Ring founder Jamie Siminoff: 100M cameras deployed, AI-powered fire detection launched at CES, and why edge AI ages like fish

bonds, crypto, sec uh treasuries, and more. all with great customer service. Uh, our next guest is the founder of Ring at Amazon. Jamie Simonoff is at CES. We're going to have him break down how CES is going. Jamie, sorry for keeping you waiting. Thanks so much for taking the time to jump on the show. It's great to meet you. How are you doing?

I'm doing great.

I would love to hear how is CES I imagine you've been going a long time. I've actually never been. It feels like a playground for me. I'd love to go sometime, but uh how is it this year? How does it compare to other years? Uh what are you introducing there?

Uh it's so it's it's pretty overall CES pretty fun. Uh I think this is like my 15th or 17th year or something like that. So it's been a long time.

Yeah.

Um I started I I [laughter]

start I started you know building the booth myself and driving it here in a in a in a U-Haul truck.

Um and you know gradu I've graduated now to a booth that you know built by professionals.

Wait how did you build the first booth? Is this like plywood or are you

scraps in a cave?

Scraps in a cave.

I actually took I actually took the Shark Tank set, you know, that was on Shark Tank. Yeah.

And I took the Shark Tank set and we like put it in a U-Haul truck, brought it to CES. It turns out that you can't use power tools

as a nonUN person at CES.

Yeah. Yeah.

And so like we we were like violently like threatened. I couldn't I couldn't afford union labor. So I'm like, "Guys, you're going to have to like pull me out of here in handcuffs. Like I have to get this booth done." That's crazy.

So, yeah, we would literally build build the booth and it got bigger and bigger and now we Yeah, we've graduated.

Okay. Tell me the story of Shark Tank and I want to know if you could play it back uh with everything you know now, do you think you could have convinced the sharks to invest?

Uh, with everything I know now, sure. I would have told them I'm going to build the world's largest security company and sell it for a billion dollars. Do you want to invest?

But you could have told him that. You think they would have gone for that? I I I I should have just told them like, you know, don't worry, I'll I'll let you invest in a 7 million valuation. It's going to sell for a billion. You're totally fine.

Yeah. One of the greatest misses.

But is like to be fair to them at the time, like I didn't know what that was going to do. You know, it was it was uh we were doorbot. We were figuring it out like a lot of, you know, like a lot of startups and things we didn't necessarily pivot, but we pivoted inside of our own sort of mission many times to get to where we are today.

Yeah. And and and how how do you describe uh the scope of the company? I mean, you you teased it. You said it's the world's largest home security company, but what's the shape of that? What's the footprint? What does your organization look like? Take me through sort of a day in the life.

Yeah. So, I mean, you know, because I'm at an Amazon, there's some things we reported. So, we're over 100 million cameras out there. Profitable business.

Hit that gong. Hit that app loving gong, [laughter] John.

There we go.

There we go. It's a camera shaking hit as

congratulations. Uh I I I mean did you ever think you'd be at that scale or what was the initial uh introduction?

No, I I I remember when I launched this thing, Nest I think when Nest sold to Google, it was reported I don't know if it's true, but they were doing like 30,000 like units either a month or a quarter.

Sure. And I remember thinking to myself, man, like if I ever got to 30 thou, like, you know, it's like if I ever got that big, you know, holy, and and you know, we're now I mean, it's like, you know, literally 100 million plus cameras out there. Um, global I and the it's, you know, for me, I we the mission to make neighborhoods safer. the impact we've had there has been substantial and that's I I truly am proud of like I I really try to focus on those things and then the output let it happen let people reward us for purchasing a camera because they think it's going to make their home or neighborhood safer.

Yeah. Yeah. No, it makes a ton of sense. Can you take me through uh sort of how you are thinking about the product suite, the uh the the feature sets like how you're positioning the the overall portfolio and then some of the announcements today.

Yeah. So I mean from a macro side

I I look at AI as IIA. So we're the intelligent assistant. And so our job is now we're you know when I launched Ring a motion alert was like mind-blowing. Like dude you got a motion alert from your front door to your phone. Like that's crazy.

Now you hear too they hear them too often. And so our job is to use AI

to basically curate for you as an individual unique to your home what you want to see when you should be interacting with it and really take down the number of alerts and increase the um the efficacy of them. So that's that's like from a from a macro that's what we're doing.

How are you how are you thinking about the trade-off of like cloud-based artificial intelligence? Obviously processing a ton of video constantly that feels like something that needs to be done on a server. At the same time, there's privacy. So, people might want it done on device, but that creates power constraints and all sorts of things. Have you I mean, also, I feel like being at Amazon's great because I feel like most people trust Amazon to be secure because AWS and all this stuff, but uh how have you have you tussled with [clears throat] like where the AI lives and the benefits and costs and tradeoffs there.

