678: Jamie Siminoff (Ring Doorbell Inventor) - Shark Tank Rejection, Selling to Amazon for $1 Billion, Surviving $3M to $480M Hypergrowth, Hiring Passionate People Over Experts, and Jeff Bezos's Leadership Lessons

Welcome to The Learning Leaders Show.

I am your host, Ryan Hawke.

Thank you so much for being here.

Go to learningleater.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes.

Go to learningleater.com.

Now onto tonight's featured leader, Jamie Seminoff as an entrepreneur, inventor, and the

founder of the home security company Ring.

He's best known.

We're appearing on Shark Tank, getting rejected only to later sell his company to Amazon

for over a billion dollars during our conversation we discuss.

White Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie quote

a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied with the status quo.

So cool.

And then Jamie talks about the exact hiring filter he uses.

He calls it looking for quote marathon runners and why it's not about resumes or pedigree

for him.

And then we want deep on a CEO or senior leader having a front line obsession.

Jamie still has his email address on every Ring doorbell you buy.

It's crazy.

He's always talking with customers and is constantly working on making things better.

I love it.

And I think you're going to love this conversation with Jamie Seminoff.

This episode is brought to you by Insight Global.

I love the leadership team and the people at Insight Global.

Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light

to the world around them.

If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people or transform your business through

talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have

the hustle and grit to deliver hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be

magic.

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I read that Jeff Bezos said Jamie quote is a real builder scrappy original and unsatisfied

by the status quo.

He's poured his missionary spirit into this book and his story is a real world primer on

founder mentality.

What did it mean to you to have Jeff Bezos say that about you?

It's pretty cool.

I mean, I'd say I think there's some pretty cool things that have happened in my life.

And pretty amazing ones that I pinch myself.

That one was definitely a pinch myself moment.

I mean, I asked Jeff, when I wrote the book, I wrote a book on the story of Ring and I

said, would you do something for the back cover and read it?

And I'd say like a lot of people you'd think like that would just sort of do some sort

of can thing or have someone in their comms group sort of come back to you and say, here

you go, which I still would have been by the way humbled by.

But Jeff is Jeff and he did it and read it and looked at it and wanted to have his

own very curated quote that's from him and so it was pretty incredible.

And I don't I don't think he's ever done any other book back jacket like that.

So in a lot of ways, it was it was humbling and incredible.

We're skipping ahead and we'll get there.

But I'm curious.

I remember I had the founder of Whole Foods on.

So he negotiated with Bezos and John Mackey.

That was a fun conversation.

What was the negotiation like because you eventually sold your company for over a billion

dollars to Amazon?

How involved was he or the conversations like I'd love to go inside the process of that

transaction?

Yeah.

So for our transaction, which happened after Whole Foods, I think they learned that Jeff

just loves entrepreneurs and so I think they learned to keep Jeff out of the negotiations

because he does it.

I think he's like, and I love entrepreneurs.

I find it hard when you're to negotiate hard with someone who you respect is that's

pretty hard to do because it's like, you know, Jeff's a builder, he is an inventor.

So for ours, like we worked with like the Corp dev people and you know, it was a little

bit sort of more high to picture like one of these deals going.

That said, they were very like they understood we were a startup.

They leaned in, you know, these are never they're never easy.

I mean, you're selling a company for over a billion dollars.

There's a lot of a lot of emotion on all sides that takes place.

So you could have kept going without them personally, it's probably really hard to pass

up the money.

Amazon is one of the biggest and best companies in the world and of all time, it's their

founder, right?

As we're talking about is also someone that I think is well respected by all and has built

something incredible.

Why say, okay, yeah, I'm going to go join them or be a part of them or sell to them as

opposed to saying, no guys, let's just keep doing this on our own.

Hardware companies take a lot of cash.

So balance sheet matters.

We grew and we started revenue, $3 million, $30 million, $170, $480, which by the sounds

like to anyone listening, like that's amazing, like what a great growth.

But the problem is when you think about it is how do you go from $170 to $480 is you're

buying, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars of products when you're selling less

than that at that time.

So you're busy always in some ways going out of business if sales growth slows because

you're overordering in order to sell.

And so we were in a position where like, from we were going from $480 to over a billion

as great as that was when we were selling, it's like anything that happened in the market,

we were toast.

It's like on a motorcycle going 200 miles an hour, like if a leaf falls down and hits me,

I'm dead.

And so at Amazon, you know, we say like, hey, we need another billion dollars to order

stuff for next year and we're growing, they're like, okay, sure, what else do you want?

And again, it's just because compared to their balance sheet, it's just the size of ring

compared to Amazon, it just was able to tuck in and fit in.

So from that side, I really wanted my mission to make neighborhoods safer.

I wanted to keep sort of doing that.

I wanted to be the world's largest home security company.

I wanted to have a huge impact and I did not want to ace the thing into the ground, which

was a very likely scenario if we kept going alone.

Looking back, I think we probably would have been fine because you can, again, you can see

how the capital markets were.

You can see how the growth was.

I mean, like you can kind of see everything now.

But I'd say with the information we had at the time, it was a great decision.

And I'd say what we did with the business has been great.

I mean, like the impact we've had has been incredible.

It's crazy to think from an outsider's perspective, you're like, oh, he's making whatever

they're doing, 500 million bucks a year in revenue.

Obviously, this dude's crushing it.

He's probably being able to relax, enjoy life, you know, go to work and work hard or whatever.

