it was both chargers. Yep. which was, I have to say, that was brilliant. And I asked you like, what is the... You didn't think so.

Well, no, I asked you what's the use case for this. I always think about the use case, right? And you were like, well, you know when you're in the club and your battery's dying? We want the bottle service to come with one of these. And I was like, Jamie, I need to have a heart to heart with you. You are going backwards in your career. And I gave you a... Do you remember this?

I gave you a talk. I do. I gave you a stern talking to. I do remember that. I do remember that. I was like, Jamie, you're Jamie Simeonoff. You made phone tag. I totally remember you saying that.

You made unsubscribe. And now you are going backwards with the pop. You made a battery with a cable. It already exists. This serves nobody. Back to the drawing board. I would never invest in something as silly as this. And of course, whatever, a month or two later,

you had Doorbot. So explain what was the origin story of Doorbop for people who don't know? So Doorby. So here I am. I'm building Pop in my garage and being told by good friends that I'm literally out of my mind. And I can't hear the doorbell when someone comes to visit because the garage is like behind the house. This is a small little house in L.A. I think you had been there once.

But it's like tiny little place, you know, like right on the street. I just couldn't hear the doorbell. The little wireless doorbell wouldn't reach the garage. So on the weekends, and this is actually like, really funny because I had taken a tiny bit of money in for the lab. And so on the weekends, I built this. I said, why wouldn't the doorbell just go to my phone? So I built this thing, DoorBot, to go on my front door, to alert my phone that I could

talk through when someone rang the doorbell. But I built it on the weekends because I didn't want to take the time during the weekdays when I was like a fiduciary to my little company. So that's how little I thought of the idea in terms of it being big at the time. at the time. And I remember looking at this idea and I was like, huh, that's interesting. And then Doorbot was universally panned. The Amazon reviews were absolutely brutal.

I'm looking at them now. 36% one-star reviews. Yeah. And if you read those, it's like that when they read the tweets, you know, on like the mean tweets. Yeah, mean tweets. Dumber than my old. old dumb doorbell.

I would give it zero stars if I could. Nothing worked properly. Don't buy this product. This product specifically says it's quick and easy setup. This is not true. Advanced knowledge of Wi-Fi routers is needed. I honestly believe this company is no longer supporting this device. Two days into making it work reliably.

I was at my front door with sufficient test equipment that I I tried this product for two weeks. I really wanted to work, but it just doesn't. You got absolutely demolished. When we get back from this quick commercial break, I want to know how you took a product, which had, I kid you not, 60% three stars and below reviews,

and turned it into one of the most loved and iconic products of the last decade. When we get back with Jamie Siminoff on this weekend startups, Is your team behind on planning for Black Friday? Or how about Cyber Monday? No worries because Clavio is here to help. Clavio is the ultimate e-commerce marketing platform for online brands of all kinds and sizes with email automation, SMS marketing, growth tools, and more. You'll get everything you need to build a strong relationship that keeps your customers coming back.

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That's KLAV. i.ryo.com slash twist. Get a free trial right now at clavio.com slash twist. K-L-A-V-I-O-O-com slash twist. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. Welcome back to this week and stars my guest is inventor Jamie Siminoff of ring.com. I absolutely demolished Jamie's early career when he was in the trow of despair, which every entrepreneur must go through, correct, Jamie?

I think, you know, as we were kind of laughing about it getting into this, the truth is at the time, it was to, I was, I would wake up at night in my bed and I tried not to wake up my wife when I was crying. And that's like, that's, that's, that's, no, that's serious. Like, I really was, I had, I had, I basically had taken the little bit of like success I had, put it all into this and was watching it in front of my eyes, if you will, the Amazon reviews, go. just blow into the ether. And I didn't know how to get out of it. I didn't know how to build product. I was trying to do the best we could. But it was at the time you couldn't see a avenue out of this. Wow. It looked like a death spiral.

And luckily, I had gone so far down this one-way road that turning around was just death. so I just kept going. But it was brutal. You burned the boats on the beach. There was no going back. I burned the beach, the boats, the everything. Everything, yes.

The compass, everything was earned. The maps. There was no way to get back. We have to make this work. Yes. And in a way, was that freeing in that you knew what direction to go? Or were you still absolutely anxious and, you know, had your toes over the cliff.

I think the problem is in hardware is it's so capital intensive. That to say you're scared looking at the future of like what you, you meet with someone like, oh, what you have to do is hire 500 engineers and rebuild this and you're like, we're broke at the time. And it's like, you know, and yeah, I'm going to now go raise money on what you're, you're seeing like the dashboard is public basically of the company. Yes. And I'm going to go to an investor.

and say, hey, put in $5 million, look at what I've done. And it's like, okay. So it was, it was, you know, it was scary. I mean, it was, it really was. So did you try to raise money and go to people and say, look at my, and they would pull up these reviews? And how do you get over that objection? So I got super lucky. Yeah, again, I would say I was working hard, but I also got lucky. We got on shark tank. And with the awareness and credibility of shark tank, it gave us enough of a sort of a flywheel effect that I could get a little bit of extra money in through sales that I probably would not have gotten otherwise, which let me hire some engineers and rebuild the inside of the company to then go to an investor and say, hey, I see what you're seeing here,

but look at this is what I'm really doing. Yeah. And I brought it to to true ventures and they, like, I think they were so skeptical they had to invest. Like, it was like, it was like such an insane story that it was almost like, let's just see what happens. Do you attribute the fact that you were unwilling to give up to what made you attractive to them as an investor? I think definitely like, yes, I think coming in, like, I should have already shut it down and been pitching them on my next thing.

And I think they were impressed that I was like, and I was totally open about it and humble. I was like, here's what I've did. Here's what I learned. And this is where we're going. And what got them that was the mission. Because my mission from day one with this, which what got me excited about the product was that I thought it could be a new way of deterring crime in neighborhoods that had never been done before. So I really did see early on this, like once I had built it on the door and sort of got there, My wife was kind of the one who said, you know, this makes me feel like we have gates.

