Inventor vs. Business Entrepreneur

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The Learning Leader Show with Ryan Hawk

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My Guest: Jamie Siminoff is the founder of Ring, which he sold to Amazon for over a billion dollars. He's an inventor and builder who couldn't hear his doorbell while working in his garage, so he built a video doorbell. When his wife said it made her feel safer, he realized technology had changed, and home security needed a complete reinvention. Ring became the world's largest home security company with a mission to make neighborhoods safer.

Jeff Bezos reads and writes his own stuff. When Jamie asked Jeff to write something for the book's back cover, Jeff actually read it and wanted his own curated quote that was from him.

Jeff loves entrepreneurs, so they kept him out of negotiations. After the Whole Foods deal, Amazon learned to keep Jeff out of negotiations because he finds it tough to negotiate hard with someone he respects.

Hardware companies can die while growing fast. Ring grew from $3M to $30M to $174M to $480M, which sounds amazing. But to go from $170M to $480M, you're buying hundreds of millions of dollars of product when you're selling less than that. If sales growth slows, you're basically going out of business.

Going from $480M to over a billion in revenue was like being on a motorcycle at 200 miles an hour. If a leaf falls down and hits you, you're dead. At Amazon, when Ring said, "We need another billion dollars to order stuff for next year," Amazon said, "Okay, what else do you want?"

There are different types of entrepreneurs. Jamie is an inventor/entrepreneur. There are business entrepreneurs who are maniacal business people we've never heard of that have just crushed it. Jamie is maniacal on product and brings invention into how they run the company.

Hire marathon runners. Marathons are the dumbest thing any human could ever do. Even if you win, no one cares. Jamie finished the Boston Marathon in 22,000th place and he's so proud of himself. You want people that don't care about external validation; they just care about getting the mission done.

AI has democratized all information. With AI making it so you don't even need to know C++ programming anymore, fill your business with passionate people who care about the mission and they'll crush anything.

When building your team, start with the mission. Jamie tells people, "Our mission is to make neighborhoods safer. Do you want to work on making neighborhoods safer? Because if you don't, you're going to be miserable here. You're going to hear it every day, and you're going to roll your eyes."

Referrals work because people don't want to let you down. The best hires are when someone's referred by someone (uncle, friend, whatever) because they feel guilty. They don't want to let the person who referred them down.

Find an infinite truth to work on. Amazon's core principles are infinite: Will customers always want lower price, more selection, and faster delivery? Yes. If you deliver in 30 minutes, they'll want it in 10 minutes. Making neighborhoods safer is an infinite thing to work on.

Your wife saying one thing can change everything. Jamie built a video doorbell so he could hear the door from his garage. His wife said, "It makes me feel safer at home." That's when he realized technology had changed and home security needed a whole new approach.

The hard part is bringing the infinite down to the tactical. When you have an infinite mission, you can get overwhelmed trying to solve it all at once. You have to figure out what to do every single day to work toward that infinite goal.

Shark Tank was a disaster that turned into everything. Jamie went on Shark Tank desperately needing money. He got zero offers and cried in his car after. But when it aired, the boost in sales gave them cash to hire people and build Ring, which started the clock on their success.

Sometimes you can't stop because you're in too deep. After Shark Tank bombed, Jamie couldn't back out. He'd already ordered too many products and owed too much money. He'd be personally bankrupt if he stopped. People think he's tough for keeping going, but he didn't have a choice.

Being naive is a superpower. Great inventions are things people say can't happen because if they could happen, they'd already be out there. You have to be naive enough to say "I think I can do this" or "I don't even know that I can't."

People said you couldn't build a battery-operated camera on WiFi. Jamie had never built anything before, so what did he know? They just went out and tried to put some parts together that seemed like they would work.

Knowing too much gets in the way of doing the work. If you're thinking and analyzing the whole world, that's time you're not inventing, building, making calls. When are you actually doing the work?

The Ring.com domain negotiation was survival. The owner originally wanted $750K for the domain. Jamie had $178K in the bank on the day he was supposed to pay. He called and said "My board said I can't do the deal, but they approved $175K today and $1M total over two years." The guy hung up, called back, and said fine. There was no board, it was just Jamie.

The stress internalized and destroyed him. Jamie wasn't sleeping and was super stressed. There are different types of entrepreneurs: some can handle that stress and sleep like a baby. Jamie internalized it, and it affected him terribly.

Be transparent at home. Jamie's son was six years old and knew where the business was. His kindergarten teacher would say, "I hear the business isn't going well." They just had open, adult conversations about everything.

Work-life integration, not balance. Jamie integrated work, life, and family together. His son came with him to pick up the first DoorBot in China. Oliver has been to 40 countries and almost every state because he traveled to every meeting.

Bring your kid to the meeting. People asked, "How do you bring your kid to a meeting?" Jamie said, "Who do you think they're gonna remember more?" We're always scared to be different.

Follow your passion, but make money when you need to. It's hard to see anyone who's achieved greatness who didn't do what they loved. But there are times you have to work your ass off to make money (Jamie was a bellhop and valet parking cars). When you set out to do something, do something you care about.

If you fail trying to make money, that really sucks. If you fail trying to do something you love, at least you tried to do something you love. If Ring fails, they try to make neighborhoods safer. That's noble.

You can tell who's successful by how fast they respond. It's a weird flip-flop of what it should be. You'd think a successful person should respond in a month, but the people running at the highest levels are actually very efficient. There's something about it.

First principles thinking eliminates recurring meetings. There's no way every single Monday at 9 AM you have something important to talk about. The world can't exist like that. Meet when you need to do something, not on some cadence.

Hire the best and let them work. Get the best quarterback, best kicker, best coach. Let them work together, let them practice, have the plays. You don't need to get together every day to talk about how you're feeling.

No standing meetings, zero recurring one-on-ones. Jamie doesn't have a standing meeting with his team in any cadence. He talks to people all day long, all night long, Sundays, but it's event-based. "We have to get sales up on this, where are the issues?" If you're not doing your job, we'll fire you.

Service to others is the best thing you can do. A year from now, Jamie would be celebrating something on the charitable side. Probably something with their work in South Central LA with LAPD, or at their 75-acre farm in Missouri helping the town that's been impacted by opioids and industrial farming.

More Learning

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#626: Rob Kimbel - The Power of Grit and Generosity

#632: Nick Huber - The Sweaty Start Up

Reflection Questions

• What's a problem you could pursue for decades without exhausting its potential? What mission has no endpoint, only continuous improvement?
• Work-life integration. What are you keeping separate that might be better together? Where could you stop trying to "balance" and instead integrate?

Audio Timestamps

02:19 Bezos' Endorsement for Jamie

03:30 Selling Ring to Amazon

05:04 Hypergrowth Cash Crunch

07:54 Inventor vs Business Operator

09:34 Hiring Marathoners

11:20 Interviewing and Firing Fast

13:25 Mission Origin and Big Vision

15:40 Infinite Truth and Focus

17:06 Getting on Shark Tank

19:32 Live Demo and Rejection

23:13 The Aftermath and Momentum from Shark Tank

24:57 Naivete as Superpower

27:00 Doers Beat Planners

27:33 Winning Ring.com Deal

30:17 Stress and Family Support

31:33 Work-Life Integration

33:26 Passion Versus Practicality

36:08 Scaling Authentic Culture

37:26 Frontline Leadership Style

42:15 Team DNA & No Standing Meetings

45:19 Service and Jamie's Farm Mission

47:39 EOPC