But it sounds like that sounds amazingly stressful to have a company doing that much in

revenue and yet could die at any moment.

Our growth was so fast that it's what kind of killed us.

And it's in such a weird, irrational thing because you're right.

Like when you hear it, oh, we did 500 million this year.

People are like, oh, that guy's rich.

That company, they must be worth a fortune.

And it's like sort of yes.

Again, the other side is if sales went down 20%, that's 100 million in sales on a company

that just doesn't have the balance sheet, like we just didn't have it.

And so it was super scary.

And at some point, I just got to the point where like, you know, it's like, do you want

$1.15 billion or to keep trying to go with this thing?

And like, I mean, in some ways, it's almost like Vegas where you're putting your money

on black and you double and you double and you double.

And at some point, you're like, I'll probably lose if I keep doubling.

I'm curious to this balance of you are a scrappy inventor.

You're a builder.

That doesn't always mean you're going to be a good business person.

And in a lot of cases, they're not, right?

It's like one or the other.

They're the great musician, but they don't understand how to set up.

So they have to hire other people.

How was that for you being the scrappy inventor of this builder?

I don't know, it sounds like you know what you're talking about.

It's funny.

When you say it like that, so I think I am a great inventor.

And I see it like still humbly, but like I have, I guess a track record that's, you know,

decent of inventing things that never existed that have done pretty well.

So I'm going to like take that.

And then I've done a lot of invention around how to like build a company fast, like how

to allow it to scale fast, like the invention on that.

What's interesting is that if you're trying to like follow this, there's a lot of people

that made more money than me and I'm fine.

I'm not like trying to complain, but because they're more business people, like they would

have looked at how to operate ring from a more profitable, because like, but I was deluding

myself with raising money and I like, and there was ways to sort of engineer it to make

more money as me if I had looked at it in that way.

But I didn't care.

All I wanted to do was grow it fast, get product out there, build more product, invent

more things.

And so I kind of like see that there's something like business people and I always say there's

like different types of entrepreneurs.

I'm more of an inventor entrepreneur.

There's entrepreneurs who are like little business entrepreneurs.

There's people that like we've never heard of that have just crushed it because they're

just maniacal business people.

I am not a maniacal business person.

I am maniacal on product and that I bring invention into like how we run the company.

I was reading that you're hiring people from Craigslist.

You're trying to find people that maybe something's happened in their life.

They're scrappy themselves.

They're humble.

They're going to work.

Can you walk me through maybe earlier in your time what you looked for when hiring other

than like the table stakes of they got to be able to do X, right?

But I'm talking about attributes of people as well as maybe how that's evolved.

If it's evolved over time when it comes to hiring more people to work with your companies.

I'd still try to hire people just based on passion.

And like you said, there is like a table stakes like if you're there to do C++ programming

like it turns out like you kind of need to know C++ programming like there are some things

that are like you have to be able to do the job.

But for most jobs I'd say and especially the AI by the way, AI has made it.

So by the way C++ programming, you don't need to know C++ programming.

Just go to freaking cloud code.

So I do think passionate people that care that want to succeed at whatever the mission is.

Those are the people you want to hire.

So I always say it's for me.

It's marathoners.

It's like someone who wants to run a marathon.

The Marathons are the dumbest thing that any human could ever do.

If you win it, no one cares, I did the boss marathon twice.

So stupid.

30,000 whatever people run it.

I finished like 22,000s place and I'm so proud of myself.

Like it's like my proudest moment is alone finishing the boss marathon in 22,000s place

that I worked a year for training every day and spending hours doing it.

And so like you want those people that whatever they're doing, they care about getting the

mission done.

And so if you can find those people and especially with AI, democratizing like all information,

just fill your business with those people and you'll crush anything.

How did you and how do you find those people?

Would you ask in the interview process, people are getting better at trying to fool others.

So how do you make sure you're finding those people?

There's two ways to do it.

One is, again, I just sit with them and talk to them.

I don't have like specific questions and all this stuff.

I just want to listen to like, what are they saying?

What are they saying in their lives?

I tell them what our mission is, like our missions to make neighborhoods safer.

Like do you want to work on making neighborhoods safer?

I'm like, because if you don't, you're going to be miserable here.

You're going to hear it every day.

You're going to be like rolling your eyes.

You don't have to care about that.

Like not everyone does.

But if you do great, you're going to love it and if you don't, you're going to hate it.

So like it's always like start with the mission.

I hire fast and I fire faster.

And I think like the reality is, I haven't figured out a way and maybe it's my own failure

in interviewing to raise the percentage of finding the best people versus finding to

your point that people that say like, oh, I'm super passionate.

Oh, my, I love making neighborhoods safer.

Oh, I'm like, it's my life's mission and then they come in and they just, you tell

they just hate it.

And so, you know, if you hire fast and fire faster, like, I certainly don't like firing

people.

Like I don't, I don't like the impact on their lives, on their families, but get them

out quickly.

You found certain things that have increased your batting average.

Maybe it's, they've actually run marathons.

Maybe it's they've had a rough upbringing or a great one.

The best is when someone's referred by someone because they usually feel guilty because we're

very transparent.

Here's what it's going to be.

Here's what we're going to do.

Here's how we work.

If you hate that, don't come here.

And I think when someone's referred by their uncle, by their whatever, like they don't

want to let them down.

And so I have found that referrals, once I don't like referrals, you don't want to make

an organization that's like, oh, you have to be the friend of Jamie to get in.