And when people come to the house, they'll now think we're home, even if we're not. And so that's what had me excited. And so when I pitched true, I said, you know, this is a way to make neighborhoods safer and a way to build home security and neighborhood security in a different way. And that was the hook. I mean, that was the- So you basically took these really hard-earned lessons. But when you opened the aperture up and said, hey, listen, I know.

that the product got mixed reviews, and let's be fair, it wasn't all bad reviews, and everybody saw the potential. I mean, one of the things you get from those reviews is disappointment because they really wanted this to work. And so that's very powerful. That's almost like, I wanted to love this movie or I wanted to love this restaurant, but, you know, they sat us late or something. It's not like the killer where I don't want this product. It's, I really do want this to exist. I'm rooting for it. It's, and you're right. It's actually very interesting. There's a lot of hardware companies that launched that had five-star review products. But in the review, it said, like, I got it working. The product's great. I'm not that interested anymore. It was like,

and it was almost a false positive then people would invest and put all these, like, like, there's a lot of companies that looked a lot better than we did in this sort of time frame of hardware being funded that looked a lot better, got a lot more money than we did. Where I would look at them and say, wow, man, if I could have raised $10 million, what could I could have done with that? Yeah. And they all just would, like just right into the ground. There was one that was like the XOX or something that was like a camera you would attach to your iPhone that would make it a better camera.

And they had raised tens of millions and, you know, just tons of dashboard cameras, all kinds of interesting ideas that people just, yeah, you're right. They got them working. They loved them in concept, but they didn't actually use them. And this was something that was a really acute need for people. And opening up to a bigger mission made people more attractive. to it. Yeah. And I'd also say because of the people who listen to your show, I'd add this, because I think it is interesting, is that when a product comes out and it's perfect right off

the bat, it's actually typically been, if you look, and I think you can see the data on this, a bad sign for the company, because it means that what you're doing is not innovative enough and it's too easy. And it's almost like having a, again, like you said, like it worked for some people. It wasn't like Doorbot wasn't like a, you know, a total dud, but it didn't do the promise that people wanted it to do. But part of that was because it was so hard to do. And so it took us longer to figure that out. It took us iterations of learning on that, which built that internal sort of like in the company, it built that muscle, which then made us, you know, stronger and obviously into a, you know, long term into a successful outcome. Yeah. If it's too easy, it's not ambitious enough, I guess,

is a way to say it. And this was so ambitious. And providing neighborhood security and this network of security was so, such a big, heady mission. And you immediately saw payoff where people started to have, you know, package, at the same time,

Amazon packages were getting stolen as like a reoccurring occurrence. And you decided to let people share those and build advertising. around them, correct? Not advertising, but we built, definitely built the way. The way for people to connect in their neighborhood, to share that information, to be safer, to talk about what's happening. And so, yeah, we built definitely a very different, it's interesting, even today when people say, who's your competitor?

The truth is that there really is only one ring. The way that we present the product, because we're so missionary, I think, is different than we're not just selling product. a experience around neighborhood security. Yeah. But it was really interesting, I think, as a viral component at the time because social media was getting its legs under it and these videos of people, you know, being able to prove, hey, look, somebody actually took that package.

I can, I can actually prove that that happened. And we can, and then magically, if there was crime in a neighborhood, somebody's, you know, doorbell could be a key piece of information of a getaway car or something like that. What was the first example where you realized, oh, my God, we could solve a crime that had occurred? So we actually, so we had the mission. We were very quiet about the mission externally early on because we thought that we could lose trust with our customers if we overpromised.

And so internally, like if you came to work for Ring, I'd say, here's the mission, here's this. And it was this guy Greg Garfield, who was in Tarzana, which as you know from living in L.A. is just sort of just north of where we were in L.A. And someone came to his door, knocked on it. He saw them on the doorbell. They broke the door down while he's like looking at it. He's like, holy cow. I think probably more than that even. Yeah. And calls 911, cops come, get this guy. He has a gun on him the whole thing. And we take this, you know, burglar off the streets with a gun. And it was just an unbelievable.

Like that was like our first like true. Like we saw the like from, you know, total thing. Like this person who had a gun was off the streets because of our product. It was no longer theoretical. Yes. It was actually reality. The mission. And it was so it was so in your head.

You can even remember the name of the customer. And the exact detail because, and so now that night you go to sleep and instead of prying in your bed, you sleep like a baby for, you're so excited, you're going out popping bottles and taking the pop charger with you. So everybody's phone is fully charged at the club, correct? Yeah, we still had a long way to go. So I don't know, but we were definitely, that was one of the early sort of, yeah, like, wow, you know, and that was actually Richard Branson pinged me like right after that news report came in and that's what got him in. Wow.

All right. When we get back from this quick commercial break, I want to talk about actually all these new products you've come up with and this in the suite of products because I saw you launch something that I think is peak Jamie Semenoff. I think it might be the greatest product of your crowd. I mean that in a good way. That's why I said peak Jamie Semenoff. You at your best.

And I think it'll be your best product ever, and I can't wait for it when we get back on this week in startups. This week in startups is brought to you by Silicon Valley Bank. What's next? What if? Are we ready? Now what? These are the questions that can keep founders up at night and no one understands this quite like Silicon Valley Bank. For over 35 years, Silicon Valley Bank has helped thousands of high growth companies by providing scalable financial solutions along with insights and expertise that many banks.

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slash next. Silicon Valley Bank, built for what's next. Hey, my good friend Jamie Siminoff is with us and we're chopping it up, talking about the old days in LA. And what an amazing journey he's had with Ring. If you don't have a Ring product,

there is a complete line of amazing products at ring.com. You should go check them out. And you released a new product that to me is, as I said, peak Jamie, I think it's going to be your best selling product ever. It is an in-home drone

that'll do what I've always dreamed of, which is, I believe this is what it's going to do. When I'm not home, I don't want to have cameras all over my house on the inside. That's weird. But when I'm not home,

I do want to be able to fly, I think they call it a sortie. Is that what they call it in the business? where the plane just flies over and air and just checks everything out. I want to fly that mission, check every room and have it land again, just so if I'm out where I'm out of town, whatever it is, the drone can fly and tell me there's nobody in the house or this is where fondue is, and I get a little picture on my dog.

Explain this product and how close it is to reality, because I've been waiting for this a long time, and I was actually pitched on two or three companies, one doing it outside of the house, one was doing it inside of the house. nobody's ever seemed to get this right and get a product to market that I know of. Explain the product, what's the name, how much will it cost, when can we get it? So, I mean, you explained it the best because I think products should come from a user need, not the technology. And so we call it the Ring Always Home Cam.

It is a drone, but we're kind of, to me, the drone and the tech and all of that stuff should be something the customer doesn't ever think about. It should be exactly what you said, which is, I also don't want to have indoor cameras all over my home. But if something happens in my home and I'm not there, then I want to literally have every angle of every part of my home to be able to see it. And so what a drone lets you do is do that. So we have built an autonomous drone. You don't fly it like a RC car. You know, you set it up, you preset it up.