So, for us, it's it's layers. You try to uh determine it's a human or motion event at the camera level. So you're not just flooding to your point like you're not flooding the AI or the servers the cloud with the stuff because it's very expensive. I mean it's using a lot of power using a lot of processing. So it's like trying to have like these different layers but you know where we like to end is the cloud. We like to have the cloud as the place that's doing the final processing. AI is moving so fast that in our area I think anything you put at the edge is going to age like fish on a hot day. And so we're trying to be very careful not to put too much intelligence at the edge because that intelligence it it decays so quickly that by the time you actually ship that product, it's maybe no longer intelligent. And I I want my team to be able to write on and you know build code and put out features that are literally the best in in the world at that moment. And the cloud really is the only place to do it right now for that final sort of piece. Where where are you uh most excited for various models to improve? Like do we need capability advancement or do you feel like there's a capability overhang where there's enough product that that it's yeah more about implementation?

It's such a good question because there's there's so many like places where we're putting models and different models and custom models and the like there's so much coming out. But I would say where you're going with it. I think we are starting to now I think that the AI is ahead of what we can sort of like you know chew and sort of digest our food with. I think it's actually getting farther along than we can put the features around it, the UI around it and and have customers understand it. So, I do think it's actually starting to get almost faster than we are um in that and it's up to us like now to try to figure out like how to get because again no one our our customers don't buy technology, they buy something that makes their home feel safer, makes their home better, like gives them more attachment to their home. They're not buying the best AI. They're buying the best service for their home. And so, it's our job to sort of not sell them technology, but sell them obviously technology in the background, but sell them the features and the services. So, but I do think I have not been able to find lately and it's it's amazing how quickly this is happening. Every idea I have, it's like the AI is ahead of the idea.

Whereas before the team would be like, well, it's not really there yet. You can't do that. Like, you don't understand. And now it seems like it's it's really just going so much faster than even I can sort of think.

Is that is that re-engaging you as a leader? I mean, it's been uh over a decade. I feel like there's a lot of times when you know postacquisition you're at a large company. It can be exhausting. Maybe you want to go fish all day or something. I don't know if you fish, but um uh [laughter] the uh but but the AI moment, it feels like it's been re-engaging a lot of business leaders. Have you had that effect over the last year?

Oh, I totally like I there's so much we can do. We can build it so fast. Get it out. I mean, we launched today. I I was I live in Pacific Palisades, so I live in the fire zone.

Yeah. And um you know it's like yeah as you know like it was a crazy thing. Yeah. So I was able to go from like living there seeing what happened there.

Yeah.

You know and then building a feature that we launched today which I think will hopefully be a a a way to assist uh in future fires which we did with Watchd Duty where now you'll get an alert as a Ring customer if you're in a fire zone. We had over 10,000 cameras in the Palisades area.

Yeah. And so now you now you would get an alert that says like would you like to join in to watch duty and give them sort of data and now we'll have an accurate up totheminute map from AI looking for embers looking for smoke and and seeing where the fire is jumping. And so now we can give real-time information to to everyone. Um and hopefully

Yeah. I want to talk I want to talk a little bit Yeah. kind of a little bit about kind of some more sci-fi stuff. I'm curious to kind of get your opinion on. So John and I John's in Pasadena. I'm in Malibu. So this time last year, uh John like I I didn't have uh electricity, cell service, anything like that. John was like house that previously burned down.

Yeah. That my my house burned down in 2018 was fully rebuilt and I and 6 months after I bought it, I was like, "Oh, it's there's a reason [laughter] it burned down." No, but the the it burned down because like an ember had floated from a far away fire and embers floated to like six houses in my neighborhood and all them just burned down. And luckily the majority of the homes were fine. And I was just thinking like there's got to be better um uh as we you know head into the kind of robotics era there has to be better. You know detection is one thing but then actual response feels like an inevitable next step over time when if it's literally a single ember that can you know be the reason that a multi-million dollar property burns to the ground. we should be able to detect that quickly and put it out without having, you know, a bunch of uh heroes in a truck drive, you know, 10 miles and come put it out with water, right? So, how are you thinking about kind of like actual response and and is that even something that Ring would do or do you think there's other startups that should

uh leverage your guys' detection?

So, um um this is where I'm like we were we worked with watch duty. So our our firewatch which is our system that we go into where AI is now watching your camera. You've put it in this mode and said like yes I want to share this that then pipes right into watch duty. Watch duty is what's happening. The command center has watch duty up. Residents have watchd duty on their app. So that is the centralized place where the map is forming on the fire. And I my hope is that and being in the fire myself I saw that like a a a bush is smoldering next to a house and I could go put it out with my feet. You know, people are like, "How'd you put out the fire?" And I'm like, "I I literally would stamp on it until it was out, put some dirt on it." Like, now if that had kept going and you know, I don't know like the exact incident, but like yes, that's what happens. Like that keeps going, then it burns a house down. Then that house starts up fire and puts out more embers. And so if we can if if you could see that on a camera and and say, "Oh, wow." Like there's this thing has jumped over to this area that's a quarter mile away and there's smoldering next to this house, you can put it out so much easier and deploy those resources. So I think that's why what's what's great about this one is we're bringing the information in and then it's going to watch duty which is already being used by all of the people that are deploying the resources today.