But the other side is, I think there is a thing with referrals where they don't want

to let you down.

Yeah.

Where someone who's just like a sort of off the street doesn't know anything, no connection,

maybe just doesn't have that same level of care.

Where does this mission from yours come from?

So, you know, it's funny, we started, I invented this, you know, in my garage, I couldn't

hear the doorbell.

I'm working on other stuff.

I just got in an iPhone and they build a video doorbell.

I just built it to like, so I could hear the door.

My wife says it makes her feel safer at home.

But again, the adventure in me was like, realize when she said that, that the way people

were doing home security up until that point was not looking at it from an efficacy side.

And we're looking at it from like a marketing and getting a contract for the home side.

I don't blame them.

Technology had changed.

All sorts of stuff had happened.

But with having the phone, with being able to be connected to your home at any time,

you needed a whole new set of things.

And I realized like these things could make neighborhood safer.

They could actually reduce crime in neighborhoods like my head kind of exploded.

And that is why ring became so big.

It's why it became probably the world's largest home security company, which I think it

is today because I didn't like, you know, say like, I'm going to build the best doorbell

in the world.

I'm going to build the best video doorbell.

I'm going to get patents like it was like, we're going to change the way home security

is done with this like new thing that just happened, which was basically the phone.

Now I mean, I've got one, everyone's got them.

It's like, well, yeah, obviously you would have this, but it's just bizarre that not that

long ago.

And I think even said in your Shark Tank pitch, the doorbell is like one of the only things

that had not been updated or whatever the language you use since forever ago, 18, whatever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just crazy that now at the time, though, it obviously had never been done.

You invented it and now it's ubiquitous.

We all have them.

It's wild and it seems because you are a tinker or you're a builder, you're an inventor.

Your wife said one statement to you and all the sudden it goes, wait a second.

This could be a thing, but it's one thing for your wife to say that.

And for you to have a little bit of an aha moment, it's another thing to actually create

a full-blown company and create a product that seems kind of like a pain to build and

then make it so that we all have them.

I mean, what's the next step after your wife says that?

How do you get this going?

How do you create a company?

Once we had the mission, and Jeff said this like in public too, like this idea of infinite

truth.

So like Amazon, if you look at like Amazon's core principles, they're infinite.

Well, customers always want lower price, more selection and faster delivery.

Yes, like it doesn't matter like, but if you deliver within an hour, they'll want it

in 30 minutes.

If you deliver in 30 minutes, they'll want it in 10 minutes, like they'll always want

faster.

They'll always want lower price and they're always going to want more selection.

So it's like, like you can work on Amazon's customer offering of like e-commerce forever.

Like until you're delivering it, the instant you order it at $0.00 and 100% selection,

like there's like you can go forever.

So when I found making neighborhoods safer, it's like, that's an infinite thing to work

on.

And as soon as you had that, that's what unlocked ring from being another little business

that I was working on and tinkering to literally what is today probably the world's largest

home security company because you were now working on something that had infinite possibility,

infinite market.

And then the hard part is when you have that is now how do you bring that down into tactical,

tangible, short term, like every day?

What do you do every day to work on that because you can also get overwhelmed by, and you

see it, companies are like, oh, we're working on solving all X and we're trying to do it

all at once.

And so it is like, how do you eat an elephant?

Like you cut it into very small bites.

Like you eat it like one little bite at a time.

You don't eat it all at once.

So it's called door bot and you go on shark tink.

What was the process like to get on the show?

What were you thinking before?

I just rewashed the pitch, but you know, so you're like standing behind and you did the

doorbell thing.

What was it like leading up to it?

Were you nervous?

I would love to go inside how you were feeling.

So I mean, you know, here I am in the garage.

I'm basically failing.

I mean, like I'm like, there's nothing's going right, but you had started and sold two companies

prior to this.

You know, but we're like very little money.

So not okay.

So online, it looks like you've made millions.

It sounds like you did not.

No.

Okay.

I wasn't broke, but I was definitely not like, I was not rich.

Like I was not like, I should not have been in the garage just tinkering.

Like I didn't have that kind of money at all.

Like I definitely got it.

And so I'm kind of like working on this door about thing.

It's eating cash because it's hard where guys is less than I'd love to go to lunch with

you and chat about my business.

And so I'm like kind of driving to this, this lunch and I'm literally thinking my head,

like, I'm like, Jamie, this is why you, you never make it.

Like because you're literally like, you can't focus.

Like you're literally going out to lunch while you're basically you're burning to the

ground, your family and your garage.

And so I go to lunch, super nice guy, great business thing, talking all the time.

He's like, what are you working on?

God, I'm like on this doorbell.

And by when I, when I would tell people about doorbell at the time, they would laugh.

And they'd usually say, come on, seriously, what are you working on?

Because it was like, I'm working on a doorbell that goes to your phone and they're like,

wow, like that's a circle.

Like, you know, it's like, that's the stupidest they have ever heard.

I mean, literally, that was the response.

And so he's like, oh, that's so cool.

Have you thought about going on a shark tank?

Still a big show.

But like at the time was like, I mean, it was the biggest, I think it was the biggest show.

I think it was the biggest show on TV at that time or like the top five or something is crazy.

30 plus thousand people were applying a year to be on the show.

So I'm like, no, I didn't apply it.

I send in my one of 30,000 application, which I shouldn't, by the way,

I just was like down to my luck kind of talking.