So you say like master bedroom, fly the house route. And so you set up the map. and do all that stuff. And then when you're gone, you could always just hit a button. It'll go and it'll go to the master bedroom or whatever and you'll see what you want to see. It'll go back and land on its cradle.

What's also really cool is it integrates to our alarm system. So if someone, you know, if the front door blows open, it'll just automatically launch, go there, and then you can just go right into your phone and see it, be like, oh, you know, no, it's fine. It blew open or, you know, someone came in. Yeah, exactly. Wow.

that's incredible. Can you imagine, though, in the case of a break-in, if that person who broke into that Tarzana home was greeted with a drone, they're running the hell out of there. They're done, they're out. And we call it that it's like privacy you can hear because the drone is actually loud,

which is good because I don't want a stealthy flying camera that I don't know it's there. I love that you hear it. I love that, like, if, yeah, if that guy had come in that door and a freaking shh-h-h-h-h-h-h-hom coming out, like, that is horrifying and you're out of there. So I do love, like, how the whole thing sort of comes together to build a product that never existed. And the price point, which I usually, I never sort of harp on price because I don't think

that's how you compete. I pay, I would pay $1,000 for this instantly. I would not even think about paying $1,000 for it. I would order one for each of my $600. I don't have six hours. I have one. I have one in an office. But I would order those two and I'd order for my parents. I'd give it as a Christmas give it a thousand. I have to figure out there. I have to figure out how to charge you a thousand. It is 249. That's not possible. How is that even possible, Jamie? That's ridiculous. And this is like when we started looking at this,

part of why we never came out with one is the cost of all the components was, I mean, it would easily have been over $2,000 to build this, you know, two years ago. But autonomous cars, all of these things have been pushing the cost of these components like LiDAR down. And so as they come down and come down and come down and they get more volume in other places, it's allowed us to finally cross the barrier of where it's a consumer sort of product that you can buy. Now, LiDAR is a key piece of this. I saw the new iPhone 12 has LiDAR built into it.

That to me is a little bit of a tell that Apple wants to get the price as you're saying of LIDAR down because if 100 million or 250 million of these phones go and they put an order in for 100 million of those little LIDAR units, that's going to lower the price. So with this, is it like, I guess, some of the Google technology where you walk around with your smartphone and you build the model of your house or is that built into the drone where I walk the drone around my house and it builds the floor plan as it were? That's exactly what you do. You basically walk around with it.

It's building it. It's telling you like, I don't have data here, go back. You get to, you then go on and you sort of can build the map and sure your windows and doors are. You put where different things are. Yeah, you pre-build the whole sort of system. And then when you have, and then you pre-build the routes or the sorties, as you said, which I like that. But, yeah, you just pre-build all the routes and then you just have it. You just click on them and tell it where to go.

What would be great, too, is if I, I don't know if this is possible, but if I'm not home, can I set it up to do one of these every hour and make me a little gift or something, you know, and text it to me or something or, you know, have it in the app as like a little looped thing so I could have it, you know, on some regular basis. So I think that's what's exciting is that you could see this with an alarm system when it's, you know, when it's armed in a way, that you say, when it's armed in a way, I want you to do X and Y and Z. Yes.

And, yes, and stitch it together. And I think you've probably seen some of those 3D scans of homes and things like that. So you could sort of see how you could play that out. For now, you know, we're going to walk before we run. There's a lot of technology here to sort of build and we want to deliver on the sort of that first use case. But definitely, I think it could be a better, you know, a product that does more for the home. And again, knowing when you're away from the home and the privacy side of this is just so

important. Like when it's in the cradle, you can't even, like the camera can't see out. So it obscures the camera. So there's just, so it's, it is like a, it is the Uber privacy focused camera that then allows you to have these features in your home when you want them. And of course, that was like the ridiculous late stage journalism reaction to it. It was like, oh, my God, you know, privacy in the home. Now Amazon's going to know what's going on inside your house.

And it was like, wait a second. I looked at it and I was like, that only comes out when I tell it to. It's only to come out when I'm not home. And I think the camera's at the bottom of that like stick on it. So this actually is less intrusive than having cameras inside your home. But of course, you know, everybody misses that because they don't even read or the product spec or watch the video. There was one like tweet that went back and forth and someone said to the person who wrote the first thing about privacy, he said, you know, like, well, here's all the features it actually has, but you probably already knew that. And the person who wrote the original tweet was like, yes, I did.

I was just trying to be, you know, like, it's like, it's like. But it's, it is interesting that that is like, you know, has become a thing, which is like, salaciousness is like better than fact. And on this one, you know, it's, it is loud. It's like, if this sneaks up on you, like, I mean, it can't. It's just like that's what I love. That's what I love about it. Like, I like that.

Like, I like that we built a, just a super privacy centric indoor camera. Does it have like bright lights on it? So if it does go to a situation, it can put the lights on or blare an alarm or something. It has a light on it. And so, yeah, so you have a light on it, camera, you know. See, when the light goes off, that's going to be a big one for deterring people who might come to the house. So if somebody was outside the window and they're messing with the window, yeah, this thing

comes by and puts the light on them. It's like really cool. And then I guess the optional paint gun, paintball gun is coming soon. The ability to shoot paintballs. But, you know, Amazon legal, I think, you know, I think they did not approve that one. So, I'll have to. No armaments on your drone. Yeah, they have to look back at that one.

Actually, if you go on YouTube, there are a bunch of, you know, people in Russia who, like, play with the weaponry or whatever. You've probably seen some of these where they, they just put paintball guns and then sometimes real guns on to drones and they zoom them over. And they, that's pretty, pretty compelling. There's big outdoor drones. I mean, they'll carry stuff. They can really carry stuff. Hey, when we get back from this quick and final break, I want to talk about the acquisition because I had Mark Souser, a mutual friend on the pod.

I believe, was he an investor? He was, yeah. He was an investor, big investor. And I asked him point black, like, hey, if this company had existed today, would they have spec? And he said, I think that would have been a possibility. So I want to talk about the Amazon acquisition, how you made that difficult decision when you had such a great growing business to become part of the Amazon family.

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Let's get back to this amazing episode. Jamie Siminoff back for his fourth appearance. What a great guest. What a great entrepreneur and friend. So you heard the tease. Do you think if the company had existed in this area, would have just spacked? I think, I don't know if we would have spacked. I think we would be public.