Yeah. Uh are you excited about robots and drones as as responders to various home you know home security wildfires. Uh you have Boston Dynamics.

Sorry. Amazon has a drone that flies around your house but is that a ring project or is that

I was I built I built that.

You built that? No way. Tell us about that. How that

Yeah. And then and then specifically, so Boston Dynamic has been showing off their new humanoids. I've been wanting somebody to build a a humanoid home security product forever. I'd love to have a just a menacing. I I mean, deterren it's having, you know, various criminals knowing that most homes now have, you know, video.

I mean, just those signs that you put in the in the in the ground like that helps a little bit. But yeah, I'd love to know more about drones and robotics. So there's different like different layers to drones. I mean so you have companies like Axon out there that are doing police drones and like literally are you know going miles. So from a fire or you know responding to something there's that layer and then I think there's going to be layers down all the way to where we were which is like I'd say the complete other side which is inside the home. So having like a small drone inside the home that can fly around see what's going on for security. Um I'm very bullish on the whole robotic space. it like in general I think AI has also you know what took what was so hard for us years ago when we were building this thing is now I don't want to say it's easy but wow is it different like like there's a real tailwind behind us and so uh hopefully I mean you guys are you guys are in LA maybe I'll bring something by the studio in a few months.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love that.

Yeah. But but more specifically, is the idea of a humanoid pacing around your property is is that is is is that a reasonable deterrent? [laughter] Is there

Have you built one? Is your

So So here the reason the reason I say it is cuz like when people are like, "Oh, you have a robot that's going to do uh your laundry." It's like, well, I have a wonderful woman who does my laundry and I like employing this person and if you give me an $80,000 a year robot or $80,000 robot that's going to depreciate and it's going to do a worse job, I'm like, I'm happy with the human at least for a,

you know, the next few years, right? Whereas hiring somebody to stand in your backyard

all night long,

all night long,

that's a brutal job.

That's likeundred 50k a year. I don't know for somebody that's actually

like worth worth.

And it's also it's a it's there's all these studies of security guards that they like their their effectiveness goes down like it literally like like algorith it's like it just falls off.

Um and you think about it's like just because you get so bored, right? Like you're sitting doing the same thing every day, nothing's happening. So it's like the effectiveness of a security guard is actually like a human security guard is very tough to be because you're not it's not normal that you're actually doing something on the security side. Uh so I do think robotics I think at the higher end places enterprise maybe there will be you know humanoid uh security. I we always look at it from high volume low cost like I'm I'm always on like the high volume lowcost residential side is where we start and so you know what can we build to bring robotics in into the home and the neighborhood. um that's affordable at high high volumes. I don't think I don't think that's going to be a humanoid for a long time. That said,

if a humanoid costs $500 or something at some point and you could do it, of course, like it's great.

I was saying to John, the teleoperation potential here, which is like, hey, ring dissect something. I have somebody somebody could be anywhere in the world. suddenly they can pop into this embodied form factor and actually be a physical deterrent because I mean so many people in I mean LA like I talk to anybody that live I mean the Palisades had like prior to the fire an insane break-in epidemic. I have friends who would have multiple breakins in their home per year.

Super uh like elite operators that would come in, use metal detectors, figure out where your safes were, pull them out, throw them out in a truck. be like 5 minutes everything's gone. So there needs like video is not enough for true deterrence like there's going to have to be physical

and we have stuff like virtual security guard that is you can set it in like you know for my house when I go to sleep I set virtual security guard on if someone comes on the property they're notified goes to a human so like there's response so I think that's I I I do think you're correct though in how you're looking at it which is like it's not just technology like the idea that like just technology is going to solve everything is not correct I think we can use our IIA like our intelligent assistant to bring people into the scene when they need to be on a limited basis. And when you do that, I think I think that's how like for example what you're talking about the palisades like how you would reduce that crime or even try to zero out that crime.

Um which I I do believe we can do over the next few years with deploying the AI as well as merging it with other human responses.

Uh how is the enterprise side or the B2B side of the business evolved? Uh what's the shape of it? when what trade-offs have you made to uh focus on particular niches or verticals? I'm interested to hear because obviously this technology applies everywhere.

Yeah. And so we really started focusing residential.

Uh that pulled us into small medium business. You know, we're in, you know, over half a million small medium businesses use us. Uh we don't even know exactly all of them.