And he's like, oh, the one that producers is asking, they're trying to get bigger products

and stuff like this.

Here's his email.

So I email the producer first and I'm like, hey, it's Jamie.

Here's my website.

You know, kind of like, and I start driving home from the lunch.

The guy calls me.

He's like, this is great.

You got to be a shark tank and I'm like, holy shit.

You know, it's just like insane.

So that was kind of my getting two shark tank, which then I still had to do a million things

that actually get on the show from there.

Like I thought at that point that I was just like, I'm like, oh, my God, I'm on.

But it turned out there was still a million things to do.

And then we go on shark tank.

It's like to your point of the taping.

And if you rewatch the episode, which he did, so they said, like, you have these producers

and they have like your pitch and you got to do all this and they're like, you need

to do a live demo of your product.

And I'm like, yeah, we, you know, because I'm like not telling them that it's like really

not working very well.

Like I did not, of course, I did not disclose that that like this thing is like super challenged

and like barely working if, if at all, didn't seem like the right thing to tell them.

So they're like, yeah, you have to do a live demo.

I'm like, okay, yeah, but let's do a live demo where we just tape it beforehand.

And then we show it because they're just like, you don't want to have all the like things

happening.

They're like, no, I'm like, well, let's do a live demo beforehand because like we could

tape it because like there's interference.

I mean, I tried everything.

They're like, no.

So we do a live demo on the show.

And like it wasn't working like the engineer I had was like literally dying trying to set

this thing up.

Like they're breaking the ones that really had like four in the whole world door bots

that had been like produced by hand.

So I go to ring the doorbell.

If you look at my face when I like turn around, because I look up, it's actually the live

feed like that's on there.

And you kind of see this face.

It's like, it looks like I'm kind of excited.

I'm actually like, I can't believe that the picture came up.

Like I'm like, I'm like, I was like, I was like, watch, I was like, this was really

impressive.

It's a live demo.

In fact, that picture quality from door bot never was is that good again ever.

Like that was like the best if you could ask for like the genie for like one wish.

It was like, just make that that one goddamn doorbell push work on Shark Tank, please.

Like just make that one work.

I don't care if anything else works just in my life, just make that one thing work.

And it worked.

You even held up Mr. Wonderful's face right in front of it and it was like going crazy.

I like, yeah, I went for it.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

And so they're all saying, no, no, no offers.

Mr. Wonderful's the last I watched it is a family show for us, right?

Mr. Wonderful's like, yeah, let's do some royalty garbage that he tries to do with everybody

else.

And you kind of stand firm and you ultimately walk away without a deal.

Like how are you feeling in that moment?

I cried in my car on the way home.

I mean, I really did go in there being like, Mark's going to give me the money.

We needed money.

Like I needed money.

I wasn't trying to just get markets around like I needed money.

I mean, it's because now people are like, oh, it's so great.

You didn't get a deal.

I'm like, it's like, I knew it was going to be a billion dollars.

So like why take a deal?

You know, it's like, but at the time I needed money back.

Sadly, and Mark was out immediately, and then the Mr. Wonderful deal, just you can't

like, yeah, I'm just telling you how bad hardware is on cash flow.

If immediately you're giving cash flow out, like it just, if there's no way it would

have worked.

I left it.

I was devastated.

Doesn't he know that though?

Why offer a stupid deal like that?

Uncertain things that can work, but not like yours where there's all that cost.

Firstly, you offer it because like someone's willing to give you like a crazy good deal

on a business like you take it.

So I think that's like the first thing.

The second thing is the way the show format works, if you don't have that negotiation

at the end, it's likely you won't air.

Oh, okay.

And so a lot of what he's doing is actually he's probably the most friendly to the entrepreneur

because by us having that negotiation, it creates the book end to the intro to the

end.

And if he hadn't done that deal, I might not have ever got on air.

A lot of people, I know there's a lot of people that go on shark tank to tape don't actually

go on air because it's just like it's like a boring episode like it's just like, you

know, I get on there and pitch and nothing happens and I leave no one wants to watch

that.

Got you.

So you leave.

You're crying in your car.

I literally cried.

Devastated, but something changes.

What happened to go from that to where we don't have any money?

I genuinely need money to a billion dollars.

The good news is at that point I was too far into it.

But I couldn't back out of the business.

If I had at that moment, just went back to the garage and said, I'm done, I would have

basically been personally bankrupt because I had already ordered too many products and

like I owed too much money already.

So like it was kind of a boiling the frog thing.

I didn't realize I was that deep in, but like, you know, it was like 30,000 for this.

You kind of like, okay, great.

We'll sell these.

And then all of a sudden, you realize if you don't sell them, I was in a bad place financially

from that side, if the business didn't continue.

So I couldn't stop.

I didn't have the right to stop.

So people always say like, oh, like people think I'm like tough.

That's so tough that you kept going.

It's like, no, I actually had to keep going.

It's actually the opposite of tough.

Like I was like a chicken shit.

I just couldn't stop.

And so I kept going.

And then when Shark Tank did air, it gave us a huge boost of sales.

That gave us like a cash injection, which then we were a little higher, somewhere people

to build ring, then we were able to sort of raise some money around that.

And so that like, you know, there still was a lot of hard sort of things along the way.

But I'd say the airing of Shark Tank would start the clock on if you wanted to plot success,

like that's when it kind of started.

Because from that moment on, we kind of had like momentum that we could kind of keep

trading on.