And I think we'd actually be a great public company. Looking at other companies, you know, revenue-wise, what we're doing compared to them. I think we would be a very large public company right now in leading pact in the sort of tech space. Amazon doesn't. Of the newer ones, you know, like the- Amazon doesn't break out your revenue. They don't. That's why I'd be a little careful with how I talk about it.

But I do think we would be a... Yeah, it would be hundreds of... It's clearly hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, obviously, because you were at tens of millions when you were a private company. So... We'd be good. We'd be good. You'd be fine being spacked. So how did the Amazon acquisition go down?

Were you running a process and looking for a buyer? Were you out of money and desperate to sell? What was the situation? It's a... I mean, it was up and down. We were raising around. We had a issue come up with an injunction. on one of our products that prevented the round from completing a day before, two days before

the wire. Going into Christmas, it kind of, it was like, yeah, like a patent type thing, an IP type thing. Yeah, and it, and it, it was a little thing, like the actual, like on the surface area of ring, it was like a tiny little area, but the optics of it were just not good. And this, it was one of my best lessons is never have an investor come in who wasn't missionary as well. This was a total financial investor and they just got immediately scared off, ran for the hills. Literally, we had done hundreds of thousands of dollars of consultants in and the whole thing and finished the whole process. The wire was coming. Oh yeah, it was right at the end. Wow,

that is brutal. So going into the holidays in 2017, we have now the maximum amount of inventory out there. So we're in the worst cash position. We were having, you know, over $100 million come in at the time. So, you know, you didn't plan sort of, the way you planned was to have that money coming in, which was coming in. And when it didn't come in, we were then in a very bad cash position. And at the same time, Amazon was sort of talking to us about sort of, you know, hey, maybe we'll do something. They actually also then said, hey, like, we're, you know, until this is solved, we're out as well. So all of a sudden, I went from like either raising around or maybe even selling or whatever to like just end of 2000 like so this is like November of 2017 is just

like and brutal all that work to get to the top of the mountain yeah and then somebody just knocks your legs out from under you and you start tumbling down the mountain again yeah right as you're about to summit we weren't even tumbling we were just like free falling like it was like a that was a cliff and so we ended up settling I hope one of these what do they call those caravans I hope one of those sticks because they're pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, zip, zip. Zip, zip. And so it one did catch that we settled the thing. As soon as we settled it, Mark Schuster came in with a check to back us.

Nice. A big check, but for his size fund, like a big check. I'll never forget him coming into my office. And I said, listen, I understand if you don't want to do this. And he was, during the, as we're still free falling, he came in and said he was going to do it. and I remember saying, like, you know, you don't have to do this. Like, kind of like, and he said, no, I still believe in it. And we're going to do this.

And so that's like one carabina catches. And then we settle the thing. Oof, now you're good. Now you're swinging. Yeah. And then Amazon said, hey, like, well, let's talk again. And, you know, my thing was, at that point, we definitely could have raised more money and could have kept going for it.

But what really did it for me with Amazon was I told my team from day one that our mission was to make neighborhood safer and that we would do anything to scale and to make neighborhood. Anything that would make neighborhood safer we would do. That's how that's where we're going to make our decisions. And if I looked at going public and standalone in X years or being part of Amazon and having a team like that help us to make neighborhood safer, which one's going to accelerate us faster? Right. And to be, you know, I had to be honest with myself and with the team. And I said, listen, this is a good outcome for everyone.

Is it the financially best outcome? I don't know. I'm not an economist. But it is certainly the best for ring. And because of that, I'm happy I made the decision. I think Amazon has been a great family to be part of. They've kept to their word and they've allowed us to really do something exceptional with the brand and help people.

Yeah, I think you know Tony Shea as well And I'm good friends with Tony for a long time And I was always amazed that You know, Jeff, to his credit, like let Tony run Zappos And it always had its own culture And I think one of the great Companies to be acquired by Really has become Amazon

Because they know how to help, but not hurt And not kill the culture at a company And you know, the fact that they kept Tony Shea there for so long It was amazing. The fact that you're still there is amazing. He's still there. Audible. CEO's still there.

Yeah. Cats. Yeah. Yeah. And so it is. Jeff. Jeff has a sort of a tenant that you let, you know, let the entrepreneur, like support the entrepreneur.

You support them. And it's, so it's been amazing. Just curious. Like, does Jeff drive these acquisitions? Is he involved in them? Or does his team just do it? And, you know, he gives you a high five at the end. end. It depends on like obviously where they are. I mean, Jeff knew about this acquisition,

but this was driven by my now boss, Dave Limp, who runs devices for Amazon. So it was in his group. And so Amazon's now sort of, you know, AWS, sort of the commerce business and then devices is kind of three of the bigger pieces. And at the scale Amazon's at now, I'm assuming the manufacturer of your devices has changed completely. You must have learned a ton or no. Was it on the same trajectory it always was? Because they were building those Kindles for close to two decades now. They've been building their tablets and what's their device, their fire or something? What's the one that they're-

Fire stick? Fire stick. I mean, they've been at this for a while. I mean, they even did their phone for a while. They're big, they do a lot of consumer electronics. Alexa, of course. Yeah. It's been interesting.

I always say it feels like when my dad gave me a credit card and said, like, buy the things you need. It's almost kind of like I feel like Jeff gave me a credit card and said, here's the store. You can choose what you want to get from it. But don't let the sort of the stuff fall off the shelf into your cart. So don't let us push things onto you, you decide. And so some stuff we've actually kept very ring, like our marketing.

You know, we've kept it very much because that really shows who we. are in the brand. And so that's really stayed in-house. And then other parts like, yeah, manufacturing, certainly we've gotten a lot of benefit from, you know, as you saw my early days of manufacturing and you said, you're Jamie Siminoff, like, you got to stop doing this. Like, that's the early days, you know, now where we are now. So yeah. And you're doing a ton of marketing yourself. I see you in the commercials. I always get a kick out of that. What's that like to now be like micro-famous or, I don't know, do people like see you on the street and just yell the word ring or what happens now?

Actually, it's funny. The commercials did a little bit of that, but being on Shark Tank actually got, like, that really did when I became a shark on Shark Tank, that like, that was funny. People did, like, say, like, I was at a Lakers or Celtics game or something, or a Clippers game with my son. And this guy behind me goes, you know, he like comes up and goes, you're my favorite shark. And I was like, whoa. Whoa.

Hotel Cuban and soccer. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. How many of those did you do? I only did two. You did two, yeah. So they brought you. That was kind of sweet of them to bring you back and do that.

