Ring: Jamie Siminoff

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2020

⏱️ 91 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jamie Siminoff spent much of his twenties and thirties as a serial entrepreneur, launching three tech businesses you've probably never heard of. When he finally landed on a breakthrough idea, he didn't realize it at first; he was just trying to solve his own frustration of not being able to hear the doorbell while tinkering in his garage. His jerry-rigged solution evolved into Ring—a doorbell with a camera and microphone that connects to a smart-phone app. After a nail-biting appearance on Shark Tank and a nearly disastrous launch, Jamie was able to rebrand and grow the business, eventually selling to Amazon for roughly $1 billion. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
0:07.0	Download the app today.
0:09.0	New years is here, and with it brings the possibility of change.
0:13.0	As one behavioral scientist put it, first starts are really powerful.
0:17.0	So as you head into 2023, LifeKit is a great resource to help you plan your life and tackle changes, both big and small.
0:24.0	Listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
0:27.0	Hey, just a quick heads up before we start the show. There are a couple of swear words in this episode,
0:32.0	so you may want to keep that in mind if you're listening with kids.
0:35.0	Okay, onto the show.
0:42.0	We start here, and it's like the week before Christmas.
0:44.0	People are contacting me and saying it's not working.
0:46.0	And their video was coming through like an old TV like TUNER.
0:50.0	Like it was like all lines through it, and you couldn't see the picture.
0:53.0	So most of our units are now in the field with customers that not only do they not work,
0:59.0	but we can't change that software on them, so they're basically bricks.
1:03.0	You cannot fix the ones that people have.
1:05.0	Yeah, you can't rewrite the software on this chip.
1:08.0	And so this was like the end of the world, like this really was.
1:12.0	Basically the business is over.
1:14.0	From NPR, it's how I built this.
1:23.0	A show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists,
1:26.0	and the stories behind the movements they built.
	...

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