I also read that you were naive at times.

And sometimes that can be really, really helpful.

How was being naive, helpful to you?

What's a superpower?

I mean, everything that you try to do, I mean, great inventions are things that people

say can't happen.

Because if people said they could happen, then they'd already be out there.

So like, you know, if you look at like James Dyson and some of these amazing inventors,

you know, Elon, I mean, people said the electric car couldn't work.

You can go back and there's all this stuff about how it like can't have enough this and

you won't have enough capacity and like, so you have to be smart enough to sort of not

put yourself into too bad of a situation.

But naive enough to say like, I think I can do this.

I don't even know that I can't.

And so people said you couldn't build a battery operated camera at this time.

We don't want a Wi-Fi like, but I didn't know.

I never built anything.

So like, what did I know?

So we just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed to what they would

work together.

It's funny.

My first sales job after I got done playing football after college.

Amy was, is this sales rep and it was 2008 and people were like, dude, oh my God, that

had to be the worst thing ever.

Terrible mark and all this stuff.

And I was like, I honestly didn't even realize it.

I didn't watch the news.

I didn't do anything.

I was just like, you know, going to work out in the gym, do my sales job, hang out with

my buddies.

I didn't even realize that there was anything going on.

I'm like, I'm glad it was just like a complete meathead idiot.

But sometimes that can be really good for you.

I think a lot of times it is because we get so wrapped up in like the GDP is going to

be down 1% off of whatever and the stock market is crashing.

You're like, oh my God, but the reality is like the markets are still huge.

The consumers still huge.

Like, but people build more businesses usually when things are down when they're up.

And so you're right.

I think it's a hard thing to tell someone is you don't want to give someone advice to

be like, be stupid, like it's not like good advice.

But the other side is if you try to sort of like do everything right, it usually doesn't

work.

Yeah.

And there is something about like naive is kind of part of that is like, and again, especially

break out big things usually come from people that were like, and you'll see that I was

like, that you can't do this.

And part of it too is if you are thinking and analyzing the whole world, that's time

you're not doing the thing.

You're not working.

You're not inventing.

You're not building.

You're not making the calls.

And so sometimes it can knowing too much or trying to know too much gets in the way

of actually doing the work.

And I think that's a key takeaway for anybody is if you're sitting there like building

all these plans and thinking about stuff and all it's like, when are you actually doing

the work?

Yeah.

Because that's ultimately what's going to build ring.

And speaking of ring, the guy who owned ring.com, I believe one of the sell to you for

two million bucks, right?

Two million bucks.

And you're like, well, two million bucks.

So you're out of your mind.

Can you tell me the story of how you are able to get ring.com?

My name is Marie Moore.

He wanted to sell it for a lot of money.

I ended up getting it down to like 750,000.

And the day I'm supposed to pay him, I have 178,000 in the bank.

So like, you got to start to figure out that math.

So I call him up and I'm like, hey, listen, my board said we can't do the deal.

Like they just, you know, which is sort of true because it's like, I didn't have a board,

but it was me.

But it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't completely untruthful.

So my board said I can't do the deal.

But they did approve me to do 175,000 today and a total of one million for the purchase.

So I'm increasing now the price and paid over two years.

And so the guy, like, F bombs and just, I mean, the guy thinks he's getting $750,000

that day.

And I like basically tell him the day of the wire.

And so just, you know, just not happy, hangs up the phone, calls me back, like, you know,

I mean, he's like, fine, you know, I was like, like, it was like, but then I'm like, okay.

So because I'm like, figure out, I'm like, listen, we'll give him a 175.

And like, if we can't afford the domain, it's because the business went out anyway.

So like, I don't need the domain for a bankrupt business.

And if a business works, we'll, you know, we'll buy it.

And so I didn't end up being, you know, anyone working out for us.

I guess for never worked out because he got $250,000 more than he thought he was going

to.

And he really wasn't my best from a negotiation side.

It was, it wasn't my most moral negotiation, but you gave him all of the money you had.

Isn't that a very scary moment?

It was a terrifying moment.

I had a venture capital investment from true ventures coming in.

And that's why I kind of like was timing it.

I didn't tell true ventures.

I didn't tell them that I was buying a domain because I was worried that, so they were

giving us like five million, I think.

And I was worried if I told them that basically like 20% was going to a domain name that

killed me.

I'm trying to keep everyone happy without like, like blowing the thing up.

And so then true ventures delays their wire like a week or two, just like, but they're

just like, yeah, like we have this going on.

Do you mind?

You know, I'm like, Oh, sure.

It's okay.

And they're like, Oh, we want to do this.

Why I'm like, could we maybe do Monday?

Cause like Tuesday was payroll.

And so I'm like, could we maybe do Monday, the one ever, you know, and they're like,

Uh, sure.

Okay.

I'm like, great, great.

And so they like wire the money on that Monday and like, you know, Tuesday we make

payroll.

But like that was definitely like, I was like, we're not making payroll.

Like we're not making payroll.

I cannot.

I don't know if I can live that.

I mean, that's why you're, you know, whatever you don't, you're done.

But I also read you did struggle to sleep mainly cause you're working so much, but I would

imagine that would hurt sleep too.

Stress was like, that's the thing.

I'm not.

There are different types of entrepreneurs.

I met lots of different types.

There are people that can do that and literally sleep like a baby donor.

They don't even care.

I internalize this stuff and it just destroys me.

So like, I wasn't sleeping.

I was super stressed.