That's super cool. Yeah. I mean, as you know, I mean, you knew me like early, early on. Yeah. Just being on Shark Tank for me was like winning the Olympics. I mean, that was like, that was huge. And so to go back as like a shark was, you know, that was like 10-n-X. It's interesting, you know, entrepreneurially where until you have success,

people can be very dismissive, and then you have success, and people can be overly, you know, whatever. I mean, just basically fair weather friends, right? I mean, you and I were coming up at the same time, trying to figure this stuff out, and then you get a couple of hits, and then all of a sudden, everybody thinks you're a genius. And you're like, but I was the same person yesterday. Yeah. And it's always been very interesting for me in my career when I've had, because I, you know, had some big early. wins with the magazines and became famous early on in New York and then lost everything, then up again, then down again. Talk about that and just what that's like as an entrepreneur

when nobody wants to take the meeting, nobody takes you seriously, and then all of a sudden everybody wants the meeting and everybody wants to get a piece or get you to be an LP in the fund or fund their startup or mentor you and all that kind of stuff. I mean, I think the most important part of it is to remember. I think you've done a great job of this of like who you are and that like to you said it's like what you said like people are people like money actually is such a bad indicator of how smart they are or how interesting they are even like go past smart like just interesting um and i think it's finding i try to find interesting people um at all levels of their career uh to to sort of spend my time with because that that to me is like what is fun and

when you can fund then someone who really needs it uh you know I love doing that. But certainly you're right. I think there is this, it's kind of like the stock market. It's like if your stock is up, you guys must be doing really well. And it turns out like not a great short-term indicator of how good someone is. Yeah, it is certainly interesting. I always thought you were one of the most talented product people I ever met.

And I always said that. Like people say, who do you respect on a product base? I'd be like, you know this kid Alex 2 from a million dollar homepage and Com and Jamie Siminoff and Elon and Ev Williams and Jack. There's a group of people who just know how to build product. They have this really good intuition about what the customer wants and they have the ability to sort of will it into being. What have you learned on that note about your gift of identifying a problem and creating

the solution? Because phone tag to me and unsubscribe are as brilliant as ring. I saw in those, like, wow, these are just such really great insights. What have you learned about channeling those insights into products? If you could explain it to somebody coming up in their career, was listening to the podcast of how do you take your idea and manifest it in a product and know it's a great idea? So I think there's, I called myself when I started Ring, the chief inventor.

And I think, so keeping that mindset of, I think there's too often we focus on the business. like we focus on trying to build a company. And I focus, when you focus as an inventor, you focus on solving problems. And I think companies exist to solve people's problems. You know, Jeff says Amazon's the most customer-centric company in the world. And I think if you keep that focus, so I'd say maintaining customer focus and not getting sort of letting the company sort of become its own way of pulling you out of that is very important as you grow.

early on, I think also standing for something. I think mission is something I really learned matters because it helps focus your product. It helps focus your solution. It helps get your, when you have a mission, customers want to be part of that. Employees want to be part of that. Investors want to be part of that. So you're like getting all these tailwinds in your direction by having a mission versus just saying, hey, I built this thing, buy it.

I get 40% margin on it. And so I really do believe that missionary versus mercenary is just such a better way to go, especially because most of the time we fail anyway. And so at least if you fail doing something good, it feels better than failing doing something that was literally just for capital gain. Yeah. And when you say that, it brings me back to that moment you were like curled up in a ball

trying to not wake your wife up from sobbing and you're like, you know, if you're going to cry in bed, it's a lot better to cry in bed about something you care deeply about and your missionary about than a mercenary thing. Like, if you're crying in bed because you've built something that's a widget that has no meaning to you. It's like, the only success is like literally success. Like, that's like, it's like if it doesn't make financial success, you lost. And with Ring, once Greg Garfield and I got that kid off the street with a gun, honestly, in some ways, like, I, That was, like, I had, I rang the bell. Like, that was, you know, that was success for the company. Now, doing it more and more was more success, but, but, you know.

Yeah, it's kind of as good as it gets. When somebody has that kind of experience, it, for an entrepreneur, it just, it closes the loop in a way, right? From that moment of inception to the moment of it actually getting there. I was actually with Elon when the rocket got to space and had dinner with them that night, the first time he got there. I was actually at dinner with them as well. and the one sprawled out of control, and it was like so close. I don't know if you remember, you invited me over to your house the night before my son was born. Yeah.

It was me, you, Elon, and there was like maybe two other people. You were playing poker. Ah, yeah. I remember that. Yes,

we were all hanging. And he had just met with the U.S. government to try to get the big contract. Contract. Yeah. And if he didn't get it, I think I'm pretty sure he would have been like, yeah,

I think he said that was like it. Gone, yeah. Like, and so that was, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting how tenuous these companies are. You know, like that one carabina saves you.

You know, two, all of a sudden when two of those break, people forget how much speed, right? Like the velocity becomes, I'm not a math genius either, but I think it starts to become exponential. Like the chances of the next one holding up gets worse and worse, the more force is going down. It's also interesting from the other side is being the carabina for someone is not only a nice thing. It's like not only a good thing to help save someone, but how profitable it can be. Like Mark Schuster, I believe, made more return on that investment in terms of the speed at which he

returned it and the amount than ever in his history of his fund. So he did a good thing. He literally saved my life. And he also got a very nice return for it. So I think, you know, it's a that's fantastic as well. As we're getting towards the end of the hour, and I know you've been very gracious with your time. What is the story with police having access to the cameras? I know that's been a flashpoint. For me, I think it's brilliant. I would love for police to have access to local cameras in London and England.

CCTV has really helped make it a much safer place. In San Francisco, we preemptively banned AI for cameras and we're kind of anti-camera in a city that's overrun with crime. I think it's completely hypocritical. If anybody's kid, God forbid, was kidnapped, they would be begging for there to be a camera network out there. And I'm fine with there being some level of cameras out there to help protect people. And obviously, privacy could be compromised, but I'm kind of okay with a little bit of that risk in order to make the world a much safer place. So explain to people what the network of cameras and that sort of system, the vision for it, and then where you're at in terms of executing on it.

Yeah, I think it's what it's been misunderstood that we built something for the police. We actually built something that is more privacy-centric for our customers, which today, today, in any neighborhood without any technology, if something happens, if a kid gets taken on the street, the police are going to come in, they're going to knock on doors, they're going to ask, do you have camera footage, do you have that? So if you were the person in the neighborhood, you're going to get someone knocking your door in a uniform, And they're going to say, hey, can I see your cameras? And that's just in essence, that is a unnerving thing regardless.