Let's go.

Um

yeah, of course. They treat it like homes. They buy it as like a proumer effectively.

Exactly. So, we don't like exactly how many, but but we think it's, you know, it's definitely north of of call it half a million. Um, and you know, just like it's like how the iPhone sort of slowly got into or not even that slowly, but got into the enterprise. Oh, yeah. Like the iPhone like, you know, Apple didn't have a bunch of sales people go out and sell enterprise iPhone.

Yeah.

It's, you know, this the CEO brought the iPhone in that they had and said, I don't want this other

not using it. I just

That's exactly right. And so I I think we've kind of gone slowly up the stack. Today we actually launched a whole line of new cameras that are multi4K lens like really higherend. We call it the elite line.

And I I do think that will sort of get us just kind of similar to the iPhone getting into enterprise. I think it'll pull us in. Um and we'll see. We'll kind of see how that goes. We also now have an app store that people can build custom applications

because historically again pre AAI a camera did security like that was all it could do in in sort of reasonable you know costefficient way. Now if you think about like a like a coffee shop if you have Ring cameras all over your coffee shop why isn't it telling you that a table was dirty and someone wanted to sit why isn't it telling you about the line? Why isn't it telling you about which team is the fastest? Why is it like like we're seeing it like it's all there and so being able to allow the long tail to be built by entrepreneurs um just like any marketplace or any app store. I do think we're going to unlock a lot of value for enterprise and small medium business that way. So I'm really excited. We actually just launched that today too. We launched a bunch of stuff today. So

yeah. Yeah. I can imagine that being really good. Have have you been uh focused more on job sites than like large enterprise like software campuses? that type of that type of security that feels like a maybe a separate problem, but I could imagine you getting there at some point.

Yeah. I mean, we like job sites have been great. We have a lot of solar powered cameras, so people use them. They put them on like you'll see them on a pole like you'll see like one of we have cameras with lights. Yeah.

So, that's also good on job sites. Like someone walks onto the job site at night, light goes on, cameras there. Um we have a talk down so you can say like you're being recorded. So, like there's a lot like we have the virtual security guard. Sure.

Um we launched today one of the trailers. So, if you see those trailers that are out in the parking lots

Yeah. um you know

usually solar panel on top and a bunch of cameras that that type of thing. I've seen those.

Yeah. So we launched one that's more of I'd say like a product lower cost in that market. Again, high volume, low cost.

Um so we're going to

I wouldn't be surprised over the next couple years we sort of really have a big dent in the enterprise, but we're not going to do it through the front door. We're not going to sort of

not responding to RFPs. We're not going to have an enterprise sales force. We're going to just, you know, come in like the iPhone. Like let let it come in. I feel like I feel like you could spin that up in a heartbeat at Amazon, but uh but it makes sense for the overall strategy. Uh one one last question u and we'll let you get back to CES. Um how do you think about uh camera sensor technology in security cameras and door cameras? I was looking specifically uh at like a wildlife like a squirrel cam for my son who's four and a half and I was but I'm also like a camera nerd. We use like, you know, Sony FX3s and full-frame uh cinema lenses here. And I was like, I sort of want like a 4K, not just 4K, but like full-frame cinema lens hardened just to find my squirrels. And it's like a ridiculous thing. I don't know that that's a real real product, but how do you think about the the the learning curve and just the diffusion of just better camera sensors, better lenses into these commodity consumer products over time?

Yeah. Yeah. So there's definitely a diminishing return. You know, you can go to like a 20k or you know like K sensor and it's it's like not going to for a norm again

very special applications. Yes. But for like a normal home, it's not going to give you any more value. I do think 4K is a giant leap.

Um we now have a whole 4K line. With our elite line, we have like now like multi multi 4K lenses that are are are um lensed down to the pixels. So it's really pixel like what you really want to look at is pixel density like that. It's actually not 4K 2K. It's like what is the pixel density? Yeah.

Um that the camera delivers. And then that's also like the AI can only process what it sees. Like so the the camera can only be as smart as what it sees. I do think the current line of 4K cameras we have right now for most residential use cases

are as good as you're going to want at the price point. And then we'll just kind of let just like everything in technology as AK sensors come down as bandwidth goes up we'll kind of keep adding that. But I do think we're right now kind of right at the edge of that curve of price. Um, you know, price to sort of quality, what you need.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Jordy, anything else?

No, this is super fun.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. This is a lot of fun.

Appreciate you making the time. Great to meet you. Uh, happy customer.

Overnight success.

Thank you for uh

Yeah, exactly. Overnight success. Exactly.

It's amazing. It's amazing. Uh, well, enjoy the rest of CES. Have a great rest.

Come back on soon

and we'll talk to you soon.

Cheers.

Goodbye. Uh, quickly let me tell you