I mean, so I wasn't, I wasn't doing it out of like a chest pump.

Like, I'm tough, whatever.

It was more like survival and doing things to survive.

But it was affecting me terribly.

I mean, it was really bad.

How did that affect you in your personal life?

My son was like three and like when I started, so he was kind of like at that point five,

six years old or something, I just have one kid.

So we actually were very like transparent at home, which helped.

I just talked like openly like when my son was six, like he knew like where the business

was.

Like he would be like literally like a kindergarten teacher who would say to us like,

I hear the business isn't going well.

I'm like, yeah, but we're just open.

Like it was just a very open adult conversation always, which I think helped on that because

it wasn't like I was trying to hide anything from them, but it just takes a village.

I mean, like having my wife and son sort of supporting me the whole way, but yeah,

it was still pretty tough.

I mean, it was definitely stressful.

What is your messaging around work life, integration, work life, balance, not killing yourself

along the way with stress and not sleeping and trying to stay healthy, but also trying

to build something extraordinary?

How do you think about all of that now and what advice do you give to others?

I just integrated my work and life and family together.

So like my son, the first door bought that came off the line in China, like my son came

with me.

So we just integrated the work life together.

And so there wasn't like a balance.

It was just integrated.

And I think that's everyone's different, but for me, that was the best way to do it.

So we spent a ton of time with it.

My son's been to like 40 countries and he's almost been in every state.

Like I mean, literally, I'd bring him to every meeting.

I didn't care.

We were going to meet with Home Depot, like Oliver was there when he was seven, six,

five.

Wow.

And then people would say like, it's funny.

People would be like, how do you bring your kid to a meeting?

And I said, like, who do you think they're going to remember more?

The guy that brought his six year old to a meeting or just some idiot with another product?

It's so amazing.

Like we're always scared to be different, but I didn't guarantee you if someone brings

their kid to a meeting with me right now, I will remember that meeting over the 3000

meetings I'm going to have this month.

What a life for him.

He's been in some crazy rooms.

I bet it hurts some amazing stories.

How old is he now?

He's 17 now.

Geez.

What's it like for him?

Because now he's an adult, basically.

I mean, God.

It's pretty funny.

It's just like he, it's funny.

He's like, he doesn't, you know, maybe because he saw all this stuff, like he just,

like loves basketball, wants like working sports.

It's not like he's like trying to sort of follow in the footsteps and be an inventor

and stuff.

Like he's like, he's happy.

He wants to do sports stuff, which is great.

I think everyone should, again, to the thing, like people should follow their passion.

Like you should do what you want to do.

Like that's the best way to do it.

So I've gotten all sides of this.

I'm glad you brought this up.

Some say that's what you should do.

And other people say that's insane advice that billionaires give after they become a billionaire

because it's easier to say what you need to do is go earn a living.

You need to get good at something and then you'll become passionate about it afterwards.

Like how do you feel about that?

Passion and work and doing the thing that you're passionate about.

What's your overall thoughts on that?

I think it's a fair argument that like someone becomes wealthy and says like, oh, go do

you like what you love?

It is hard to see anyone though that's achieved anything of greatness in the world that didn't

do what they loved.

And so I think the other side of it is there are times like, you know, when I was a bell

hop and valet parking cars, like that wasn't my passion.

You know, I did that in high school and college.

I did it to make money.

Like there are times when you have to like work your ass off to make money.

Like I've done sales.

And so, but I think when you start like the career of what you want to try to do and you're

going to set out to do something, like do something you care about versus, I think the

worst thing is when people do entrepreneurship and they're trying to do something to make

money because they, if they fail, like if you fail trying to make money, that really sucks.

If you fail trying to do something you love, at least like you try to do something you love.

Like I always just say like, if ring fails, we try to make neighborhoods safer.

Like we worked on something noble.

If it fails because we just tried to make a buck, that's not fun.

When you talk about sales, I also think you're a much more effective sales professional.

When you are deeply passionate about the mission and about the product that you've created

because of that mission, you can feel it in your voice.

I have since a second week connected on Zoom, like you can feel that this is kind of oozes

out of the person versus someone who's just like, all right, I got to like make some

money.

So I got to sell it.

I think that's a real thing and it's certainly aspirational.

I hope for most people.

If you want to become excellent at anything, there's got to be that care, love and passion

behind it.

If you look back at almost any brand, the original, and over time, they're like loses and

it doesn't matter.

But usually very authentic when they start, like Nike was extreme, like Phil Knight is

an authentic person.

Nike might now just be more of just like a big brand that produces shoes, whatever.

I actually still like it, but at the beginning, like these brands have usually true authenticity

to them that goes deep.

Bring is, it's a big brand, but it's because it was so authentic.

It is authentic.

Like we care about what we do, you know, we just launched this dog search party thing.

That was my Super Bowl commercial yesterday, which was kind of cool.

But you know, it's like, how do you invent something like that?

Why do you do it?

Because you care.

Like you, that's authenticity, which then drives also the brand.

So as the company grows and you're adding more and more people, there are odds that some

of those people are taking it as a job to earn a living and they'll work hard, right?

But they don't care like you do or like some of the earlier people do.

That's just natural as a company grows in size.

So how do you maintain this culture of authenticity and care and get after it as you grow and scale?

One is you have to be realistic that yes, as you get bigger, not every single person in

the company is going to like wake up eating there, like making neighborhoods safer cereal.

I get it.