Now, and then the police, you've got to figure out how to get that data, whether it's on a little hard drive or on the cloud or emailing it. So it's a super inefficient process. And it's also not privacy-centric where they're actually face-to-face with you. What we built was a system for our customers that if the police need footage, they can request to our cloud. We then send an alert saying, hey, Jason, this incident happened in your neighborhood. Would you give the police footage from, you know, 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. on this day from your cameras. Now, if you say no, it's anonymous. They don't know. So it literally versus that person at your door.

If they knock on your door and you say no, that's kind of a weird thing to say. And maybe it's because of something, it might not be nefarious. It's just because, like, I don't know, you were doing something weird that day in front of your house. Who knows? Right. And you just don't want to share. If you say yes, then obviously yes. Then we, the foot it, you know, you are now handing it over.

The police then use it under their regulations. So you're creating a process, which then also creates an audit trail. Yes. Which is better for everybody. So if the police were doing something that was Fugazi and they shouldn't be, it was somebody who was trying to spy on their X or something, nefarious, it would be an official request versus the knock on the door request. So now it's an audit trail.

So that's better. tracked, it's anonymous. It's, it's, so that, like, we really did bring to this process,

I think, like we, you know, we upped it. It's very thoughtful. It's very considered. You thought the process through. It's not that they have

unlimited access to every ring doorbell. They have the ability to request access to it. And then you have the ability to opt into that request, which by the way is just making the real world process better. Yes. And you can also opt out fully

and never see it again. So it's 100% in control. And of course, you get barbecued this by late stage journalists who are looking for a headline to just barbecue technology because now all of a sudden, technology and companies and entrepreneurs are the enemy of the state for some crazy reason. It's so weird, isn't it? Like 10 years ago, everybody loved technology and companies and innovation.

And now it's like this weird moment where everybody is a socialist, communist hates it. Yeah. I think I guess a bold minority. I do think I think some scrutiny is good. I should say some, I think scrutiny is good. Yeah. But I do think facts should win.

That would be nice. Yeah. So that's, to me, that's the thing. Like, I'm fine with being grilled on anything that we do. We are a large company. We do, you know, we're doing a lot of things in neighborhoods. And I think there's nothing wrong with the press or someone else giving us scrutiny, I do think that the fact should win. And on this one, I do believe that what we're doing

is really good for our customers, our neighbors, and privacy in general. Yeah, it's absolutely no-brainer to do this to make your neighborhood safer. I don't understand why people would not want to have a more efficient way to just deliver that information and have the a lot of trail. Now, how do you feel about facial recognition? Because that seems to be another flashpoint where people are like, I don't know if I want to be identified. And obviously, in some countries, the government has CCTV cameras and they can track people. What do you think the right approach to that is? So we have not launched facial recognition as a company to our customers. We would not sell it to police or sort of organizations like that. And our

position on it is, you know, as with any feature is until it's something that really brings value to our customers, we're not going to launch it. So I always look at like the always home cam with the drone. You know, I saw that for a long time that I could build something. But until the price point hit the right thing, until I could build the right features on it and thought that it was really a true product that people could use and get benefit from, we're just don't, we're just not going to put it out there. Yeah, I think that's pretty thoughtful. It would be nice. And I think some other camera companies allow you to know this person's home so you can identify specific people if you want to program it. But it's not like it's hitting some database of all faces in the world.

So what about that? If I just wanted to know, oh, hey, this daughter's home or this person's in front of the camera and I program it on my side, is that a bridge too far? Or is that that seems to me to be my choice of which faces? I think it's definitely an interesting new area. And like you said, there are some camera companies that are doing it. Yeah, we're still watching it. We want to make sure that whatever we do is thoughtful and good for our customers. Yeah, it's to me in a city, it's a no-brainer.

I think the way it should work in a city is it should be like when you subpoena phone records where you go in front of a judge and say, hey, there is this corpus of video cameras over the last 10 days in the city, city of San Francisco, city of L.A., wherever it is, London. we have an abducted child, we would like to search for this child's face, for this purpose over this number of days. So we're not searching for your ex-wife for the last year to try to find out who she's dating so you can stalk her or some crazy police officer who's gone rogue. It's like this specific instance, it goes to a judge, the police captain brings it, the

B cops then get the results, and it's for a limited time frame. That would be such a no-brainer and make everybody super safe, which I think they have at all the tunnels. It's one of the ways they catch criminals now is every time they go through an easy pass or something, they can catch them with that. Yeah, I think thoughtful regulation around any of these things is good. Like, that's what sort of the role of government can play. And I actually look at that as exactly what you're saying, which is like bring thoughtful like legislation to the forefront and then, you know, let's use that. Did you guys have your own, like, alarm company to then go, you know, dispatch the police now?

Is that all built in now? We do, yeah. So we have the ring alarm, $10 a month with professional monitoring. So we sort of broke the sound barrier of that whole sort of thing, no contracts. Yeah, so. That whole ADT thing that was paying $150 a month for him getting barbecue. It's crazy. Yeah, we can, we can.

You bring it down to $120 a year instead of. 10 bucks a month. And that's become a popular option, I take it. People are starting to do that. That's been a great product for us. And it's a good ecosystem product because also knowing the status of the home is important to set your cameras of how you want them to give you motion detection of an always home camera like the drone.

If you're in this alarmed away mode, it can do things based on knowing that. So that's really what I love about the alarm is knowing the status of the home of what you decided, not just what some sensor decided, but what you've stated. Like you've said, the status is I'm away and it's armed. That makes total sense. What hardware are you looking at? Like we talked about LiDAR, lowering costs. Are there other things that are coming down the pipe that you look at hardware and say,

hmm, that's sort of interesting. AR maybe? Yeah, I'd say from a hardware side, I think LIDAR is probably one of the most interesting. And like you said, you just see it get in the iPhone now, which I'm really looking for like, are they actually going to make it? So when you're walking down the street, is it going to warn you when you're about to hit something? I do wonder if that's, yeah. I haven't heard anyone talk about that, but people actually do run into stuff.