Like that's just the reality.

I think leadership though is that for my side, if I truly am authentic with it, it does

like sort of usually trickle down so that keeps it, I think having a founder that's there,

that like keeps that energy and authenticity to it matters.

Having other people around us, you know, helps.

I do think also you have to, as a company is bigger, just be willing to be accepting that,

yes, like it's going to be it slightly less.

It can't be perfect.

Because if you try to like keep it to perfect, you're going to like die.

That said, I think you can also do a lot of things to keep it much better than just letting

it sort of go to just like a big corporate board.

There is a difference between being an inventor and being a CEO of a company, especially

a company that gets bigger.

There's more and more people involved.

There's a lot of elements of management, leadership, vision, public speaking, I mean,

a million things that go on with being a CEO.

How did you get good, you're a world class inventor, one of the best of our generation,

right?

But how did you get good at being a leader?

How did you get good at being a CEO and running a business?

I think this is where people overthink what it is to be a good CEO.

A good CEO, a good leader is someone who's leading.

It's like first principle thinking like, how do you lead ring?

You lead it by leading it.

You lead it by going out and installing devices.

You lead it by caring.

You lead it by continuing to invent.

You lead it by being transparent with people and honest.

Everyone knows it ring that I will work harder than they will.

That's leadership.

I think people have come down to leadership as a process and it's a, how do you do this?

How many emails do you send a week?

Everyone knows they're coming from some group that's writing the emails and I think authenticity

and with AI is going to get way more important as a leader.

Just be authentic.

I mean, I think people want to follow someone that is authentic and cares and wants to do

it.

And so for me, it's like, it's not like I'm not a good CEO.

I am a great leader because I'll charge over the hill when the bullets are coming any

day.

It feels to me like you still have and maybe have never not had a front line obsession.

The guy who started on the front lines and even as the company has grown has stayed

on the front lines.

You know the business inside and out.

You're authentic.

I mean, we didn't have a comms team before this meeting.

You can just show up and talk because you're on the front lines.

You understand what's actually going on.

Yeah.

I mean, my email is still on every box.

The letter jatring.com is my email.

It's on every box has been from the beginning.

When you're on the front lines, everyone else respects.

When customer service does it, if someone emails me, I'm going to respond.

They don't feel like they're doing a lesser job because they're not like they're doing

the most important job as in my like we're all there for the customer.

Do you get bombarded with emails?

Not really.

People are pretty respectful.

I mean, like I'd say like every once in a while, there's always like these like edge

things that happen where someone's just like kind of like sadly, like just not respectful

with it and stuff.

I would say most people, yeah, but we mess things up.

And so like I don't care if someone's unhappy, they can email me if they're unhappy.

We mess something up.

We'll fix it.

So overall, I'd say like I don't get a ton because we're pretty good overall.

And by the way, the reason I don't get a ton is because our customer service knows

it at a scale of over 100 million cameras in the field.

Our customer service knows like if they do something egregiously bad and someone emails

me like I'm on it.

Like I'm going to call them like they know it.

And so that everybody, I'd say works at a level that they know that like I'm here.

And so it does keep everyone, I'd say everyone on their toes a little more.

I'm fascinated by that element.

I emailed you and I think you responded in less than an hour about doing this podcast.

And I thought, wow, but it's funny.

I'm curious to get your take on this, but maybe it's different now that you're more

powerful person.

But I feel like some of the busiest people that have the craziest jobs and that you think

are literally building the things that are changing the world respond so fast.

And this has happened to me over the past 11 years.

They're such fast responders.

It blows my mind.

It's a weird thing where I've found that the people that are the most successful, you

can almost tell who's successful by how fast they respond.

Yes.

And it was just so flip-flop of what it should be.

A successful person should respond to you in, you know, a month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the commonality I've seen over the past 11 years that blows my mind.

It's better for me now with a show that has, you know, shown to give others a good platform.

So I get it.

It's more common now.

But it's still even over a decade, people who I would think, oh, no way.

And then 15 minutes later, they're like, sure dude, let's do it.

How about tomorrow?

I mean, it's wild to me how often that happens.

When you're running at like the highest levels, you're actually very efficient.

And there's something about it, but it's 100% right.

And I do.

I even find it like when I look at investing in people, I'll get like a founder of like,

I'm sorry, I'm so busy.

I didn't get back to you or something.

And I'm like, and it doesn't mean that they won't be successful.

But it is a like warning sign because, yeah, like when the most successful people get

back to me in five seconds, it's like, there's something wrong here.

Yeah.

I've been studying a lot, Jamie recently, great teams, specifically the DNA of great

teams, whether it's sports, business, any team.

I would love to hear your frontline obsessed version of what are some of the attributes

or the dynamics or the DNA of excellent teams.

I think the DNA is that people know what they're doing on the field.

But I think I think the best company runs the same as the best sports team, the Seattle

yesterday, like that team ran freaking great.

And they ran great because the quarterback didn't think he's a kicker.

And the kicker didn't think he was a linebacker.

And so like, and he trusted the kicker, trusted the linebacker's going to do his job.

He's not like when they're about to hike it off as the kicker doesn't go back to like

the guys.

Hey, listen, are you going to block that guy over there?

I just want to make sure we should have a meeting about this.

So I think like there isn't a ton of me that happens where everyone knows of play.

Like the play is set, so you know what that is.

And so I think like people know it ring, the play is making the average safer.

We know kind of where we're going.