Like, it's a real thing. They walk into the street and hit by cars. I mean, sadly, yeah. So, like, so I wouldn't be surprised if they build some sort of, almost like a self-driving system in there. Slam on the brake system. Yeah, like, hey, it's like, you're about to bump into somebody at the airport when you're looking at your black mirror. Yeah, exactly. I wonder how far that LIDAR goes too, because my understanding LIDAR on cars is still massively

expensive. And I'm assuming that's because it goes 100 or 200 yards or something. Yeah. I wonder what the field is of this. So it's field of view, accuracy. So all those things come into play with these like LIDAR, radar, all these systems. I think there's a seven feet. And again, the accuracy doesn't have to be within, you know, some of it's like millimeter

wave. And so it's like literally within like. a millimeter, autonomous cars obviously have to do, also they're going much faster. You have to like, you know, like if you're doing 70,

80 miles an hour, think about how far you have to throw it to just make sure that you're getting ahead of where the car would know then to stop or not stop. So there's interesting stuff. But yeah, but that's what's driving down the cost in our area of a, you know,

a few miles, like a, you know, a single digit mile per hour drone does not need to throw the LIDAR, you know, thousands of feet or a, or a phone doesn't need to throw it that far that fast. So Apple is going to come out with AR glasses at some point.

It seems inevitable. What do you think the world will look like post-A-R glasses? Are you excited about that? Do you think that becomes the next major platform and sort of retires the phone or de-emphasizes the phone? I don't think, I really still don't think that the wearing glasses thing happens. I mean, you saw it with 3D TVs and it like, it was a huge thing and like no and we saw it with Google Glass and it was like and and then I just don't think I think the phone I wouldn't be surprised if in 30 or 40 years we still have

something like that in our pocket just because of the size and the efficiency of the you know the problem is anything else like on your wrist or like just the size of it is a physical limitation. Glasses are, I don't know, I just don't see everyone walking around with glasses on their face. I just don't, but you know, what do I know? I mean, I didn't invest in Uber and you did. I didn't invest in DoorBot. Yes. It cost me $25 million. You were raising out, what valuation was that probably? Five. Five. God, it's so painful. You sold for one point? Yeah. It's a couple. Yeah, it's a little bit above that. That's stinging right now.

Luckily, I invested in Comet Five. So, are you angel investing now once in a while? You put a little bit out there? I don't really get a lot. I don't like, you love like the, I mean, you've like made, like, that's like a thing. I don't really love the angel investing. I like when I do like a very specific targeted thing. I did that moink meat thing on, it's like a meat box called moinck to,

on Shark Tank. Oh, what is it? It's like ethically farmed, like, sort of like, you know, natural meats, M-O-I-N-K. And it's like a box that comes to you, kind of like a butcher box. Got it. But like higher-end meats at lower prices.

I love that idea. Yeah, the entrepreneur is unbelievable. She's super missionary in LaBelle, Missouri. I've since bought a farm in LaBelle. Really? Oh, yeah. Look at you. Oh,

yeah. Farm now? So, I kind of like what I focus on things. So, like, on that one, I like, you know, I, like, really, like, I've gone deep. And it's all ethical. And it looks like they have some nice rib-eyes on this. Oh, yeah. The rib-eyes this weekend.

They're very, very good. Yeah, see, that's, and it's grass-fed, right? That's the thing. Yes. Yes. Once you start eating grass-fed, it's very hard to go back because you start realizing, like, the other, the corn-fed beef is so mushy and doesn't. have that flavor. You have the grass-fed beef and it tastes so good. Corn's not as, from what I've

learned, is like, corn's not as good for the animal. It's just like a very high-protein cheap feed. Yeah. And so grass is like what they're supposed to eat. So they're like much healthier, which then, you know, it's like better like environment. It's better everything. So yeah. Oh, congratulations on this one. And they came through shark tank, huh? It did. It came through shark tank. So I've done like a couple, but like very, very select and stuff that I can like really focus. Mark told me like when it's on Shark Tank, a lot of those deals don't actually close because you have to go then due diligence on them.

So what happens after you make the commitment there? Is there like a retrade that goes on or diligence? What happens after the show when you actually have to consummate it? It's just up to you to call them and try and close it. It's just, yeah, it's like it's just, I mean, they obviously want you in good faith to be when you're up there. You're not supposed to be saying like, but as you know with investing, the due diligence is 90% of, like, you know, you meet someone for an hour, great, but like, you know, you got to check

everything out. And so, yeah, like, like Mark said, I mean, not every deal goes through. This one, I mean, I said I'll do 400,000 on the show. I ended up doing 500,000. For what? How much, what percent was it for 20 percent? 20 something, yeah. I think it's going to be a good investment for you. That's a great valuation. There's upside still there. Yeah, it's grown, grown a lot. But it's a nice, I like the mission. Like, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, the meat business. I I mean, there's a lot of, like, factory farming and stuff that's just not good for farmers. And so, like, it's bringing, you know, buying from small family farms is important. So, again, I just, I love like when you're doing something that you can feel good about.

It is a pretty, I mean, when I look at the com.com investment, it just makes me feel so good that, as Alex told me, like, they met with, I don't know, 50, 60, 70 VCs. They all said no. And I got to be the Mark Suster in this situation where I was the carabina that held. And I was like, oh, fuck it. Like, I think this is going to work. You know, my guy, Sam Harris was like, you know, meditation is a big deal. Like, yeah, you should do this.

And I was like, okay, no problem. We'll put in $370,000 out of $5 million valuation, see what happens. That's it. But that's the amazing thing, if you look back, everyone always thinks that like the ones that made it new and the ones that didn't, didn't. And it's like kind of in so ways it's the opposite, as you've seen. Like, there's so many, like, I always laugh when investors are like, oh, I can't. can't get into good deals because it's too hard. I'm like, well, go fund all the people that have great deals that can't even like get to Silicon Valley. There's so many great companies

and entrepreneurs that can't get any sort of oxygen. Yeah, and it's, it is really amazing. You really don't know. If you told me that the two most successful investments would be a meditation app and a cab dispatch company, it's like, they're like, didn't see that coming. Yeah. You know, it's very, very random. And especially early on, both, definitely on Uber, I know, like, early, early on. Like, it was not thought of to be like, you know, it was like a black car thing that you could get picked up and look cool. And like, it was like, Schuster passed on it.

He was at that Open Angel forum. And he always laughs about it. He's like, ah, you know, I left the email in my box. I kind of didn't get to it. I didn't get it. And that's always with you. I always tell folks the story of missing manifestment. And I was like, I thought Jamie was brilliant.