But we don't have to all meet and talk about each other's jobs.

Jason Matoro who runs my technology, like Jason and I talk all the time, but we don't

have meetings.

I don't even have a standing meeting with the team in any cadence because we meet when

we need to meet.

We talk about what we need to talk about, but like why do I need to?

If these are the best people in the world, why do we need to get together every week?

Do not have a lot of meetings.

I have a lot of meetings on things that need to get done.

Say more.

What do you mean by that?

The best day for me is like a product having an issue that we're going into production

and we need to fix something like that's a meeting like not standing meetings of we're

doing the budget meeting and we're doing the this meeting like how many direct reports

do you have?

I couldn't even tell you.

I mean, not a ton.

You don't have reoccurring one-on-ones or anything?

No, no, zero.

Man.

No, but I talk to people like all the time, responding.

I talk to people that work with me and I don't care if you're a skip level.

I don't even know what that shit means.

I talk to people all day long, all night long, Sunday, like we're talking about like things

but it's event-based.

We have to get the sales up on this.

We have to get like where there's issues, where there's whatever we work on it.

And I trust that people, but if you're not doing your job, we fire you like that's kind

of how it works.

That's the reality.

I just think reoccurring meetings should be absolutely eliminated from the world.

I hate them.

I don't have any.

If I could get rid of the button that allows for them, I would nuke it.

Yes.

Man.

Like it's not first principle thinking, like there's no way every single Monday at 9 a.m.

you have something important to talk about.

It just doesn't, like the world can't exist like that.

There are times when you should meet, but like it should be based on like when you need

to do something, not some cadence and they do, they just become like and they just stack

and stack and stack and like I don't have the best quarterback, have the best kicker,

have the best coach, let them work together, let them practice together.

Have the plays, but you don't need to get together every day to talk about how we feel

it.

Jamie, one more question.

This is a little bit maybe adjacent to what we've been talking about.

And maybe it's personal.

Maybe it's professional.

Maybe it's both.

So let's say we're meeting or I'm seeing what's happening with you one year from today,

exactly a year from day.

And this is called a champagne question and you've got a bottle of champagne.

I don't know if you drink that or not with your wife, your son, your 17, 18 at that point.

You guys are celebrating.

Do you celebrate?

Huh.

Probably something, probably something on the charitable side of things.

Like what?

You know, we do a lot of work in South Central LA.

Probably something more on that, but we do a lot of work with the police, the LAPD.

We also do a lot of stuff.

We have a house in Missouri that at this farm and we do a lot of stuff out there with people.

So probably celebrating something like again, I think the best thing you can do is kind of

service to others.

And so it's probably something where we somehow help someone do something and it wouldn't

be like the champagne thing is like, we wouldn't be like clicking it.

You know, we're not that sort of family, we're like, oh, we did it again.

Like, you know, we sold the business like, yeah, you know, like, like cigars and stuff.

But it would be celebrating it like we were able to sort of do something good, you know,

with our brains and minds and whatever that helps someone.

More service oriented.

I read 75 acre farm in Missouri, like, are you there a lot?

What do you do there?

I love it.

I'm there all the time.

It's, you know, it became like a passion project.

I invested in a business out there called Moink actually when I was on Shark Tank, I went

there, fell in love with the place, became like a, I'm like sort of part of the town now.

I love the people.

The town had definitely been certainly impacted by opioids and by industrial farming and all

the things that are impacting these towns, like, these towns are all over the US, you

know, small little town.

And so I, you know, we started to kind of work there with the towns people and fix the

streets and the sidewalks and put a little coffee shop and everyone's kind of come together.

And it's a really cool place and I love going there and bringing people there and it's

been fun.

Love it, man.

Well, I really appreciate you being here and all the work you do, you're making my

home safer, my neighborhood safer.

So thank you so much for that, man.

I'd love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man.

Absolutely.

Thanks, man.

It is the end of the podcast club.

Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club.

If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learningleater.com, let me know what you learned from this great

conversation with Jamie Seminoff a few takeaways from my notes, frontline obsession.

I love that Jamie still has his email address on every ring doorbell.

And also, by the way, he's a very fast responder, which we found to be a commonality among leaders

who sustain excellence over time.

Back to frontline obsession.

The moment you stop touching the actual work is when you lose the feel for what's really

happening distance from the front line is distance from the truth.

I think CEOs and senior leaders should be obsessed with being on the front lines.

And then the next one got me kind of tuned up during the conversation.

No recurring meetings in the calendar, no standing Monday morning meetings.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't meet with people, but only meet when you need to get

something done.

When you need to actually have a meeting other than that, there should be no standing meetings

on your calendar.

If you disagree, please email me.

I'd be happy to talk about that.

And then the next part of that was pretty cool.

Why Jeff Bezos wrote the first book endorsement he's ever done and why he called Jamie quote

a real builder, scrappy, original, and unsatisfied with the status quo.

What a cool part.

It was, it was neat to have that part of the conversation with Jamie.

You could tell it meant a lot to him.

And then I liked his hiring filter.

He calls it looking for marathon runners and also he hires fast, but then fires fast to

be realizes he makes a mistake.

And I think that's something we all could get better at.

Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message telling

a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with

Jamie Seminoff.

I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and

you also go to Spotify, Apple Podcast, subscribe to the show, rate it five stars, hopefully,

write a thoughtful review by doing all of that.

You are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis.

And for that, I will forever be grateful.

Thank you so so much.

Talk to you soon.