I just, this pop thing was so ridiculous. And then I kind of didn't bet. but I had watched him do unsubscribe and phone tag two products I paid for and loved and I should have just bet the jockey, bet the jockey. Like you believe in a person, just give them money and don't overthink it. And that is my big mistake with you. But at least I get to be friends with you and build that friendship over the years. Yes.

That's more valuable. Well, thank you. Yeah. All right. Listen, continued success, my friend. Thanks for doing it. I hope you got Amazon stock. Did you get stock or cash in this deal?

A little bit of stock? I'm so good. If you got that stock, you're real good. When you sold to Amazon, I think it was probably at... It was like... 1400. Oh, 1400. Okay.

So it's only like... It's pretty amazing when you think about what happened with this pandemic. It's really... It's been such an accelerant to all these people who had never ordered food online, who had never used Instacart or Amazon or Uber Eats, Postmates. It has true... I mean, you know, obviously lots of bad things from this thing and a lot of hard But yeah, it is incredible some of the shifts that have happened that might be 20, 30 year,

like what it would have taken 30 years to shift and just have happened like literally almost within a flash. Yeah. I was talking to somebody and I was asked, I always been asking people like, what do you think? And I've been getting asked. What do you think is being compressed? And somebody said to me, telemedicine was the number one thing. And I didn't even think about that.

And I was like, you know what? That's the one, isn't it? Is there one that's better than that? I mean, that's definitely one. I think office space will be an interesting thing in the future. I mean, there's just, and there's always going to be the one that we, in five years, was obvious, but no one saw. That was like, you know, the one that really compressed it just kind of didn't see. But, but yeah.

Online ordering is an interesting one, obviously, cloud kitchens and that kind of stuff. The online education stuff, I think, is going to be a major one where, people started learning how to educate from home. Obviously, people having studios at home and being able to do Zoom at home. That's another one, telemedicine, distance medicine. But that one to me was super interesting. I'm trying to do the other ones that were. Oh, you know what the other one is?

People using Robin Hood and trading stocks again, which we were lucky to be angel investors in Robin Hood. Oh, wow. They're at 15 million members, I heard. I mean, I don't have inside information. It literally moves the market. I mean, it's, it's. Yeah.

Like, it's literally that, I mean, it's that big. It's crazy. Yeah. When, when, and it's young people making small bets. And that's really interesting on a societal basis because you have boomers who are just playing for their 401k and they don't really care about the environment as much or carbon. And then you have these young people who are like, I just want to buy whatever stocks are going to be good for the planet. I'll buy Tesla.

Yeah. You know, and like you actually have a generational war occurring. Yeah. in in portfolios it's bonkers they're like I want to see a carbon you know I want to see carbon go down therefore I'm going to buy Uber stock I'm going to buy Tesla stock yeah it's pretty amazing it's a lot of interesting stuff happening right now it's definitely it's it definitely a dynamic time um and what do you think's gonna let's close on that what's how do you think this all wraps up you what does your heart tell you about 20 21 we get the vaccine and we're we get

out of this, or do you think this is going to be a two-year thing? You know, it's, I'm hopeful for, as I always say, I'm long world. So I'm hopeful that, you know, a vaccine comes. I'm also very hopeful that, and I think this is going to be more necessary than the vaccine, that there's better treatments, which we're seeing some of those sort of trickle in. But if you had, you know, again, if you could treat this like a common cold, you know, if you could have some better medicine for it, then the, the vaccine becomes less important because I do worry about distributing vaccine to the entire globe in a few months, how hard that's going to be.

And so, like, I think the treatments could be as important as the vaccine itself. So that's what I hope. But, yeah, I'm hoping by next summer that we're all. Back at it. Yeah. Go to a, go to a basketball game again. Oh, be dope. I love to say.

Courtside, finals. Would have love to be a court side for the Lakers. That stub hub app that I haven't, like, touched for, you know, six months. Yeah, I get some of those last minute tickets on the way to the arena. You buy the tickets. Ooh, get a good deal on some good tickets. I can taste the street meat outside. Oh, yeah.

Absolutely. Get that, get those sausage sandwich. With the bacon wrapped around or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. You'll pay for that later. Yeah. I think it is, I think, the other thing that I'm really hopeful about, I've been talking to people is the cheap testing.

And so I've been to a number of events where they had the 15-minute tests from other countries, and they're using, I was talking to an actor, actress, and she was telling me about on set, they have these, and, you know, 15-minute test, and everybody can go on to set. They do them every day. And then, you know, that combined with treatments, all of a sudden we start isolating this thing. We have tracing. And it's unbelievable. We don't have, like, testing and tracing working right now.

Like, this is America. We could have rallied the whole country all. these entrepreneurs and we never use that energy to get this testing up and running. We're only doing a million tests. And in Korea and in India, they have two to $10 testing strips that use a swab in your mouth. Anybody can do them. And people have them all over their house. And there's no more cases in Taiwan. There's no more cases in Korea. Every post office, which is in every town in the U.S. should have been a testing facility. Unlimited. It should have been for the first six months should have been free. You have to go at least once a week and you find this thing, you,

you contact trace it. Yeah. We're pouring trillions of dollars into the economy when we could have just done that. Yeah. And my idea was, we should have said anybody wants a free Starbucks, you know, or any local business. Go to a local business. We'll give you a $5 gift card. and we just give people a $5 visa American Express card to use in a local business in their town if they get tested. So you get off the train or you're walking around town when you park

at the Santa Monica Place or whatever. They give you a test. You can go in and here's your $5 gift card. Free parking and a $5 gift card to use anywhere in Santa Monica place. Boom. Yeah. We're done. That's just failure of leadership

and just execution, you know, like when you look at the entrepreneurial space and how good entrepreneurs, this is why I want to Bloomberg. you know, Blumie would have been so good. He's just such an executive and he would have executed so well.

I just want testing. Testing is just so obvious and easy. Like India and Korea and Taiwan, they all figured it out. United States can't figure it out. We've got the greatest tech companies in the world. We've got the most capital laying around. It should be done by now.

It's so frustrating. I can't wait until we get this done. All right, listen, Jamie, I kept you for over an hour. I appreciate your time. I'm so happy with your success. Honestly, just, you know, we know each other for so long now. I know.

I am so happy for you because it was so obvious to me for so long that you were one of the most brilliant product people. I mean that sincerely in the industry. You just understand it. And it's just so wonderful to see one of the good guys win and win big and really succeed in the mission. So just, you know, friend to friend. Congratulations again. Thank you. And to you as well.

All right, I'll talk to you soon, brother. Okay. See you all next time on this weekend starts. Bye-bye.